2015 garden plan with nice pictures

This year i'm trying out a new gardening method called the Mittleider method.  It's a method of using synthetic fertilizers with natural minerals to get maximum yield.  At first I was a bit hesitant to use synthetic fertilizers but since i've gotten into hydroponics i've changed my mindset a little.  For me, the main focus is to stay away from herbicides and pesticides.  So we'll see how it works out.

As a note, i'm not following it perfectly, because the method wants me to move my beds farther apart (which I will do if we ever move to another house, and if it does awesome I might do it here too).  So instead of following it perfectly I'm planning on doing companion planting to help keep down on bugs (one of the benefits in the Mittleider method's spacing between beds is to cut down on bugs).  So it's not a perfect example, honestly the Mittleider method is a lot easier since u generally plant one plant per area of your garden.

I used a crazy tool that I wrote myself (with the help of some starter js) which you're welcome to use, but I warn you that if you don't know javascript really well it'll only be soo useful.  http://jsfiddle.net/BmLLh/77/

To use, you just click the 2" or 4" or 36" etc to get a circle that is the size of the plant you want to plant, and then you can drag it around.  It's setup to be 4' by 5' (1/2 of my 4x10 beds) which was perfect for my needs.  If you know css you can change the size, if you know javascript you can add more spacing circles.

Here's a few pictures of my grow beds for this year.

Bed 1 - Contains my tomato guild (which I'm having twice in 1 bed).  Tomato, Lettuce, Potato onion, carrot, radish, kale, beet, nasturtium, spinach, thyme, and basil.  All work nicely together for keeping down on bugs and helping one another.

Bed 2 - Cucumber and celery guild and my pea (mostly potatoes though) guild.  Cucumber guild: cucumber, beans, celery, kale, chinese kale, spinach, nasturtium, rosemary.  Pea guild: onions, peas, beans, carrots, potatoes, marigolds

Bed 3 - Contains my Corn and Winter Squash guild and my Zucchini and bean guild.  Corn Guild: sunflower, butternut squash, corn, lettuce, and spinach.  Squash Guild: squash, zucchini, fenugreek, beans, radishes, marigolds, rutabaga, spinach.

 These are beds 4-6, note, 1/2 of each of these beds currently has garlic in them, so i'm just showing the other half of each.  Really each of these are just a continuation of the bed before it

Bed 4 - Another Tomato guild

Bed 5 - Another Pea guild

Bed 6 - Another squash guild

 The hardest part of this will be planting :), but it should cut down on weeds and bugs.  We'll see how it works out, and hopefully next year be doing the full mittleider method to see how it compares.

Also this year I plan on making some videos of the garden to show how it progresses, so stay tuned.

Total Plant count:

Lettuce - 33 plants
Onions - 70
Peas - 24
Chinese Kale - 16
Kale - 13
Potato - 60
Spinach (and Arugula for some of them) - 109 (probably overkill)
Rosemary - 2
Marigold - 22
Beets - 24
Carrot - 27
Potato Onion - 24
Radish (some will be random carrots) - 226
Tomato - 15
Beans - 17
Thyme - 6
Turnips - 40 (these will become 40 Rutabaga in fall)
Basil - 3
Celery - 19
Nasturtium - 5
Sunflower - 3
Corn - 16
Cucumber - 4
Fenugreek - 10
Butternut Squash - 2
Squash - 3
Zucchini - 3