I've gotten a complete layout of what to plant, using growveg.com's ipad app. It's not the most impressive thing ever, but after 30 minutes of frustration I got it done :).
That's the layout. It might be slightly difficult to read, but it shows everything. Notice the layout itself. I chose this layout so that I could:
- Have 2 feet of walking space around each grow bed
- Only have 2 feet of reaching distance for any plant in the entire garden (which is why the boarder is 2ft)
- Also, around the borders will be fences (otherwise i'd have made them 4ft too :))
Plants I've chosen
It's a pretty large list, once you get started it's hard not to just plant everything you have a seed for, and i've done close to that :). So here's the list:
- ROW 1
- Beefsteak Tomatos - 8 sq ft, with the trellis. These are indeterminate, meaning they need to grow up something. A determinate tomato (or a bush tomato) will be nice for next year when using crop rotation.
- Carrots - Carrots love Tomatos, using companion planting, i put a row next to the tomatos these will probably also be in with the tomatos as they're supposed to help them.
- Green Onions - I found an interesting trick with green onions. You can plant green onions from the store, after cutting off the green, and they just grow more green every 2 weeks. You can get like 4 or 5 cuttings. Worth a try while the seeds grow. Also, carrots and onions go well together because onions scare off carrot flies.
- Broccoli - 18 sq ft, broccoli need more room, this should be enough for 6 or so plants. Hope to see how the seeding works on these
- Beets - Beet greens are great for eating, and i'll probably end up canning several of the beets themselves, and hopefully juicing several of them.
- Acorn Squash - I would need 2 plants, but I also planted zucchini which is in the same family (which means i can't save the seeds from either one)
- Cucumbers - will setup a small trellis on the side of the grow bed.
- Oregano - Good for the plants around, scares off the bad bugs
- Radishes - 2 sqft only because i have them, who knows how we'll eat that many :). i do hope to save seeds from at least 4 or 5 of these plants though
- Spinach - these should be nice and sweet
- Peas - need to plant those soon, early march, will setup some string for them to hang onto.
- ROW 2
- Rutger Tomatos (roma size) - 8 sq ft, with the trellis
- Green Peppers
- Carrots - see above
- Onions - see above, though these ones will be allowed to grow to be bigger 2" bulbs. You can do 2" or 4", but 2" makes for more yield (evidently), and smaller onions are better since who uses a full onion :).
- Extra Dwarf Bok Choy - These i'm just growing because of how cool they are :). They grow to be about 2 - 3 inches tall, and they're just tiny bok choy plants. Will be great in stir fry, or just as a steamed vege. This is the cabbage family plant I hope to get seeds from this year (only 1 cabbage family should be seeded a year)
- Brussel Sprouts - I'm interested to see how these do. I probably won't plant them a lot, but maybe if they do well
- Kale - I heard from a friend that these are an awesome edition to a meal, they add almost a meaty texture to a dish and this last year they grew all through the winter (though with our winter this year even tomatos might have lived that long :)).
- onions and carrots - mostly carrots, I'd like to get enough to juice some. I do want to learn how to do the biointensive companion planting, which I might discuss when I go to actually plant these.
- Swish Chard - Another green which hopefully i'll be able to juice, and find other ways to cook. Mainly just checking to see what all grows well, as I hope to eventually get a year round crop of greens for salads
- Tom Thumb Head Lettuce - Just got these free from the place that sold me the Bok Choy, and these are smaller heads of lettuce, which sounds really cool :). They're about baseball size, and from the ratings they're perfect for a 1 person salad, which my wife does a lot :). I will definitely be collecting seeds from these
- ROW 3
- Corn - 16 sq ft, on the north side so that they don't shade the other plants. I hope to see how these do in a square foot garden. I'm not expecting much, but if they do well, then I will probably continue to plant them.
- Parsley - Does well with corn, and is good for the garden in general for bugs. I really look forward to being able to pick fresh parsley for spagetti sauce.
- Cilantro - Not that well known of a fact but coriander and cilantro are the same plant. Generally Coriander is considered to be the seed in America, but really most places call the entire plant coriander (cilantro is spanish). I hope to be growing a lot of these to seed :).
- Bush Beans, I have 2 sets of these in this row because they work well with a few different things. These will be great fresh, and canned. They need to be picked early and often so they produce full amount. I also hope to inoculate 1 set but not the other. It's not a great test, but hopefully it will show if inoculating legumes makes much of a difference. It's supposed to make the plant better for composting (helps the plant pull more nitrogen from the air, which is what plants like to eat), and make more yield.
- Lettuce - 2 types, 1 a headed lettuce, and 1 a leaf lettuce (pick leaves as you go). Will be interesting to see which one is better for how we use it.
- radishes - i know i know, but I have 2 different types, have to try them both out.
- stevia - evidently these are hard to germinate, we'll see how the soil blockers do. Should be nice in a an herbal tea to sweeten it up.
- eggplant - my wife loves egg plant, and we'd really like to learn how to cook it. These are just the normal Black Beauty ones, if we find good ways to eat it, then we'll probably try out more types. Easy to save the seeds too which is a plus.
- zucchini - I almost got away with not growing these :). But they're a classic part of a garden, and my wife likes to cook them into zucchini bread, so I gave in.
- mustard - should make for some really good greens, and it'll be interesting to learn how to get the seeds from them.
- butternut squash - I love this stuff :).
Strawberry Beds
I have the strawberries all around the whole thing. Seemed like the best use of the 2ft space :). This will allow them to branch out and fill the whole space. I do plan on adding a few onions to the beds to keep out pests. I also added some Basil, Garlic, Marigold, and Mint which do excellent jobs of not only blocking out lots of pests, but also making really excellent food :). The mint and basil are also going to be planted throughout the garden to help. Here and there. For example, the green peppers and tomatos love basil, so there will be a plant next to them.
Things to think about in the Future
With the layout I have the plants are close to those things that they work well with, and I tried to make them far away from those things they aren't. However, it gets even more tricky next year and the next. I will want to rotate the crops so that the same type of crop isn't in the same place. I'll need 4 different rotations (should be fun) which should keep down diseases and pests (bugs will lay their eggs near the plants they like, and when the plants aren't there next year they don't do as well).
Another thing to think about is when things need to be planted, and what to do with the land before and after. I hope to plant most of the spring plants again in the same places in the fall after adding more compost. This will hopefully give me 2 full sets of crops, which will be nice. Succession planting, another thing I'd like to learn more about in the future.
Future Blog Posts
- Saving Seeds - I'll make a different post for every plant I save. I should have plenty of video and pictures of the process (hopefuly).
- Planting - I'll show u the garden before and after, and how the biointensive layout works
- Composting - I found a cheap place to buy great compost near by, but I also want to compost any left overs each year. This is where I differ from normal biointensive gardening, but doing so allows me to grow more veges :).
- More Soil Blocking - I'll have pictures of starting the seeds in the 3/4" blocks
- And More ...
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