The seeds that I ordered have arrived and I’ve been sorting and organizing them into a new box with the seeds from 2008 and 2009. But the biggest part of planning the garden every year is actually figuring out what is going where. I actually do this before I order seeds so that I have some idea of what I want I need – or, um, justify to myself… 
I’d like to maintain at least a 3 year rotation for crop families and this is the third year. It’s harder than I think it will be to make the rotation happen – some of the big blocks of crops are probably in the last place I have to put them without throwing my whole system on it’s head!
So here it is, the working draft of the 2010 garden plan (click to enlarge). For reference, each square is a square foot.
The color coding doesn’t mean much to anyone but me, but generally it’s by family and/or nutrition needs. It just helps me see at a glance where I’ve got certain types of vegetables.
Now I just need to work through the seed starting schedule. Of course, that has more urgency than I realized as I need to start lettuce and early brassicas as soon as this weekend! Wow, where’d the down season go?
How’s your garden planning going?
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I have yet to order my seeds because I’m determined to map out all of my gardens beforehand, but it keeps getting put off (at least I got my cover crops in on time, though). I think I have about half an acre mapped out, but that’s it so far. Seeing your garden plan has inspired me, and the idea of color coding is making me giddy! Plus, I need to start seedlings SOON, so time’s a-wasting. Thanks for sharing this, it will help me organize my own plans a little better.
Glad to help! I always swear I’m going to map things out before hand, but it always ends up being only a sort of plan before the seeds arrive…
Lettuces are sitting outside this sunny morning, onions and cabbages are germinating on top of the refrigerator. While perusing the garden plan and seeds that just arrived, I realized that I forgot to order beans! So I’ll need to get to the local nursery to pick some up as well as leek seed. I’m hoping to find some winter leek varieties since I couldn’t find one from the place I ordered.
That’s quite the garden plan! I’m jealous! It’s graph paper for me. That way I can take it out to the garden with me. By the end of the year, it’s a bedraggled mess, covered in dirt and splotched by dew.
I only have 400 square feet to work with currently. I don’t really want to expand until I do a better job of utilizing the space and veggies that I have. But I can dream….
I certainly didn’t forget the bean seeds – I’ve got more than I can possibly use. If you were closer I’d totally hook you up.
If I had it to do over I’d have a slightly smaller garden. I suppose we could let part go fallow but instead we’re going to space things out a bit more and try new ways of minimizing the weeding.
I’m hungry just reading about your garden. Reminds me I gotta pay my CSA for this season. I hope Brian has things mapped out as well as you do.
Bet he has it mapped out even better than I do. My plan is pretty, but could use more detail about how many I’m planting and when. I guess that’s going on the seed starting schedule.
There is still at least a foot of snow on the ground where I live. I usually don’t start planning until late March.
How lovely to have so much space! I just got my garden map done and posted this week as well. I’m working with considerable less space (about 1/4 of my 1/4 acre) dedicated to growing veggies but we pack it in! Planning is really the key to making it work.
We haven’t started planning our garden yet, although in my head I’m already realizing we need to shift the big garden due to the club root fungus we found in the nursery-bought cauliflower and broccoli (drat!). I think we’ll move brassicas to the north end instead of the south, and shift everything else down “two spots” toward the south (this being beans, corn, cucumbers and squash).
Our larger plan, although not for this year, is removing a couple of “useless” trees from our southern fenceline behind the garage and moving our entire garden over there so we can reclaim some of our sacrifice paddock.
Oh, I did just remember…we will not plant as many pole beans because I will NOT be canning them on my dinky, squished-right-against-a-wall, two-burner kitchen stove!! Glad I remembered that…we don’t need 60′ of pole beans!!
We’re planting fewer pole beans this year as well. Last year the amount we got was really overwhelming. I think the chickens may have eaten more than we did by the time it was all said and done. Oh well.
Bummer about your club-root. We’ve so far (knock on wood) avoided disease issues.
Wow, this is great. I will tell you I am pea green with envy when I see a garden plan such as yours. Oh, those classic rectangles fill only the garden of my dreams. In reality, I garden in a sloping yard with beds of a zillion different shapes, all irregular and nonlinear. I have curves, ovals, bulges, you name it. But nary a rectangle to be seen. Nice to look at, I call it ‘naturalistic’ but it is hell for planning an orderly veg garden and especially, figuring out how much to plant. Aiiee.
I will also confess that every year I promise myself that I will sit down and plan it all out, choose veg varieties before ordering, be sensible, be frugal — you know the story. And every year I run out of time, sit down with the catalogs and a vision of a space much larger than the one I actually own, and just …… order. When the seeds come, THEN I start figuring out where to put them.
Dumb? Yes. But I’m resigned to it by now. And this accounts for why I had almost 20 varieties of tomatoes out there last summer. In my own desperate self-defense, I decided in the end to call it ‘research’ and that made it ok.
LOVE your plan. Would love to see photos of the resulting plants throughout the coming year. An aerial view would be cool. Gotta crane?
Of course you know I’m jealous of your pretty rambling natural looking garden right? Ours just seems so BORING in comparison. Of course, I suppose ours is easier to plan and till, but still!
I order way too many seeds every year too. It would help if I actually figured out how many plants go in each section before I order – but I always overestimate how many broccoli plants I can get into a 15′x4′ bed…
Laura,
The plan looks great! Geez you have a lot of sq feet to grow on… (Envious, though maybe not of the workload). I love how you layed it all out with color coding. I did something similar last year to map out my plant dates and expected harvest dates. Worked pretty well so I may do it again. Thus far I am well behind last year but because of the fact that good preparation carries over year to year, I think I’ll be alright. I’m getting ready to set up my seed starter and get the early spring stuff going in the next couple weeks and the addition of my greenhouse this year should help get a good start on the Hot weather things too.
I was wondering, after last years dissappointing bee experiment, what are your plans for what you’ll do differntly this year with them? I’m planning on starting a hive and would live to hear what you learned through experience.
Thanks and best to you and the family!
Paul~
Paul, I’m so jealous of your greenhouse! It’s on the someday list for us.
We lost our hives this winter and so have no bees at the moment. Jessi and I are regrouping and trying to decide if we’ll order bees, get on the swarm list, or ??? It really depends on her as I’m a bit disenchanted with them right now. I appreciated the pollination they gave us, but at the same time they were a lot of work for a lot of heartache. Hopefully you’ll have better luck than we did!
Hello!! I haven’t made a new map for this year yet, but juggling the brassicas so they aren’t in the area with clubroot is tricky. I LOVE my brassicas, and HATE clubroot. We didn’t have it until I put a large amount (about 6″ on the surface) of half composted horse manure in about 5 years ago, and now we’re stuck with it. We opened another few hundred square feet to compensate, but the rotation uses that up pretty quickly.
Going to start my keeper onions, salad greens, and a few brassicas this weekend.
I really enjoyed the potluck at Laura’s place last weekend. I love to talk gardening, and learn what works for other folks.
Lisa – it was so great to meet you last weekend! I’m starting lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower seeds this weekend. And if it stays dry I might loosen up some space in a couple of rows so that I can put in early peas next weekend. I cheated and ordered onion transplants again this year – starting them from seed last year was a pain in the arse, plus it didn’t work all that well for us.
Laura, have you ever been to Modern Victory Garden’s site? Her seed starting schedule is here for the peninsula: http://www.modernvictorygarden.com/2010seedstartingsched.htm. She is an amazing gardener and I really heavily on her spreadsheets. She really pushes the envelope of starting dates so maybe it wouldn’t work quite as well for you but it seems to work for my Seattle garden.
I have been. I’ve actually got a pretty complete spreadsheet that I put together (and color coded) last year. I’m just updating it with quantities now and then I’ll post it later this weekend. We’re in this weird zone that isn’t really Everett and isn’t really Arlington and yet isn’t anything else either. We kind of go with trial and error and optimism around here
Laura, possibly the ‘grass is greener’ syndrome (ie lots of rectangular beds vs rambling/naturalistic beds) jealousy is just another version of the age-old jealousy between those with naturally curly hair and those with naturally dead straight hair?
Re crop rotation (ie brassicas to avoid club root). I will add my envy for those of you who CAN rotate crops. Despite hearing of the need to do this in every gardening book, gardening seminar, gardening talk I have ever read/heard, I have few such options in my garden, at least for tender crops like tomatoes, cukes, peppers, etc. I have only 3 places in my yard with enough reliable frost protection to risk planting these darlings. They are all in front of south-facing walls (house or rock), and/or under a wide roof eave. Because of our short season (officially 90 days or less) and possibility of frost even in midsummer, I just can’t risk planting these crops anywhere else.
Thus, I have planted tomatoes in some of the same spots for 32 years now. I hear Eliot Coleman and every other garden writer I know of, gasping in dismay. But so far so good. I add lots of compost and not-made-by-me organic matter every year, and feed with crop-specific organic fertilizers. In the past 2-3 years I have begun risking planting in more exposed areas, as our summers are noticeably warmer than when I first started gardening in Bend. You can’t argue against global warming with me!
Holy Cow you’re organized! I need to get my stuff together and plot out our garden too, but the whole crop-roation/sunlight requirements/more seeds-than-space conundrum has me good and flustered. Oy, but spring waits for no slacker…