megany
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Veggie garden layout feedback?

Hello everyone!

We're about to start our first garden at our first home! We're being very ambitious and plan to use more or less every inch of our yard (including pots for herbs on the patio). We're not unrealistic -- we understand that we're likely to see some/many failures this year (it's a learning experience!).

We've done a ton of research, and are suffering from major information overload. I'd love some feedback / help planning the layout of our garden, since I know all of you are far more experienced.

To give you some background, the part of our backyard closest to our house is north. We're going to be doing double dug beds (slightly raised, we're going to surround them with cinderblocks) since the yard has not been used for gardening before and I want to make sure the dirt is loose and as good of quality as possible.

Here's our current plan:

4 beds, each 4 feet (wide) by 15 feet (long). There will be a 1 foot space between each bed so that we can walk between them.

END OF YARD (SOUTH)

BED FOUR:
Row 2: Strawberries
Row 2: More lettuce -- broccoli raab
Row 1: Swiss Chard

BED THREE:
Row 3: Spinach -- lettuce
Row 2: Radishes -- Onion -- Spring Onion
Row 1: Carrots (radishes between carrots, they'll be ready before carrots)

BED TWO:
Row 3: Lots of peppers (mini bell, bell, banana)
Row 2: Summer squash (replaced w/ winter squash) -- eggplant
Row 1: Zucchini (bush type) -- Beans (bush type)

BED ONE:
Row 3: More tomatoes (with loose leaf lettuce planted throughout)
Row 2: Tomatoes (with loose leaf lettuce planted throughout)
Row 1: All trellis: Cucumbers -- Pole beans -- Sugar snap peas

HOUSE (north)

We're going to buy the strawberries as plants. Unfortunately, we aren't going to be able to start seeds inside this year, and our budget is super tight so we want to give direct seeding a shot. I realize that might mean less success with the peppers and eggplant, and maybe even tomatoes. Hopefully it will work out though.

We're planning to make a cold frame later in the year for the lettuce, swiss chard, and broccoli raab to try to extend the harvest season for those.

Any thoughts on the arrangement and overall plan? Suggestions for improvement? Our goal is to get as much out of our space as possible. We're vegetarian, and there are only two of us, so our goal is to eventually make our garden a primary food source.

Is it completely unrealistic or nonsensical? I would love feedback! Thanks!

cynthia_h
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Your plan looks as if you're basing some of your ideas on Jon Jeavons' How to Grow More Vegetables... If not, you'll want to look at his book. The double-digging, low-rise beds (he doesn't use cinder blocks, and you may wish to omit them, too, in the interest of more walkable paths), 4' wide, etc. are hallmarks of his system.

My local public library has a circulating copy of his book; yours may, too. The most current edition is the 7th, which has a foreword by Alice Waters (so you'll know you have the most current edition).

Be advised: his book is very dense with information. Don't expect to absorb everything he has to say the first, second, or even third time through. I've looked through mine an untold number of times, and I always find something new.

Best wishes.

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

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applestar
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Even when started in late Feb/Early March, tomatoes don't start to fruit until mid to late July -- and these are earlier varieties, and peppers sometimes even later due to heat stress in July/August. I'm still having trouble with eggplants but I haven't given them the priority care I've been giving toms and peps, so I can't comment on that.

If you are still intent on direct seeding tomatoes, I would recommend you sow earlier maturing variety seeds with the cool weather crops since my volunteer toms growing from seeds in the compost do sprout about the same time I set out my transplants and I do get some harvest from them every year. You might try putting cut-off top of soda bottles where you plant them for micro-greenhouse. you might also seriously consider building your cold frame now to start the Tom, pep, and egg seeds in a little later on.

Last year, a volunteer tomato came up where I had set up a wall-o-water one week before planting out the tomato transplants. This little seedling quickly caught up with the 8week old step-sibs after they were planted, and produced beautiful sandwich tomatoes at around the same time.

megany
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Location: Maryland (Zone 7a)

applestar wrote:You might try putting cut-off top of soda bottles where you plant them for micro-greenhouse. you might also seriously consider building your cold frame now to start the Tom, pep, and egg seeds in a little later on.


Both excellent ideas! We'll see if we can cobble together the materials for the cold frame early. And if not, we'll try the soda bottle idea!

gumbo2176
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Megany, the only concern I would have is the amount of space you are allowing between the beds. If you are laying them out in a straight line 4 ft. wide x 15 ft. long each with a foot between them end to end, then that should be fine because you should work your beds from the sides across the 4 ft. width.

My concern is if you are laying them out side by side with only a foot between the boxes on the long side, that would make for some very confining space to try to work the beds from the sides. Perhaps I misunderstood your layout plans, but that could be an issue for most gardeners if they are laid out that close between the long sides.

megany
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Location: Maryland (Zone 7a)

Gumbo,

Here's a (definitely not to scale) outline of how I was planning to lay them out. I was thinking I could get to the beds both from the short 4' sides (because there will be space on either side) as well as access them from the long sides, since there will be a foot in between. Does that seem reasonable?

________________________
| |
| BED THREE |
|_______________________|

One foot of space in between
________________________
| |
| BED TWO |
|_______________________|

One foot of space in between
_______________________
| |
| BED ONE |
|______________________|

gumbo2176
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Megany, with that little space between the boxes it will severely limit your working area. Remember, some plants get pretty bushy and will not be confined to the area of the box itself. Things like tomatoes can get 2 to 3 ft. in diameter and I'm sure many plants will overhang the sides of your boxes.

I would think more like 3 ft. between boxes would give you room to work in the boxed area from all sides with some comfort. Think about this, you couldn't kneel down in a space only 1 ft. wide much less work a garden patch comfortably. It's much easier to give yourself enough space now before they are built than it is to realize the boxes are too close later on and have to move them after they've been filled with soil.

Just food for thought and a little voice of experience.

megany
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Thanks Gumbo! We left some wiggle room, so I think there should be room to increase the gap between the rows a little without making the beds smaller. We'll definitely do that then.

gumbo2176
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If you laid them out like this:
________________ _______________
( ) ( )
( _______________) (______________)
1 2
15 ft. side 15 ft. side

This would be the better solution. Lay them out whereas the 4 ft. sides are end to end. That way you could work the long sides from both sides of the box.

gumbo2176
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gumbo2176 wrote:If you laid them out like this:
________________ _______________
( ) ( )
( _______________) (______________)
1 2
15 ft. side 15 ft. side

This would be the better solution. Lay them out whereas the 4 ft. sides are end to end. That way you could work the long sides from both sides of the box.

Boy, did that come out bad when I posted it. It was more to scale before I hit submit.

megany
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Location: Maryland (Zone 7a)

applestar wrote: You might try putting cut-off top of soda bottles where you plant them for micro-greenhouse. you might also seriously consider building your cold frame now to start the Tom, pep, and egg seeds in a little later on.
I guess my next question then is when to plant. For my zone, I've heard it isn't really safe to plant tomatoes until May. If I use cold frames, how much earlier could I plant the peppers, eggplant and tomatoes?

If I use cut-off tops of soda bottles, could I plant a little earlier as well? Like beginning of April?

Does anyone know of a good template for excel where I can plug in my last frost dates and it will calculate when to plant all the different veggies? I can create one myself, but if one already exists I don't want to recreate the wheel.

I'm going to buy a soil thermometer so that I have a better idea of the actual soil temp, but by March the weather should be consistently in the low 60s. Will it be safe to sow the first batch of the spinach, peas, broccoli raab and lettuce? Anything else?

Sorry -- I know these are basic questions, but I've just read so much that my brain is fried, and I'm having a difficult time sorting out all the information on when to plant what.

@Cynthia - Yup, I am basing some of my ideas off of Jon Jeavons' book! I picked up his book, as well as 6 other highly recommended gardening books (mostly focused on urban gardening or small space gardening) from the library, and read all of those (and took notes) last month.

TZ -OH6
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Plant radishes near the tomatoes and peppers to keep the flea beetles off of the tomatoes and peppers. They will grow anywhere. Plant them a couple of weeks before the tomatoes and peppers go in so that they are in place when the bugs come.

Plant the tall things along the north side of the beds. You seem to have have trellis and tomatoes all together, probably shading each other.


Strawberrys generally need their own bed, although things without heavy leaf cover such as onions or garlic go well with them because they don't shade out the strawberies. Possibly your carrots would work better than the big leafy things you have planned. I would move the carrots in with the strawberries, and the radishes to every place with tomatoes and peppers, and move the leafy greens (chard, lettuce, spinach etc) in front (south) of the tall things. Spinach and lettuce will be over and done before warm weather so they might go well with the sguashes and be gone before big vines take over.

megany
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Location: Maryland (Zone 7a)

Thanks everyone -- great advice.

@TZ - It may seem like I have the tall crops shading the short ones, but in reality my yard is just backwards.

It turns out that I had to re-do my plan a bit because of a problem I encountered with a giant hill in my yard. It's going to be too much work this year to level out the hill. So we're doing four slightly smaller beds at the bottom on the flat part.

We finished bed #1 this weekend though, so it's ready to go. Is it safe to plant some of the cool weather crops this week, like snow peas, carrots, radishes, and onion? Or is it still too early for my area?

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jal_ut
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megany,
I think you can plant your early crops now. Spinach, peas, carrots, lettuce, cabbage, broccoli and onions.

Contact your county extension for local information.

Be aware that strawberries will send out runners and take over the bed you put them in. You will be able to grow some short season things along with them this year though.



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