help me find problems with my garden layout

All right, I need some eyes of wisdom and experience on my garden plan for this spring/summer. I am open to any criticism, suggestion, etc.



4x8 box
1st row:
peas, peas, peas, dill, broccoli, broccoli, carrots, zucchini (will sprawl outside of the box)
2nd row:
lettuce, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, broccoli, broccoli, carrots, carrots
3rd row:
lettuce, lettuce, spinach, cauliflower, cauliflower, onions, garlic, pumpkin (just one plant for the two boxes pictured - allow to sprawl out)
4th row:
corn, corn (I will add more corn once the lettuce is done), peppers, cauliflower, cauliflower, onions, garlic, pumpkin

2x8 box (I will have a trellis on the 8' side, which is on the west, but I am planning on putting plants that do well with partial sun. That spot in my yard gets full sun all day)
1st row: tomatoes x5, cukes, peas, watermelon (sprawl)
2nd row: strawberries, strawberries, strawberries, carrots, spinach, spinach, lettuce, lettuce

All right, have at it! Thanks y'all.

Tracy in SC

Swap positions of the corn and pepper with the peas in the North corner. You'll minimize shading your lettuce and spinach.

Oh, good catch. Thanks!

Hi Tracy,

Looks like a good plan, any plan that suits you is fine for you! The only thing I'd do is move the cukes. I don't know where I'd put them, but from experience, I'll say they are voracious in their growth habits. They will attach to a trellis, but they will grab onto the tomato plants, and you will spend your time getting them off the tomato plants. I have the notion they could hurt because they grab on tightly. They may not do any harm, but, mine bothered the heck out of me and my tom's.

Jo

Great point. I actually had my cukes and maters together last year, and I did struggle with that. Don't know why it didn't occur to me in making this plan.

Thanks!

Okay, here we go with suggested changes. I'm still open for more suggestions is you spot something!

jazzymaddy wrote:Great point. I actually had my cukes and maters together last year, and I did struggle with that. Don't know why it didn't occur to me in making this plan.

Thanks!

I'm also not sure I would have the cukes next to the peas as I havent grown peas before.

Here is my note to myself from last june when I started planting in March:

My pole beans & cucumbers have merged and grown off the top of the 4 ft trellis. The beans have not yet bloomed but the cucs have. There is such a jungle that I haven't found any cucs yet.

Note to self: DO NOT plant beans next to cucs again and give them both a higher trellis.

Enlarge this imageReduce this image Click to see fullsize


I couldn't find the cukes til the were mostly too big. Same with the bans. This was one square of beans and I think one cucumber.

everything looks alright, but for proper pollination, corn need at least 5x5 for non SFG. Two plants might just be a waste. . . might consider something else for those two squares.

Forgot to mention that I'm planning to put in more corn once I harvest those lettuces, so I will end up with 6 squares total. Will that be sufficient?

And I am not sure what else to do about the cucumbers. I only got one cuke off of two plants last year, and then I got some gummy disease that killed it late in the season. Not a great year for that. I definitely want to give it a better fighting chance. Should I allow my watermelon to sprawl, and just move the cuke down a square?

Thanks you guys for all your help!!!

jazzymaddy wrote:Forgot to mention that I'm planning to put in more corn once I harvest those lettuces, so I will end up with 6 squares total. Will that be sufficient?

And I am not sure what else to do about the cucumbers. I only got one cuke off of two plants last year, and then I got some gummy disease that killed it late in the season. Not a great year for that. I definitely want to give it a better fighting chance. Should I allow my watermelon to sprawl, and just move the cuke down a square?

Thanks you guys for all your help!!!

Last year I planted corn after I harvested my onions in June. I had about 6 squares with what ended up being about 20 stalks that grew (Mel recommends 4 per square). Most stalks had 2 ears. It was so delicious - I was very happy with it. I will probably follow the garlic and potatoes with corn this year.

Awesome! We got one ear of corn last year, but it was so tasty that it was worth it!

jazzymaddy: what software did you use to plan your garden?

Jazzy,

That looks good , very good .
Here's a suggestion ..don't know if its possible or cheap but here goes.

Get the pictures of your crops put on white magnetic sheets , cover with a high grade sticky sheet and cut the individual squares slightly smaller than the fit to square foot scale .
Put your plan sheets on magnetic sheet and cover as before .

Put your SFG plan sheets on a metal backed surface like a fridge door or teaching board and away you go ... as soon as you clear a square remove the original label & insert the new crop magnetic label but do keep the kids away form the boards .

Luci Dawson wrote:jazzymaddy: what software did you use to plan your garden?

For the first iteration in this post, I used the planner on gardeners.com. Here's the link.

http://www.gardeners.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-Gardeners-Site/default/Page-KGPJS

Then I just did a screen capture and saved it as a jpeg.

But then I wanted to able to move it around more easily and save it in my files, so I re-created it with excel and clip art. Not very high tech.

plantoid wrote:Jazzy,

That looks good , very good .
Here's a suggestion ..don't know if its possible or cheap but here goes.

Get the pictures of your crops put on white magnetic sheets , cover with a high grade sticky sheet and cut the individual squares slightly smaller than the fit to square foot scale .
Put your plan sheets on magnetic sheet and cover as before .

Put your SFG plan sheets on a metal backed surface like a fridge door or teaching board and away you go ... as soon as you clear a square remove the original label & insert the new crop magnetic label but do keep the kids away form the boards .

Love that idea. Good for us visual learners. I just keep it saved on my computer though, which is free. That works better since I can buy more seedlings with the savings...

jazzymaddy wrote:Okay, here we go with suggested changes. I'm still open for more suggestions is you spot something!

I'm super new, but I thought peppers need a trellis to grow? You have yours in the middle of your 4x8 with the spinach and broccoli.

I grew peppers in the middle of the bed. Most don't get over 15-18 inches tall, but may need support because the peppers can be heavy.

Furbalsmom wrote:I grew peppers in the middle of the bed. Most don't get over 15-18 inches tall, but may need support because the peppers can be heavy.

I want to plant peppers this year, but am racking my brain about space (trellis). How could I put support in place for peppers so that I can save my trellis room for tomatoes and cucumbers?

Perhaps fix two 1 inch square uprights at / across the middle of an SFG box perhaps using cheap " F" clamps from a dollar & dime shop , fasten cord across the tops so you have a soccer goal sort of frame of poles and cord , then hang something down from the overhead cord over the square where you need support .

What hangs down could be another cord or a piece of wooden dowel etc. placed a couple of inches deep in the MM

They don't need a trellis, but would appreciate a supporting stake.

Kay

Support, check!
No trellis for pepper, check!

Getting more excited learning this stuff.

jazzymaddy wrote:Okay, here we go with suggested changes. I'm still open for more suggestions is you spot something!

The zucchini will kill the carrots. It needs more room - probably that 4 squares in the corner.

Chopper



I like you layout as I have built a 4x8 SFG as well. I had to do my plan on excel so were did you get the nice graph and plants???

I would like to put mine up for review as well....

floyd1440 wrote:I like you layout as I have built a 4x8 SFG as well. I had to do my plan on excel so were did you get the nice graph and plants???

I would like to put mine up for review as well....

The graph is just the cells enlarged to the right size, then I applied a border to the right places. For the plants, I just clicked "Insert" then "Clip Art", and did a search in the clip art library for tomato, carrot, etc.

Hope that helps.

Chopper wrote:
The zucchini will kill the carrots. It needs more room - probably that 4 squares in the corner.

Last year I had a zucchini in one square in the corner that I trained to flop over the side of the box, and it worked well. Of course, I only got 4 or 5 zucchinis. Maybe that was the problem. Or maybe it was the extreme heat and the bugs.