lets see your garden plan

for those in the works of creating your plan lets see them.
It does not matter if they works in progress. you might need feed back
to help you along. please only post plans on this thread or your planning issues.

Oh yes, please! Here is mine so far:
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Sorry for the poor picture quality. Please keep in mind that it may look like too much crammed in one place because a lot of it is succession planting of spring-summer crops. Also, I am going to attempt to grow some of my cool weather crops (cauliflower, peas) near my trellis and train some warm crops (water melon, cantaloupe) over those to see if it will lengthen growing time. (Also because I had to be creative for crop rotation purposes.) The plants in gray are just overflow from a larger plant next to it, not additional planting. My melons and most squash are smaller types that can fit 1-2 squares when trellised. Lastly, I'm working on lots of companion planting to work with organic gardening as much as possible.
This is only my 3rd year and I still feel quite new at this...so please be "gentle" in your critique.

I don't know if you can decipher my notes This is the basic rough draft.
I have a list of seeds still coming and will no doubt redo the planning a couple of times. And probably NOT stick to it completely when planting

Next Monday I have no munchkins so am hoping to get a more final draft done.

All the beds are not together like it shows. They are spread out though my yard. I think I need to make a master layout of my yard!

And the notes are for spring/summer/winter so it can confuse even me



in the north west corner of my yard = potato bins are by beds 1-2-3 ..beds 1-2 on south side of a shed, bins and bed 3 on west side

south west corner of my yard = spring/winter bed, tomato bed, vines bed (pumkin on ground/loofa on a frame with beans, peas etc bed, and potato bags for squash/zuch ,

Herb bed is in the gnome garden in the south east corner of my yard

A-B with cattle panel between are in the central south section.

Oh and I have a half barrel on the south corner of my house I grow cherry tomatoes in.

And the no 1 4x4 is now gonna have a row of mammoth sunflowers in the back against the shed, with a cotton in each square.

And I have a bathtub I am moving from my shade garden to a sunny area for ground cherries!

Wow CindiLou....I think I may have actually understood all of that and that's saying something for me. The loofa squash looks fun! Have you done them before and what do you do w/ them? I've always wondered if people ever actually eat them or just use for crafts and such. Also, I will envy your mammoth sunflower. I did a couple my first year that grew 12' high and blooms almost 2' wide....and man were they work! I did 1/sq and their roots took over at least 4 sq/ea....probably to steal the nutrients from everything else. They were beautiful and had tasty seeds though!

yup did the sunflowers before! Huge! I ended up using loppers to cut the stalks and a spade to get the roots out! What a job! But I have two grandsons that are always at NaNa's (now I babysit 12hrs a day!) they loved them! You know..I was thinking about the space they took up after I posted. I think I changed my mind and will plant them in the GROUND behind the box lol..

My loofa I tried last year but didn't start it in the house soon enough. So starting it in Feb this year with the brocc. I had blooms but no squash on them. You can eat them when they are small too so I will try that as they go. I hope! I am hoping to get some to make loofah with lol..

Made a layout of my yard this evening. (Yes I am home alone in the evening and get bored in the winter ) I have a quarter of a city block. The map is NOT completely to scale. It looks a lot more crowded than it is! This gives you an idea of where I stick my gardens lol..
Hubby doesn't mind mowing around stuff. He says it's less mowing lol..I actually mow the garden area and the south side from the street to the dog kennel with my reel mower.

Here is my current plan for this year. I only have 4 squares I haven't figured out what to do with. I will be keeping my Bell peppers in pots to try to over winter them again, I already have the seeds in and am waiting for sprouts hopefully Ill have ripe peppers before October this year.

Oh, such nice neat plans, people.

I drew mine out. But I have no idea what's going where, except for maybe the tomatoes. If I do it like last fall (pink box on left), I'll end up letting the seedlings tell me where they want to go, and then write it in over the plan. Totally bass-ackwards, I know.


CC

I use paper and pencil as well, because I am too cheap to buy software and I don't usually take my computer to the garden. I tend to draw all over my plans and change things up.

Here is our plan using territorialseeds.com software. Pretty cool to move things around.

cool plans so far but I noticed you all seem to be missing one or two of the most important points of the square foot method.
when I post a diagram tomorrow of one of 4ftx4ft beds.
I think you will notice the points I am referring to.

thegreatcob wrote:cool plans so far but I noticed you all seem to be missing one or two of the most important points of the square foot method.
when I post a diagram tomorrow of one of 4ftx4ft beds.
I think you will notice the points I am referring to.

Cob, please state your point.

camprn wrote:

thegreatcob wrote:cool plans so far but I noticed you all seem to be missing one or two of the most important points of the square foot method.
when I post a diagram tomorrow of one of 4ftx4ft beds.
I think you will notice the points I am referring to.

Cob, please state your point.

Could one of Cob's points be the orientation of the beds? CindyLou is the only one where I can see it on her plan unless I have missed anyone elses.

Oh my gosh...I am a ditz..hubby says the reason the layout of my yard looks so crowded..I have a 250 foot by 250 ft lot rofl...

so..we missed a point or two on our rough plans? Really? well let me see..we plan..then we rework the plan..then we change the whole thing again.....we plant..then we decide we wanted it different and make notes for next year that we lose/don't use. Yup we've got it covered lol

Here's my current version of my 2013 front-yard SFG. I'll probably keep tinkering with it for a while! After all, around here we can't plant/plant out hot-weather crops until at least Memorial Day.

the points you forgot are:
1.succession planting.
2. mixed planting so you don't have bug problem.
(the only plant in plans that need block planting is corn).
3. Some of you forgot to include space for your plants per plant type.
(squarefoot 1,4,9,16.)
4. Orientation yes it is an issue. but plant height. tall in back short in front. more important factor.
5. use shade to an advantage if have a bed corn that shade a bed of greens during the hot part of the day you can get a longer
harvest of plant that bolt because day day length
6. scale issues in the plan .
say 4x4 box on plan you can have an over all plan. then diagram for each box.
I remember talking about the above issues with my square foot teachers.
here are 5 things that have stuck in my head from reading mels books
and taking the classes.
1. space correctly don't over crowd.
2. grids help you keep the bed organized
3. don't over plant one type plant to be harvested at same time.
4. interval planting plant the same plant in different square and harvest them over period time.
5. if plant is harvested fill the space with another plant(succession planting.
I think I will have to post diagrams later to explain each point.
A square foot bed in planted in 3 dimensions a well as over time.

Edited to take out what I was thinking

CindiLou as for looking at your plan. I see one spacing and one technical issue that will cause you some problems,
1.if you three sister bed is 4x4 I see you having crowding issue since 4 Cucurbita pepo varieties aka (squash and pumpkin plants will overwhelm the bed). growing 1 plant of that group is better option.
2. growing bean up corn may sound good bit in practice the bean and corn where grown for dry use only not like today when corn and beans are grown for fresh use.
also the bean have tendency to pull ears off the corn.

CindiLou Yesterday at 11:15 pm

.Edited to take out what I was thinking

yolos wrote:

CindiLou Yesterday at 11:15 pm

.Edited to take out what I was thinking

Cob I don't know about the others, but my post is a general post of what my boxes will have in them. The lions share of people on this forum know the rules for planting an SFG so I didn't feel the need to brake it down by numbers per square. Those that don't know the numbers need to buy the book and do some reading. As for shading from tall plants, once summer is rolling starting around May my entire garden gets full sun from about 8am to about 8pm unless I plant tall plants on the east or west side of my garden.

I have bucked the system for spacing on my plants on several occasions and had great results I have always planted my Toms 1' apart and have had bumper crops every year last year I had four squash plants in 4 squares side by side and they gave me so much fruit that this year I will be only planting one of each. So in so much that the books say that you need X amount of space per plant I have treated it more as guide lines and I continue to experiment with my planting using the SFG rules as my base to fall back to when something dose not work.

Hogger
I am so glad to see your plan. I feel the best plans are related to wishful perfect growing temperatures, perfectly growing plants, and perfect growing time frames. Don't think that is going to happen with crazy Ohio weather. So I bought a bunch of seeds from Baker Creek and Seed Savers and I just plan to wing it. Whatever happens, will happen. I read of others tearing things out because the next succession crop must go in at a certain time. I can't do that. I am going fully by the seat of my pants. I'll start a bunch of seeds, see what is successful to transplant, and let it do its thing. Fill in the rest of the squares as space allows. Just keep key crop spaces available for a few things. And still add a box or two each year till I reach a limit that can be fully supported by the compost to maintain everything. That's about all I can plan for at this time.

Hoggar wrote:...I have bucked the system for spacing on my plants on several occasions and had great results I have always planted my Toms 1' apart and have had bumper crops every year...

Hoggar, spacing toms 1' apart is not contrary to what the book teaches, unless you are talking about the determinate/bush variety. Do you plant those that closely together as well? That would be great!

I accidentally planted my determinate, plum type tomatoes one foot apart last year. They grew huge, heavy and needed a lot of support, but they actually did pretty well.

I also didn't know how to prune them (or pretty much anything else, LOL!) They were supposed to have produced all at once, but they actually produced for months on end, well into late December when they were planted in April. Who knows?! Beginner's luck.

Here is my basic plan for this spring. The bottom pic is the same scale as the first, but for some reason my computer would not let me save the entire set-up as one pic so I had to split it into two, and of course then I couldn't get the scale right on the pics. Go by the squares - each one is one foot. The pics only represent what will be in each square, not indicative of plant spacing. I may rotate the onion box to the farthest west, then have the corn between the broccoli box and the onion box, to give the onions more sun, but then it may not give my carrots the cooler shade they may need. May need to do some shade testing before planting!





GG

Hi Llama Momma,
I have not had the opportunity to do succession planting because I have always done come and again harvesting and it lasts all season. Last year was the first time I've had open space in my boxes and that was because my spinach bolted before we even got a leaf from it, so I had 6 empty squares that I never got around to refilling.

Gwennifer,
I got most of my spacing info from the seed packets and then ignored it. I plant my determinate and indeterminate in the same box and string trellis every thing its all in a 2'x8' box. In this picture the front trellis is my Tomato trellis and the back net trellis is where my Cucumbers are going this year. It is hinged and I plan on angling it over the box this year to shade my lettuce and spinach crop.
This year I am also planting several Tomatoes in pots so I can move them to the greenhouse in the fall.



Here it is full from last October.