Wednesday, February 18, 2009

my summer plans

for the kind souls who have asked- these are my summer plans- i am going to start preparing the garden plots in march. i have mine and my sister's to get ready and i will start my seeds probably end of march. i want to say i am zone 5ish so i will plant first or second week of may. our frost date here is supposed to be last week in april this year. or so the almanac says :)

i ordered my seeds (johnny's seeds and seed savers exchange) and most have arrived. i have a couple outstanding but they will be here in plenty of time. i intend to do a combination of square foot gardening and traditional row gardening- both in the companion gardening style. what the heck does that mean?

square foot gardening is growing intensively in one square foot of space. so, what i am going to do is put together a 4 foot by 8 foot raised bed separated into square foot grids and plant certain veggies there. i can harvest and replant all season. i had toyed with the idea of cold framing but i don't think i will try that this particular harvest season. companion planting is growing mutually beneficial fruits, veggies and herbs together so that they will enhance each other and you can harvest more. it's also not putting plants together that will inhibit each other. native americans planting a stalk of corn with a squash vine using it as a support with bush beans at the foot- is a great example of companion planting in a small space.

so, i will do some veggies in the raised bed and will do companion planting in a few rows also. i want to put corn and sunflowers and whatnot in- and they need room. so- a few rows of them along with putting beans and squash vines to use them as supports- helps everything grow better and helps keep the critters at bay. using cucumbers or squash vines with corn helps scare raccoons away from the corn. garlic will help keep the bunnies at bay (i hope). i have some excellent books and will put the links below.

roses love garlic

carrots love tomatoes

square foot gardening

four season harvest

seed to seed

root cellaring

that's plotting, starting, growing, harvesting, saving, and storing. i have more books i will share along- but that's how i spent my winter.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love this post!!! I'm so excited about my garden this year and it's so cool to read about your plans!!! Yay for Sq. Ft. Gardening and companion planting! I trust you'll be double digging your beds? xoxoxo! (I'm going to start tomato and pepper and eggplant seeds as soon as we're past this cold snap. I'd like to kill that damned groundhog!)

jmsjoin said...

I can't wait! Heck you can start a few tomatoes right now. Put them in big pots with plenty of compost and fertilizer.
You know how to companion plant. You know carrots love tomatoes. Plant garlic around your potatoes.

I left both at our old house so the kids could have a surprise. Some veggies hate each other and will put out pheromones to kill certain plants off! So they do not do well beside each other!

I didn't see it but I might have missed it. There are books on companion planting and rotating in your catalogs. The only plant I know that does not like to be rotated are potatoes. They don't like fertilizer either! Have fun spring is coming!

Unknown said...

Gardening has always been a sort of mystery to me. I love flowers and those that manage to come back year after year, sort of fend for themselves. I'm a very fickle gardener.

As I've said here before we have several small local organic farms, so it's kind of nice to entrust the growing to those neighbors. It's just that I'm lazy, let's face it!

You're inspiring me, though...I'm thinking...

fjb said...

My tomatoes love horse poop, the more the merrier, and I always grow basil with them. My ever bearing Victoria strawberries were taking over the garden last year, so this year, the babies are being given away not transplanted.

I left some carrots in the ground last fall and all the neighbors tell me that they will be fine once the snow clears. We'll see. I've tried this before and found nothing left but orange mush.:( We're still working on the onions I've had in the garage all winter and it looks like they'll last us until spring.

My big plans this year are to finally move the gigantic rhubarb plants that were here when we moved in to the opposite end of the yard, away from my garden.:)