20 Bed Adaptation Agriculture Garden Plan

Adaptation Projects
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If you had 20 100squarefoot (4x25 feet) or 10squaremeter garden beds and wanted to plant a garden that would give you a major portion of your food, what would you plant?

Assume 8 month growing season with adequate rainfall. Some of the hardier greens survive through the winter.

Primary crops of grain corn, beans, winter squash, and potatoes. Probably more than one bed of each of those.

What else would you plant and how much?

Am open to creating landrace/adaptation seeds for any foods not yet available.

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I would probably get inspiration from Jeavons’ (how to grow more vegetables) work.

edit: found a more detailed description here: John Jeavons - 60/30/10: Percentages for Planning Sustainability, Diet and Income in the Smallest Area The 60/30/10 planting ratio is a cornerstone that allows Biointensive farmers to build soil fertility and produce large amounts of food in a very small space, almost indefinitely. 60% crops— a.k.a. Carbon and Calorie Crops— are the winter and summer grain crops, preferably interplanted with nitrogen-fixing legumes The 60% crops are so named because they should comprise about 60% of the growing area in a Biointensive garden. These crops produce a tremendous amount of compost material and soil nitrogen from the legumes, as well as a significant quantity of calories from the edible grains. Included in the 60% category are wheat, oats, cereal rye, barley, and triticale for winter grains; and flour corn, amaranth, sorghum, quinoa and pearl millet for summer grains. The legumes include the vetches, fava beans and Austrian field peas. 30% crops—a.k.a. Special Root Crops— are root crops that have the potential to produce 5 to 10 times the calories per unit of area and time as compared with other crops, including soybeans. Special Root Crops include potatoes (especially 65-day maturing varieties), sweet potatoes (especially 90-day maturing varieties), leeks, parsnips, salsify and Jerusalem artichoke (especially 90-day maturing varieties). The 30% crops should comprise about 30% of the growing area in your garden. 10% crops— which are Vegetable and Income Crops— include salad vegetables and all the other crops not described above. They can be used to provide variety as well as minerals and vitamins to your diet, and can be sold to generate an income. The 10% crops should comprise about 10% of the growing area. 60/30/10 is the basis for sustainability, but is should be noted that skilled farmers can vary the ratio a bit, as long as sufficient carbon and nitrogen are produced by the "60%" crops, sufficient calories and nutrients for one's diet are produced by all the crops, and the weight of food to be eaten daily is comfortable for the consumer. Using this crop ratio as a guide, you can build real sustainability into your garden or farm. It’s a fun puzzle for gardeners to contemplate as the winter sets in: how can you use these ratios to design a garden? Which crops will you grow to build your soil fertility and feed your family next year? If you would like more information about planning a garden based on the 60/30/10 ratio, there are a variety of resources you can use: • You can learn the basics for free from Margo Royer-Miller’s “Farmer’s Handbook” available online at http://growbiointensive.org/Self_Teaching.html. • If you want the works, you can dive right into the new 8th edition of "How to Grow More Vegetables", which has updated master charts explaining which crops do what, and how much you need of each one (http://www.bountifulgardens.org). • Also, check out The Harvest Planner – a tool currently in development that will “…help you design a garden or farm that produce delicious, bountiful crops for nutritionally complete diets and income, and enough organic matter to help maintain soil fertility at almost no cost.” http://www.harvestplanner.org/ | Facebook

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With the 100 square foot bed system described that is where my mind went (the John Jeavons grow Biointensive plan)
Secondarily, I would just audit what you eat and prioritize that.

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We have 1000 sf garden (plus culinary herbs in the flowerbeds), 4 people in the house, and year round growing season. We grow about half of our yearly produce intake. We prioritize things that we like that are relatively expensive to buy or that we can grow much better eating quality (which means no potatoes or grains. That means:

Permanent:
Apple, plum, peach, apricot, pomegranate, tangerine, lemon, and orange trees (latter two are in the fence and shared with neighbors)
20 row feet of cane berries (boysenberry, blackberry, and loganberry)
30 row feet of everbearing strawberries
1 Rogers Red grapevine
1 passion fruit vine
Rosemary
Oregano Cimarron and Oregano Indio
Sage
Za’attar
Pink savory
Rau ram

Cool season:
30 foot row peas (combination of shelling, snow, and soup)
3 each broccoli raab and mustard greens
5 tatsoi
5 raab-tatsoi homemade cross (work in progress)
10 kohlrabi
10 sprouting-type broccoli (Piracicaba is our current favorite)
5 collards (local grex experiment)
10 foot row of beets
10 foot row of turnips
A handful of lettuce and some Chinese pink celery in odd spaces
Cilantro and arugula volunteer in open space
Half dozen peppers that overwinter and give a trickle throughout

Warm season:
4 summer squash (doing a little bit of crossing)
4 winter squash (compost pile specials)
30 row feet of green beans in the spring and fall (replanted with cowpeas for the hottest months)
20 sf sweet corn
15 tomatoes (selected in an ongoing trial of hot climate tomatoes) plus 3 Sub-arctic Cherry in the okra patch for the very early season
15 peppers (ongoing Landrace work for sunburn resistance)
25 row feet of okra
10 row feet of Armenian cucumbers
10 row feet of melons
2 watermelons
There’s a couple of cardoons this year for fun

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For sustenance, don’t forget about fat. Some kind of oilseed crop. Maybe sunflower or brassica seeds; there are others which might be best for your climate

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I am on 3 acres, just starting my permanent gardens. My main garden area for this year is (?) about 50 x50. 75? I never actually measured it. But it’s square.

So far I have 4 seedling apricot trees that survived their first winter, 4 peach trees, 1 cherry. Aronia, elderberry, highbush cranberry and a bunch of others getting established.

I have planted more tree seeds and also have several purchased trees.

I will be starting my herb gardens this year.

I have potatoes in the ground, and onions. Garlic around the trees. Culinary herbs (oregano, cilantro, cumin, dill, etc) are going to be “wilded” in coming years. Tomatoes and peppers will be going in the ground shortly. Corn, squashes, melons, with sorghum and various grains for the chickens.

Chickens and eggs for protein and fat. The goal is to be food self-sufficient in two years. Not going to happen. Maybe 5.