Garden planning considerations

Adaptation Projects
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I think it was the second spring up here I realized I could just move my fenceposts if I wanted a bigger garden. It’s a luxury I had never before had. Every year I’ve run the pigs in a new area and expanded the garden that way. Last year’s garden was the biggest garden so far and it did well, but I didn’t get as much data collection done as I’d like. Now in preparation for deciding how big my garden will be in 2023 I’m rounding up my considerations, then I’ll math out my requirements, then I’ll come back and consult this to help pare down the mathed about of space:

Some of my 2022 garden went into perennials, and a significant amount of perennial material needs to go in this year (primarily apples).

I want to space some of my tomatoes wider so they don’t tangle with each other, so I can collect better information about individual plants.

I have limited energy for indoor starts this year.

Last year I didn’t get to do the tomato and pepper things I wanted, so there’s a lot of extra energy that wants to flow into those projects.

Irrigation is challenging.

But I have lots of straw mulch this year.

This is the first year I’ve really felt like I have a broad enough base in some projects (squash, favas) that I don’t want to add to those projects much. On the other hand, I’ll want to watch them closely, because they’re past the survival round, and watching takes time.

I want to grow several seeds from the same sibling group together in many cases.

My season is short, so planting and harvest are n relatively short windows. At most I can take a week to till and plant (nearly) everything.

I have a limited amount of row cover for the crow-attractant plants.

I want greens that are not lamb’s quarters to self-seed over most of my garden, so I need pockets everywhere for them.

Most of the important information for some plants can be recorded in winter (survival, flavour, size for squash and favas, for instance) while others need more growing-season attention (crossing-friendly flowers on tomatoes, and the flavour of tomato fruits across the season, for instance).

I want a bunch of good storage starches this year to eat.

I want a range of families to eat from.

I always need to try new things.

I need to grow enough seed to contribute to various swaps etc, plus to eat if the seed is edible (corn, grain), plus to shape my soil seed bank even if the voles come around.

I may have some old seed that needs a grow out.

If things are new to me and being direct seeded, they need a dedicated space so I can see what they are when they come up.

There’s more shade than I thought in a couple places.

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Yep. Planning is fun and also stressful. Trying to optimize all the space and give things priorities.

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One of my biggest garden planning considerations this year is, “How closely do I want to plant all my banana seeds?”

I’m not sure how much of a germination or survival rate I’ll get. If it’s high, I want to keep all the plants (in order to see what survives through the winter), so I should space them far apart. If it’s low, I don’t want to have devoted 90% of my garden space to them, so I should space them closely. So I’m not sure how far apart to space them.

Hmmm. I suppose I could always sow my garden beds full of everything else as if the bananas won’t sprout, and sow the bananas far apart enough as if they all will. Then, if I get low banana germination, I’ll have a productive garden, like last year; and if I get high germination, I can gradually thin out (and eat the thinnings of) everything I don’t want sticking around a whole-season-long companion crop for the bananas.

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I have three acres of grass, and unfortunately I can’t kill it all this year (without chemicals).

The first priority is to start a garden, but the grass has to be dead or very reduced to make that possible. So I put down thick woodchips, and cardboard under the boxes.

But how to do the wild garden without either herbicides or lots of digging? And the pollinator garden. Both of those need to be direct seeded into the ground. And I want to do the first of the herb gardens this year, although most of those will be starts planted straight into the other woodchip area.

At the same time I am learning completely new soil and weather, so that will make it harder.

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I really appreciate the six months of snow cover here; it forces me into planning on a way I never got when I could harvest year-round, and I enjoy thinking about it.

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Three acres is indeed a lot! I struggle with things that need a fancy seedbed too – all those wild plants with tiny seeds, like evening primrose, and the fukuoka package. My legacy habit is just to lasagna bed them with cardboard and compost but it does take a lot of material.

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Found this in a plant group today and it seems relevant

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I try to use less plastic but I really think tarps for solarizing the soil to kill the sod/weeds/cover crop is the best option small scale. The least bad option from herbicide, constant tilling, etc.

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I posted that on my page today, because I KNOW thats me. haha

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If I had three acres of grass I would either get chickens and a chicken tractor, or I would divide an area into sections with a chicken house in the middle. Chickens will weed, cultivate, fertilize, eat bugs, give you eggs, and make wonderful sounds. Moving them periodically from one section to another they will clean up the old garden plants and weeds and make it ready again. This idea illustrated in Earth User’s Guide to Permaculture by Rosemary Morrow

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My local grocery store’s cardboard compactor broke down. They have a full 20’ shipping container full of cardboard plus they’re lining it up along the parking lot, neatly broken down. I bet they’d be fine if I took a trailer or two of it.

Hm.

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I love planting things with unpredictable germination (like bananas) into a tiny nursery bed. Then if anything germinates, transplanting it into a more permanent location. With things like walnuts or apricots, that might winter-kill, I leave them in the nursery bed the first winter, then move them to a more permanent location after the first winter.

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Ooh! Have you germinated banana seeds before? Or am I the only one here who’s trying to do it? (I’m obsessive. laugh)

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I never even knew that it was possible to obtain banana seeds, let alone grow them…

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(Grin.) Well, maybe, once I have abundant banana seeds, I can send you some! It’d be awesome if you could get some to grow. You’re clever, and your climate is much colder, so if you can, I bet you’d create something really special.

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Current garden planning level: taking my pre-soaked favas out, looking around for a stick, and putting the favas in roughly- spaced holes made with the stick. No tools, string, or measuring. Let’s see how I feel about this when they come up.

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