Garden Plan 2014

I’ve been busy this week planning next summer’s garden and loving thinking about being out in the sun and dirt again. I hope the perennial asparagus, fruits, and herbs survive this very frigid winter! Thanks to the internet (and a few books) I’ve learned a few things to incorporate into this year’s plan. Companion Plantings: This is something I’ve always tried to be mindful of. The most important thing seems to be to keep the onions and garlic away from other veggies, especially the beans and peas, except that beets do like garlic. And keep the dill away from the tomatoes and the sage away from the cucumbers. Many plants help each other: basil, parsley, marigolds, and nasturtiums seems good everywhere! Crop Rotation: I’ve always tried to move the plots so as not to plant the same thing in the same place two years in a row. But this year, I learned a little more. I think I discovered that the leaf die off the pumpkins and melons experienced was from a pest in the soil. Several places suggested a 3 year crop rotation. So I came up with this 3 year rotation plan. The garden has 12 annual beds if I count the end of the apple tree bed as #12. So I divided the garden into 4 groups of 3 beds each, based on companion planting compatibility. Each year I’ll shift everything down 4 rows. So where group 1 is this year, group 2 will be next year. Group 1: 2 tomatoes and peppers and 1 potatoes Group 2: 1 melons, 1 zucchini and cucumbers, 1 squash and pumpkins Group 3: 2 Onions and 1 garlic Group 4: “row” crops: 1 carrots, broccoli, beets, chard, bush beans, 1 peas and pole beans and lettuce, 1 corn and wheat. Cross-Pollinating: I was also concerned about the fact that all the squash are together in this plan and I’ve always thought you had to worry about cross pollination and therefore getting weird produce from it. But with a little internet searching, I’ve learned that pumpkins, zucchini, yellow squash, and possibly butternut squash can cross pollinate with each other., but that it only affects the seed, not the fruit. So it’s only a problem is you save the seeds for next year! So here’s the plan!