Crop planning for the vegetable backyard usually feels overwhelming to new (and skilled) growers. There are a lot of completely different colleges of thought on easy methods to plan and structure annual crops. Consequently, there’s plenty of conflicting data on the market to confuse the well-intentioned researcher.
At Seattle City Farm Co., we create plans for 70 gardens every year. Our backyard plans are devised to maximise the backyard’s productiveness, whereas preserving them neat and tidy. We manage our plantings to make ongoing upkeep as straightforward as attainable.
For gardens to be productive and tidy, we be certain they’ve loads of gentle, water, and vitamins; we work to maintain pest stress low; and we succession plant new crops all season lengthy.
A key to our crop planning system is that we plant in particular person rows and/or teams of the identical crop. This has a number of benefits, together with the next:
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When a specific crop is able to be faraway from the backyard, it is possible for you to to clear an entire row or part of the mattress, leaving satisfactory area to plant one other crop. (See: Crop Rotation and Lifespan)
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Some crops have progress kinds that make them incompatible with different crops. By planting your crops in teams, it’s simpler to maintain suitable crops collectively and incompatible crops aside. (See: Development Type)
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Concentrations of the identical crop household are simpler to handle—to use fertilizers on the proper time, skinny the crops, and so forth.
Even throughout the bounds of those guidelines, there are infinite crop mixtures. For example these ideas, I’m going to stroll you thru the crop cycle over one yr in my house backyard.
I selected the next crop plan as a result of this backyard is analogous in measurement to many house gardens. It consists of two 4’ x 8’ beds and a surrounding 2’-wide L-shaped mattress. In most years I’m fortunate sufficient to have extra rising area than this (and I’ll take each sq. foot I can get!). Nevertheless, I hope this specific yr feels accessible to most gardeners- and it exhibits simply how a lot meals you possibly can develop in a comparatively small quantity of area.
A fast word on studying the maps beneath: (T) means the crop was planted within the backyard as a transplant and (D) implies that the crop was direct sown. The crops in daring are those that had been planted in the course of the time interval mentioned in every map.
MARCH-APRIL
The primary picture exhibits the backyard in March and April. Every part within the diagram, besides the garlic, was planted throughout these early spring months. I simply occurred to be actually into beets at the moment, so I devoted numerous area to them. In different years, I’d have in all probability divided the area devoted to beets in half and added a planting of carrots.
