Saturday, May 2, 2009

Planting my garden

I'm still building my garden's framework, though it's almost finished. I'm hoping to have seeds in the ground before next weekend. We just have to figure out how to move the frame from the garage to the great outdoors.

This week I've been deciding what to plant in my 28 squares of my square foot garden. I have two rows of 14 squares each. In my research into different varieties and types of each plant, I've selected a small sampling. This is mostly so that I can learn what will grow in our garden. Secondary to that is to learn which varieties we prefer. I'm particularly interested in the tomatoes. My favorite tomato is the campari type. I can eat an entire plate full with just a little salt. I'd eat them at every meal -- even breakfast. Unfortunately, I can't find the plants available for purchase anywhere, and I'm not talented enough yet to grow them from the seeds leftover from dinner. Because my entire family feels the way I do about a tasty tomato, I've chosen to go with all indeterminate(means produces until the frost) varieties. We'll see how that pans out as the season goes along.

My garden has taken quite a bit of thought, and of course an Excel spreadsheet. I've copied and pasted things around in Excel for weeks trying to come up with the perfect combination. Because so much of what I want to plant will need to grow vertically, the entire back row will be trellised. All of the plants requiring trellis subsequently have to be placed on that back row. Good thing we went for a long garden!

Here are the intricate details:

The Back Row:

The Front Row:

  • Square #1 -- Cucumber(Marketmore 76) from seeds

  • Square #2 -- Lettuce -- Romaine(Parris Island Cos Lettuce) -- I'll be rotating the planting in this square. The first planting will be a transplant from the store. I'll also plant seeds at 10-14 day intervals after that for good crop rotation. I'm a bit worried about when the lettuce will go to seed because of heat. But, since I don't know when that will happen, I'm going to try to grow as much as possible until then.

  • Square #3 -- Lettuce -- Salad Bowl Lettuce -- again, I'll purchase one then plant the others from seed.

  • Square #4 -- Lettuce -- Great Lakes Lettuce -- again, I'll purchase one then plant the others from seed.

  • Square #5 -- Lettuce -- Bibb Lettuce-- again, I'll purchase one then plant the others from seed.

  • Square #6 -- Green peppers

  • Square #7 -- Herbs -- small patches of cilantro, parsley & chives

  • Square #8 -- Red peppers

  • Square #9 -- Spinach -- Teton Hybrid Spinach from seeds

  • Square #10 -- Jalapeno peppers

  • Square #11 -- Spinach -- transplant from the store

  • Square #12 -- Yellow peppers

  • Square #13 -- Onion -- Spanish sweet and red onion

  • Square #14-- Sweet 100 Cherry tomato

1 comment:

  1. Good luck! I'm trying to grow my stuff from seeds (except for strawberries). I started indoors, and needless to say a lot of them didn't make it. I don't think I gave them enough light. And now Erik thinks my garden bed is a new sandbox. So he stepped on some of my seedlings. And Taylor thought he needed to move my labels around. So I have no idea where my carrots, tomatoes, and green onions are. Plus I can't yet tell the difference between my jalapeno and bell pepper plants. Great stuff. So hopefully everything grows for you!

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