My mother called me the other day, to ask about sharing shipping (and larger palettes of plants) for our garden orders this year. I thought it was a GREAT idea & the kids and I have been working on how to maximize our little garden space for this year. Because we spent SO much last year getting everything ready, we need to keep our changes to a minimum. But this is what we came up with for this next year. The only thing I wish we could do, was find room for a few more tomatoes - but with Mom insisting on growing 50 plants just for her & Dad & habitually calling us to help her out with her overabundance... I suppose we don't actually NEED to plant more ourselves, huh? Here is this year's plan.
done. nice lay out, too, sister. I love your mis-word that works so well: "palettes" rather than pallets. I remember getting many palettes of plants! maybe get a diff variety of tomato, if mom gets say, big boy or some other fresh eating tomato, get a plum variety for canning/freezing as sauce/paste. personally, I'd grow veggies I love but tend to get pricey, like red bells. you could set containers on the resting bed, couldn't you? I think you need some food for the soul there, too, such as lavender or flowers for cutting. I MUST have rosemary.
Oh boy, I must have been more tired than I thought when I typed that, to not catch the misspelling! It did look pretty though, didn't it? heehee! And thanks! It's a lot of fun - and a bit of a challenge to decide what we'll grow each year in such a small space, to really make it "worth it." Mom always grows dozens of full-size & roma and just a FEW cherry tomato plants. We tend to stick with cherry tomatoes here, since DD likes the little ones & I like ALL tomatoes. Sweet 100 & Sweet Million have both grown very well for us, but we were considering trying a few new ones this year... after doing a little research, it looks like Marcellino & Chocolate-Cherry would also grow well (and have the high-yield we're used to) here. Our flower bed is the long brown stripe that the pumpkin buckets straddle with their arch to the far right of the picture. Right now we have giant moonflowers in there, and I'll let the kids choose a few annuals to fill it in. They tend to choose ornamental grasses & small blue flowers of one sort or another - very tranquil, really! Lavender hates me, much to my chagrin. I've got nearly solid-clay soil, and I can't seem to keep it alive in containers. My next attempt with flowers will be Scottish heather... a close second-favorite. Other than that, I've got lilies, lilacs, and the rose-bush grown from a cutting of the wild rose I rescued from the side of the road & dragged home as a little girl. love, mom
Stick your lavendar in a full sun fairly dry spot and ignore it. You'll be surprised. Lavendar loves neglect and suffers when you get touchy feely with it. I have heavy clay also, and found that I killed it with love and water, when I moved it to the fringes and almost forgot about it...it thrived and multiplied.
Thanks gardener I think my problem is that there ISN'T that much "dry" in my neighborhood. We have a dry-spell each August, but the rest of our spring/summer is pretty soggy. My mom actually grows a few marsh-plants in with her lilies! love, mom
Nope, no such luck... my yard's the flattest thing ever. I was thinking though, if I were to use a HUGE container (Mom's got stacks of 'em from buying trees) and poke plenty of extra holes in it I might be able to have lavender up on my front-entry deck. Then even though it would still rain buckets, it would all run right back out. love, mom
That might work, but consider working 1/3 sand in with whatever you fill the pot with. Then it would certainly drain. And full hot sun. And hold back on any fertilizer.
Oh, sand! No problem. We've had a "sandbox" inside for years, and I was just informed that DD has finally outgrown it so I've got 50# of fresh, clean sandbox sand I needed to put SOMEWHERE this year. THANKS love, mom
I prefer the spanish or french lavendar, the blooms are prettier to me. But any of it is great I also have Munstead.
that looks really good! i wish we could get our garden sorted like that.. we just grow things anywhere at the mo! chocolate mint is looooovely too =] i grew cucumbers the other year, we (mom & i) just put the plant in big pot and stuck canes in to support the plant - water it regularly, pick the cucumbers when theyre about 7inches long... the ones we grew, if they got longer than that, they curled =/ ever thought of potatoes? a huuuuuuuge pot full of earth with a spud in, youll get a few from that =] another idea.. maybe get a hanging basket and attach to a wall to grow a mix of herbs and/or mints in =]
That's beeyooteefull. I always try to plan out my garden like that, but it never does end up looking like the map.
Just a quick update - and a question. Does anyone have any experience growing scallions? We'd like to try this year, but we tried leeks last year & they didn't do so well... they grew, but they only got as big as a scallion. From what I can find, I didn't water them NEARLY as well... apparently the ground should have stayed fairly saturated while they were young? Anyway, in light of our financial pinch this year, we've decided to re-think each bed and here's what we came up with. We're sticking with the same layout & don't want to add the expense of any more beds... but we're making sure each bed produces the absolute maximum we can think of.
my brocolli didnt grow very well last year =[ it didnt get compact heads and then it flowered, so it was just a wasted plant really, which is a shame
For your scallions or leeks try amending with sand and peat or bark/leaf mulch/compost. The soil needs to be loose and friable for them to reach any size. Watering won't accomplish that. Your soil needs to be loose to the point where it doesn't clump when you squeese a moist handful. The same goes for most root crops. If your carrots turned out alright, do what you did with them.
Oooh, thanks for the tips on scallions Gardener! We'll have to try that. I had wanted to switch over to only GMO-free gardening this year, but we had a few financial upsets and can only switch HALF our plans. So for this year all of our seeds will be organic/heirloom & GMO-free, but the seedlings will still be store-bought. NEXT year however, I will be seed-saving so we can pick up the seeds in time for EVERYTHING to be done "right!" I'm not terribly happy, but am choosing to see this as a two-year plan rather than that I didn't get my way this year. The kids are ecstatic because we ordered our seeds last week! They wanted the most exotic-looking plants we could find, until it came to the carrots. I was informed that carrots should be orange and long - NOT round, and NOT purple, red, yellow or white! No clue why, but it was rather funny to see how vehement they were about this one vegetable looking "normal." I chose the seed company, and then let the kids have free reign over which plants we would grow. So we will be growing: "Rattlesnake" Pole Beans (produces green pods with purple streaks) "Purple Sprouting" Broccoli "Chantenay Red Core" Carrots "Edmondson" Cucumbers (4" light green mini cucumbers) "Crimson Forest" Scallions (they thought that red "green" onions were particularly funny) "European Mesclun" Mixed Greens (a mixed packet with: various lettuces, radicchio, arugula, endive, orach, mizuna, kale, mustard & corn salad) and "Winter Luxury" Pie Pumpkins (6# golden fruit with white netting) Since we're transplanting the chocolate mint & chives from my mom's yard which has been organic since I was four, that means that ONLY the tomatoes, peppers, basil & lemonbalm will be seedlings from the plant stand. I will certainly check, but I've never even seen organic, let alone GMO-free plants at our local stand so those are the plants we're "fudging" on this year. I can't wait - purple broccoli sounds like a ton of fun! As do bright red onions, and wonderful pie pumpkins! love, mom
