Garden Plan 2022

This year marks a record for how many times I’ve changed my mind with my garden plan and where plants will go!

I can’t believe it’s April and I’m just getting this plan up on the blog. But after all the changes I’ve made, I feel more sure that this is a plan I’ll stick with. Here is the plan the garden for 2022:

In reality, I will do more interplanting than what is shown above. But it is a good representation of the basic layout and main crops. If you want more of a close up view on a phone or tablet, I’m adding a PDF so you can see it better. [Editing to add: The main garden is 100x100ft. The second garden (includes kids gardens) is 40ft x 100 ft. Each row is 100ft long and 30 inches wide. Walkways are 24 inches]

Notes:

I am following the advice of others to keep my squash and my melons planted away from each other. Hopefully, this will allow us to get a good crop that isn’t destroyed by bugs. 

My main summer crops all have a cover crop planted prior to transplanting or direct sowing them. It is the first nine rows that are already cover cropped, (going from the bottom of the garden plan upwards and the view you see in the photo above).

I will follow the same process as last year, when it’s close to planting time, I will crimp the cover crop and then pull a silage tarp over it. The process terminates the cover crop and usually only takes about a week if it’s warm enough. The reason I do this is so it’s not going to seed or competing with the food crop.

 Then I’ll remove the silage tarp and plant the tomatoes, peppers, corn, and squash directly into the crop residue which at this point is a beautiful in place straw mulch.

I still haven’t figure out how I’ll plant corn seed into the winter rye residue. They say winter rye is allelopathic, meaning it produces compounds in the plant tissues and the root exudates that inhibit germination. This is great for reducing weed seeds but I’m not sure how my corn seed will fare. I guess I’ll find out soon enough!