Below you’ll find my garden plan for the quarter-acre garden we have in production. It includes vegetables and some fruits like strawberries and melons.
Growing a Year’s Supply of Food and Maximizing Efficiency
As many of you know, this year will look a little different for us since we are expecting a baby in June! I’ve done my very best to scale back as much as possible. Even though I’m sure it doesn’t look like it 🙂
I’d still love to be able to grow our year’s supply of veggies as we have in the past and this plan reflects that. Of course, there are always variables and unforeseen things that may happen with my pregnancy and the birth. But I am planning for the best case scenario since all of my other pregnancies and births have been free of complications.
If I feel like the work in the garden is too much or if other things arise, my backup plan is to support some of my local market garden friends and buy the needed produce from them. I don’t usually take this stance but I’m giving myself some grace this year.
What I’m doing Differently
I’ll be utilizing lots of cover crops to fill the empty rows in the garden! This will minimize weeding while at the same time increasing fertility. I’m also going to grow less tomatoes this year. I don’t think I’ll have the time to preserve as many as I usually do and I also feel like I usually grow so many I don’t manage them well.
Hopefully, with less plants and proper management, we can still get our year’s supply of tomatoes that we need. Only other thing I’m shrinking space on significantly is sweet corn.
For that, I’m doing half the size plot I usually grow of sweet corn. If after the baby comes I feel up for it, I’ll do a second succession of sweet corn in one of the rows that had spring cover crops.
I’m not sure I like the location of the melons and watermelons, but other than that, I feel good about the way everything looks right now. I’m sure I’ll make a few tweaks as the 2023 season unfolds.
The 2023 Garden Plan- The specifics
Total main family garden is 100ft x 100ft. Additional garden is also 100 x 100 ft, even though the plan doesn’t show the whole thing. What is not shown will be cover cropped.
The second garden will have cover crops in the first three rows and a 14 x 100 ft area for the kids gardens. The kids area is three garden beds 30 inches wide with roughly 2 feet of walking path area between rows.
The main garden also has 30 inch wide rows and 18 inches of walking path throughout the majority. The only exception is the caterpillar tunnel rows are about 36 inches wide, with the 18 inch walking paths.
With the flower borders along the edges, the actual length of the rows is shorter, about 90 feet per row.
Previous Garden Plans
To check out our garden plan from 2022 click HERE. And our garden plan from 2020 (old home) is HERE. I checked around and I don’t think I ever published our 2021 garden plan!
10 comments
I was wondering how you transition your spring peas to cowpeas in the summer. How early do you have to plant the peas in order for them the be done in time for the cowpeas to be planted so they have enough time too?
I plant my peas on March 15th usually. We harvest the peas the first and the second week of June. As soon as the peas are finished we tear them out and plant the cowpeas. Mid June timeframe. We get hot, humid summers so the cowpeas thrive and grow fast. We harvest cowpeas in late September or early October.
I was just wondering what app or website you use for your garden planning? I draw mine out by hand which gets messy 😅 This plan looks tidy and easy to understand!
Thank you! I drew it myself on Adobe Photoshop. It’s not an app 🙂
You impress me with how strong you are even while pregnant. I’ve been seeing a trend in some people these days that don’t stay as active as they maybe should or used to. I can’t see very much slowing you down. That’s probably why you have good, uncomplicated pregnancies 👍
It looks cut down a bit but everything you are growing is still what’s going to get you through. You know, you can always freeze dry and or freeze the tomatoes for when you are more ready to work on them 🤷🏼♀️ Don’t go wearing yourself out beautiful mama ❤️
Beautiful plan! The more you grow the more you know! Thanks for inspiring us. I hope you are feeling good.
I’ve been teaching nutrition classes in my stake and included a link to your post on healing your body with food. I hope that gets you some good traffic. 😊
[…] I also spent some time wrapping up our garden plan and posted about it HERE. […]
Awesome
What have you found to be a waste of growing and what have you found as
a few invaluable tips?
Well the only plants that are a waste, are the ones I fail at. For me that has been brussel sprouts and peanuts. The peanuts grew very well but got eaten by rodents before I could even try one! Brussel sprouts are a magnet for bugs. My biggest tip is to not overdo it. I have the same problem every year and it’s that I do too much. It’s hard to keep up with harvest, weeding, and preserving.