Asking Yourself, "How much should I Plant?!"

[omar818]

I live in a city and I'm taking the urban gardening approach. I'm trying to cram as many vegetables in a very small area. My backyard isn't very big, but it does get plenty of sunlight for gardening.

 

[grow_my_own]

grow_my_own, I want to have some extra for the chickens as well. The question then becomes, how much more to add to what we think we need. . . We are just going to make our best guess and see what happens.

Same here, Skeeter. We don't know how much extra we'll need, and we don't even know if our garden's going to do well, so we are utilizing our soil nutrients to their fullest potential and planting as much as we can. I'd rather have too much, but I'm that way with most things in life. It's better to have something and not need it, than to need something and not have it. And if you have something you don't need, you can always find someone who DOES need it! That's where sharing with friends, neighbors, the chickens, and local food pantries and what-not comes into play.

 

[ducks4you]

Great advice. I need to plant MORE jalepenos that last year, and I thought I was swimming in them in 2011! I'm swimming in eggs this Winter. I replaced my laying flock and their 13 mixed daughers (Rhode Island Red x Welsummer) lay 6-15 eggs/daily. Last winter 10 hens were laying 4-6 eggs/daily. I'm giving some away and eating lots of them hard-boiled--good for a reduction diet.

 

[HotPepperQueen]

Oh I hate having to decide how much or how little! My philosophy is go big or go home- because we have plenty of land to do it. Last year was a little bit over kill, but we managed and everything got picked, eaten and/or canned. As far as weeding goes- I was waaay too lazy to weed our huge garden and decided to put grass clippings inbetween the rows. Now I have a tiller that fits inbetween the rows so that will help! I think the most important thing for people to remember is- GARDENS CAN'T WAIT FOR YOU! If a vegetable is ready, it's ready. It won't sit there and wait for you to have a convienient moment to come outside and pick it. Gardens need morning and night attention. I love the info provided in this post! Thanks for sharing!

 

[digitS']

Morning and night? I don't even live at my gardens . . . Yes, I've been out in one of them a few times at 3am to run sprinklers but I'd probably be shot if I'd shown up somewhere else !

Back on the farm where I grew up, there must have been more than a few inches of topsoil. The ground had been a lake bed prehistorically. Once I got up here in the glaciers , topsoil became a precious commodity!

The topsoil in any of my gardens the last few decades has never been more than about 8" deep. You don't hit the caliche level until you are down several feet lower than that but, you can see that the organic matter essentially stops well before there. One way to make the best use of soil nutrients is to move the topsoil off the paths and into the growing beds.

I have 2' wide paths to accommodate my big feet. I'm comfortable with 4' wide beds. By the time I've moved the 8" of topsoil off the path (okay, I can't usually get that much of it ), the garden plants have considerably better chance of growing more roots. I don't really make any effort to get below the depth of the tines of the spading fork but, that's 11 inches!

This year, I may be able to finish the job I started last year and put the last 1/3rd of the big garden in permanent paths and bed. Now that the pesky Tractor Guy isn't showing up out there anymore . . .

Steve :tools

 

[skeeter9]

Good point about moving some of the topsoil from the paths to the beds, Steve. We gardened in wood-framed raised beds last year, but are switching to a larger plot of land this year. Once we get it tilled up (probably this weekend), I want to do this and also possibly incorporate the indian style of gardening that you posted about in another thread.

Grow_My_Own and HotPepperQueen, I always think along those same lines, but I don't want to get in over my head and not be able to take care of this yummy garden we have planned. I think we are going to go "medium" this year and see how that goes, although I'm not quite sure how that looks yet.

 

[grow_my_own]

Well, beings that last year, we got 6 bok choy plants, 4 tomato plants, and 6 pepper plants (moved in the middle of planting season so didn't have a "real" garden), ANYTHING this year is gonna be considered a big garden. What we did is laid our yard bare, and when we're off next week we're gonna till it and completely re-do the whole yard. It is going to be landscaped with new grass, and alllllll of the landscaping plants this year will be edible plants, save for the few flowers we plant to attract bees/pollination to the yard. I'm probably gonna start a blog about it in the next few days and start taking pictures of the progress as we go along here. We're on a sloped hill so we are going to be putting in "lawn" on the bottom terrace... it will receive runoff water from the landscape/vegetable plants higher up the hill, so I won't have to waste water just to grow a pretty lawn! I may have to water it SOME, but not as much as I would if I put it at the top of the slope instead of the bottom .

We're also terracing out the whole thing. Ugh. We seriously have a lot of work ahead of us.

 

[skeeter9]

Sounds like it's going to be gorgeous, Grow_my_own! About how much room will you have for edibles?

 

[grow_my_own]

Sounds like it's going to be gorgeous, Grow_my_own! About how much room will you have for edibles?

DH has the measurements written down in his little notebook, which he has with him in the car & he's at work right now, but if I remember correctly, we're going to have about 1000 square feet of garden space this year. Our garden area/yard is about twice the size of our house, and our house (a tiny yet completely adorable mother-in-law cottage set on a hillside in the woods on the back end of an alpaca ranch in the Sierras) is just under 600 square feet.

Our driveway side bed is about 3 x 16 feet, and I've put a divider in the center so it's like two 3 x 8 beds right next to each other), and we have another triangle-shaped corner bed in an obscure part of the property that's 10 feet long, 3 feet wide in the middle & tapered on both sides. I don't know if we're going to use that bed or not this year... it didn't winter-over very well, and much of the hay we put in there last fall hasn't broken down yet. I might just let that bed keep on cooking & plant some fall veggies in it at the end of summer.

We hope it will be gorgeous! It's gonna be a lot of work. Luckily, I telecommute from home for my job (live in California, but my job's in Oklahoma... I've never been there), so I am always here except when I venture out to the local farm/feed stores and to drive up the hill to check our mail at the post office once a week or so. Oh, and I go to the grocery store every 2 weeks when I go to the feed store. We don't have our garden YET, so we still have to buy a lot of our food.

 

[skeeter9]

That sounds amazing! Definitely a lot of work, but what fun! We are in the foothills of the Sierra's, too. Are we neighbors?