Planting ideas?

[crooked stripe]

I have this 10x10 garden next to the house. I have tomatoes, peppers, onions, bush cucumbers, cabbage and broccoli planted now. Want to add more to get more out of my small space before I mulch but have no idea on what will fit. Any suggestions? The garden stops at the end of the downspout pipe. The weeds are growing like crazy so the need to mulch is great. John

 

[patandchickens]

Well you can always pull the mulch aside and plant thru it later on, if necessarily and sensible

My best suggestion for maximizing a small space (which is not going to be highly relevant this time of year) is to plant short-lived early things amongst longer later things, such that the quick early things vacate the space before the later bigger things actually need it. For instance you can plant radishes or lettuce in space that will ultimately be occupied by tomato plant foliage.

Also in future years you could consider intensive type planting (which includes 'square foot gardening' type methods) which puts plants extra-crowded together. You get less crop per plant but more PER GARDEN AREA.

Good luck,

Pat

 

[Tutter]

Hi,

What a great little space!

What I do in circumstances like that, to best utilize my space, is now go underground.

You can grow root vegetables, between your above ground vegetables. I have a small space just for fun, and I put in it purple pearl onions, carrots (if the soil's not very good yet, you can plant short, or round, varieties.), 3 types of beets, leeks etc.

I agree with Pat on the closer planting and the lettuce.

Also, if you are planning a fall/winter garden, start the vegetables you will grow there in pots, or flats, so that they are ready to go in when you clean out the summer garden.

There is one problem with a single garden area, and that is that you will keep planting things like brassicas (cabbage family like cabbage, broccoli, collards and other "greens" etc.) in the same spot season after season, year after year. To avoid health problems for the plants, you really need to rotate your varieties of plants.

Perhaps you could scout things out and find a couple more likely spots to work on next year, and the year after?

Even if you eventually just extended out into the lawn a little more.

The ultimate would be 4 equal sized plots, which could be smaller than your 10 x 10 because you will increase your growing space by 3.

For example, 1 quarter would be planted in a cover crop, one would be for your cabbage family plants, one for your nightshade family (I'm being very general here, if you need more info on that, let me know.) and the third for misc.

The next year the area which was in a cover crop would grow cabbage family, say; the one that grew cabbage family might grow the nightshades., etc. That means that nothing in the same family would grow in the same area but once in 4 years.

And since you are growing in a 10' space, if you stayed small, you could have only 4' spaces, and only increase by 2' in a growing season. (And won't affect your water by much.) Or, if you have the room, make each one 5', which gets you from 10' of growing space to 15'. etc.

Well, that was more information that you had asked for, but maybe it will help in future planning over the winter?

Good luck, it looks great; a nice use of space.

 

[OaklandCityFarmer]

Great suggestions from Pat and Tutter.

Pat is very right talking about short lived and long lived things. This works great and it helps a lot. Tutter makes a very good point about planting brassica's and other related plants in the same area every year, especially if there were problems with disease. Sometimes this can't alway be avoided. The best solution I've found for this is to allow the ground time to rest and use a cover crop. This replaces the soil of the nutrients depleted in the growing season and adds tons of organic matter back to the soil. Healthy soil, healthy plants.

Just to add my humble opinion.

I would consider also start planting vertical. You could easily construct a pvc/netting fence along the back (house side) of the garden and grow peas, beans, cucumbers and anything else that vines. On the right side, looking at the picture, (I'm assuming the left side gets the most sun?) you could even plant 2 rows of corn, I'd plant them about 6-8 inches apart and 8 inches between rows. You shouldn't have too much of an issue with pollination since they're so close together, IME. You could also plant beans and peas amongst them and they'll vine up the corn. This would also help by pulling in nitrogen for the corn since they're heavy feeders. You do want to make sure that neither the corn nor the fence block out too much sun from the garden.

Staking tomatoes and removing suckers (both from the bottom and crotch) would help maximize space, although does tend to lower harvest amount. You could plant them around 16 inches apart to really maximize space.

There are a few other things that could help. Some of which will come to me later, I'm sure. We have a small piece of land here in a very urban part of the city and we grow a lot of stuff from our small space. It's amazing how much you can get out of a small piece of land.