2013 Vegetable Garden Layout

I like to be very organized and I'm a chronic maker of to-do lists, diagrams, maps, etc. My attitude towards gardening is no exception. After completely reworking the layout of my garden this year, I got to start with a clean slate (with the exception of an awkwardly placed patch of garlic planted last fall, and my rhubarb patch). It doesn't appear that I posted a map of my 2012 garden, but that's not surprising since last summer I was focusing on my Master's thesis and the garden was somewhat neglected. However, I can compare my current map with my garden layout posted in 2011 (which was fairly similar to 2012).

The 2013 vegetable garden has 13 north-south rows. Each row is 3 feet wide with 18" pathways between rows. So far, all the rows and pathways are constructed and black plastic has been laid on rows 1 through 6. Row 3 and rows 8 through 13 are already planted (except for the beans and corn)

Here's a list of what's going into each row:

Row 1: "Experimental" tomatoes from my cross of martino's roma and Black Krim two years ago (more on this later), as well as some other heirloom tomatoes, and awkwardly located garlic

Row 2: Heirloom tomatoes, peppers

Row3: Yukon gold and banana fingerling potatoes

Row 4: Winter squashes, watermelons, gourds, pumpkins

Row 5: Watermelons, cucumbers, pumpkins

Row 6: Summer squashes, muskmelons, eggplants, pumpkins

Row 7: Edamame and green beans

Row 8: Onions, shallots, leeks, green beans

Row 9: Lettuces, carrots, snow peas

Row 10: Kales, mustards, and other brassicas

Row 11: Parsley, cilantro, celery, strawberries, tomatillos

Row 12/13: Sweet corn and popcorn, rhubarb, perennial herbs

M.I.A.

Why the nearly 4-month gap in blog posts? Blame graduate school! In the last several months I've worked three different part-time jobs, written countless cover letters and job applications, finished writing my thesis, defended my thesis, submitted my thesis to Michigan State University, and tried to figure out my post-grad school health and dental insurance needs. Only now are things starting to settle down...and that's only because I'm partially-unemployed.

During my (hopefully brief) downtime, I want to try to reclaim my jungle-like vegetable garden, work on some home-improvement projects, and do some canning, reading, crocheting, cooking, cleaning, etc...you know, all the things that didn't make the priorities list for the last few months.

When life gets busy, things like this happen:

The behemoth of 2012.

5 Yard Dash

I know what I'm doing this weekend:

5  cubic yards of compost

I also just got back from attending the MSU Horticulture Gardens plant sale where I picked up some Big Rainbow, Azoychka, and Persimmon tomatoes (only $1 per four-pack!), a Tigger melon, and an armenian cucumber. I also nabbed a few gorgeous coneflowers (in shades of yellow and orange) and some pink dwarf cosmos that were leftover from experiments from my fellow floriculture researchers.

Home and Garden Goals for 2012

Things are pretty up in the air for me at the moment. I've decided to finish grad school early with a Master's Degree instead of continuing on for the PhD.  I'm actually really excited about moving forward with my life, and I hope by this summer I'll be settled into my first "grown-up job". Who will I be working for? What city will I be living in? I have no clue, and it's very exciting.

I would like to stay in Lansing for a while longer, so hopefully I can find a decent job in the area. I own a home and I'm not ready to pick up and move yet. If I had to move (say, for an awesome job opportunity) I could do it, but I would also be displacing my boyfriend from his job. I have my mortgage paid off and finally have a chance to build up some savings. I put a lot of work in my house (built in 1920) when I moved in (re-finished hard wood floors, new carpet, new windows, new paint, new linoleum, etc). There's still a lot more to fix-up, and I'd like the chance to finish giving the house the attention it needs.

I put a lot of love into my house when I moved in.

 I have my vegetable garden, which I'm not ready to leave. I have my chickens, which probably couldn't come with me if I move out of town. I have the prospect of legalizing goats in my city, which I'm really excited about. I'm in a good centralized location in Michigan to visit a number of friends and family. I have a lot going on here in Lansing, so the prospect of going back to apartment living (while testing the waters at a new job out of town) isn't very appealing.

When I moved in, the huge and sunny backyard was a great "blank canvas" for a garden.

Building raised beds the first spring at my new house, 2009.

That said, I'm hesitant to plan much for my 2012 garden. Come summer, I don't even know if I'll be living here.  Assuming I stay here for at least a couple more years, here are my garden goals for 2012:

1. Finish legalizing dairy goats in Ingham county- the wheels are already set in motion and I'm confident that this is going to happen!
2. Assuming #1 happens, convert shed into a goat house, fence off back part of yard, and purchase two dairy goats.
3. Build a top-bar bee hive and start beekeeping
4. Raise meat rabbits (I will probably do either #3 or #4, but not both in the same year)
5. Build a mini-hoophouse for season extension
6. Finally get my raspberry patch under control
7. Continue to learn more about breeding my own vegetables (I have a friend with a cool blog who's currently writing a book called 'Creating New Heirlooms')
8. Defeat the mealy bug on my cactus and succulent collection
9. Take regular "aerial panorama" photos of my garden this year. The ones I took last year were pretty cool...I'd love to track how things change from month to month.
10. Can some pickles (the meager cucumber harvest in 2011 prevented this from happening)
11. Can some whole tomatoes (for some reason I tend to turn my entire tomato harvest straight into spaghetti sauce)
12. Plant some fruit trees (I should have done this the first year I loved into the house). I would love pear, apple, cherry, peach, nectarine, and apricot.
13. Buy a meyer lemon tree
14. Grow corn, winter squash, and leeks for the first time
15. Start onions from seed (I've always grown them from sets)
16. Learn how to make cheese (I've already experimented with butter and yogurt)
17. Improve my basement seed starting setup (new lamps, new bulbs, more space, etc)
18. Experiment with soil blocks for seed starting (I have accumulated so many plastic trays and liners, I'd love to get rid of them all and replace everything with soil blocks).

And here are a few house-related goals:

1. Work on the half bathroom (new linoleum, new paint, new cabinetry)
2. Finish cutting and laying quarter-round in all the rooms that got new flooring
3. Get new kitchen countertops and possibly gut the entire kitchen and get new cabinetry (I like the free-standing modular Ikea cabinets, but I'm worried they'll look too modern in my ancient house). Possibly extend the cabinetry to create an island, or create space for a dishwasher (I would really really love a dishwasher). 
4. Clean up the basement, which has become a giant scary storage dump
5. Buy more shelving for the basement
6. De-clutter, get rid of knick knacks, have a garage sale
7. Buy one or two dressers. We've been storing all of our clothes on shelves, and it is not working.
8. Figure out some sort of storage system for my recyclables, which are currently heaped into piles in the basement

Garden Goals: How'd I Do in 2011?

Here's a re-cap of my gardening goals for 2011. Let's see how many things I actually accomplished... 


1) Eat more vegetables. I would especially like to try to eat more of the vegetables that I grow. I should try to incorporate veggies from my garden into every single meal this summer. I have a bad habit of growing random vegetables that interest me, but then I never actually get around to eating them! For example, I've grown swiss chard the last two years, but never eaten a single leaf. Swiss chard is beautiful enough to grow for its ornamental value, but I'm probably really missing out on some good stuff!
I definitely accomplished Goal #1. I tried many new vegetables this year as well as increased my overall intake of vegetables. In 2011, I ate a lot more kohlrabi, kale, swiss chard, cucumbers, edamame than ever before. The dark leafy greens often found a home on top of a homemade pizza. 

2) Keep better records. I usually keep track of the dates that I sow my seeds, but I never remember to record things like plant-out date (if transplanting), date of first harvest, or harvest yield. Generally, I remember things like flavor, disease susceptibility or resistance, and growth habit. Over the years, this knowledge can get a little jumbled and should probably be written down.
Goal #2 didn't go so well...I started the year off fine, but once seed-starting season was over, I pretty much stopped keeping records. Keeping up with recording names and dates for a highly diversified 1,000+ square-foot garden is a bit much for me.

3) Plant fall crops. Every year I intend to sow a fall crop of carrots, lettuce, broccoli, cilantro, etc., but I always lose track of time or forget. It's a shame because I could plant all kinds of fall veggies in vacant spots that have opened up over the course of the summer. I also should try to build mini hoop-houses for season extension.
I kind of accomplished goal #3. I did some sowing mid- to late-summer, but these sowings didn't amount to much. There were quite a few things that I planted in spring, however, that probably should have been planted for the fall (like daikon radish, broccoli, cauliflower, etc).

4) Grow strawberries. This will be a first for me.
I planted the strawberries and then kind of forgot about them for the rest of the summer. Hopefully they'll come back strong this year.

5) Clean up my wild black raspberry patch and my red raspberry patch. These were engulfed by weeds last year and my harvest was almost nothing.
I did clean up the black raspberry patch, but not so much the red raspberry patch. Again, my harvest was almost nothing in 2011. Small-fruits must not be my thing!

And finally...

6) Be a better composter. My goals are to chop up my compostables better (I've been meaning to purchase a machete just for this task), turn the pile fairly often (I never do this), and compost more cardboard, tissue, and paper (yes, these can be composted).
Nope...goal #6 didn't happen. I'm still composting all my kitchen and garden wastes, but they just pile up and sit there doing their own slow-motion break down. 

Google Map Your Garden!

I happened to type in my own address while poking around town on the Satellite view of Google Maps. I was really excited to see that my vegetable garden is clearly visible! When I was house hunting almost three years ago, I used the Satellite view of Google Maps constantly. Since I didn't care as much about the actual house, I used Google Maps to check out the amount of full-sun area on each property before asking my realtor to show me the house. 

The satellite images must have been updated around June 2011 (I'm guessing) because I didn't put down the straw mulch between my raised beds until May and the grass is still pretty green (prior to the terrible drought we had later in the summer). Also, you can clearly see my boyfriend's white car in the driveway (and he's only had that car for a year). You can also see the chicken run alongside the garage (to the left of the garden). Looks like the chickens had already de-nuded the run because it shows up as a big brown rectangle.

I can even tell what time of day the satellite image was taken. The huge shadow over the car and the bottom left corner of the garden only occurs late in the afternoon. 

I didn't think about it at the time, but wish I had saved the previous image so I could compare.

See if you can find your garden on the map!

Free Leaf Mulch!

One of the students in the horticulture lab I teach offered to deliver some chopped leaf mulch from his landscaping business. How could I turn that down?

I got four garbage cans full of mixed chopped leaves and grass. Although 4 cans didn't sound like much, it was enough to cover almost my entire garden in a couple inches of the stuff.

Mulch waiting to be distributed to other beds.

Now I have the majority of my garden cleared, weeded, and tucked-in for the winter!

Garden Panoramas

Upon request by my brother, I have put together some semi-aerial panorama shots of my garden taken July 3rd. I've been wanting to put together some photos like these for a long time, but I always forgot. It was actually surprisingly easy too!

Garden facing east. The chicken run is vacant because the ladies are taking their afternoon siesta.

Garden facing north.

Garden facing west. The wild and untamed bed on the far right contains my strawberries, raspberries, and black berries. The three small plants at the bottom left corner are my rhubarb plants I started this year from dormant roots.

Planting Time

I finally got around to planting all my veggie seedlings last weekend (and I'm finally getting around to writing about it now). Let me tell you, it takes a long time to plant 54 tomatoes plus numerous cucumbers, zucchinis, peppers, tomatillos, gourds, pumpkins, and herbs. Phew!

The bed in the foreground is the only empty spot I have left. I'm planning on putting some pattypans and watermelons there...when I get a round to it. Directly behind the empty bed are some of my tomatoes.

I'm really happy I decided to smother and mulch the grass between my raised beds this year. It's so much easier to mow around rather than in between all the paths.

My lettuce bed is doing really well now.  Hopefully the 90 degree weather we are getting all of a sudden won't ruin things for me. Seriously, we went from April-like weather to August-like weather in about one week!

Four Cubic Yards of Compost!

I recently purchases four cubic yards of compost from a local landscape company. Two years ago (when I first moved into my house) I purchased 7 cubic yards of topsoil/compost mix from them...and they delivered it to the wrong house! Can you imagine 7 cubic yards (i.e. a small mountain) randomly being dumped in your driveway? 

This time I made it very very clear what my address is, what color the house is, what side of the street I live on, and I also put a huge bright blue tarp on the driveway where I wanted them to dump the stuff (kind of like X marks the spot). They got the delivery correct this time and I was surprised by how huge the pile was. It didn't quite fit on the tarp as you can see from the photo. 

I'm hoping this load of compost will go a long way to enriching all the new beds I added this year as well as filling in my raised beds (which have settled to almost half-volume over the course of two years).

Make Your Own Sturdy Tomato Cages

It's about time to bust out my lovely homemade tomato cages! I've been growing tomatoes for over a decade and these things are the best supportive structures I've come across yet.

While these tomato cages are a little more obtrusive than a wooden stake, they do a great job supporting and keep the plants from flopping everywhere. Plus, they don't rot or rust, so they should last you a lifetime!

Here's how to make them:

Purchase one or more 50' rolls of welded wire fencing. They run between $30 and $60 depending on the size. You should be able to find this at most major hardware stores. The welded wire comes in different heights between 4' and 7'. I have always used the 6' height because many of my indeterminate heirloom varieties can grow to be 7' or more by the end of the season! The fencing comes with 2" by 4" holes. This size hole can be difficult to work through if you have large hands, but I think the utility of these tomato cages will make up for the inconvenience.  

*Please wear long pants, closed shoes, and gloves when working with the fencing. The cut edges of the wires can be very sharp. 

Lets assume we are using a 6' tall by 50' roll. Unroll the fencing as best you can. Follow the instructions in the diagram below (sorry, I went right to left, instead of left to right). Make sure you include the exposed end wires in your measurement.

Once you have all your panels, form them into cylinders and bend the exposed horizontal wires into a loop and secure around the opposite end of the panel (see below).  

Your finished tomato cages should be approximately 2' in diameter, which I find perfect for two tomato plants. When you install the cages in the garden, weave a stick or a stake into the bottom part of the cage and pound into the ground to secure.

P.S. the welded wire goes on sale all the time at Menards (assuming you have one of those).

How do you support your tomatoes?

Drip Irrigation

Soaker hose in action

I have these wild dreams about having a beautiful, lush flower garden despite the fact that I generally ignore my flower beds once vegetable season gets going. This year I thought I'd try to pamper the flowers a little bit by installing a crude drip irrigation system. I snaked 150 feet of soaker hose throughout my front flower bed. In theory, all I'll have to do is mulch the area and give the bed a nice soak ever once in a while to keep it from petering out mid-summer. Here's hoping...

What's in my compost bin: Chicken Poo

I recently tore down both of my compost bins. I was really disappointed by how little usable compost was in each of them. The unusable stuff (stuff that hadn't fully composted yet) has been added to the new piles (kind of like a starter culture for cheese or sour dough bread). I'm excited to be getting wonderful fertilizer from my chickens. I've read a lot about using chicken manure in the garden and it sounds like I'll have to be fairly careful with it so I don't burn any plants (i.e. make sure it's well composted before putting it into the garden).

Yep, that's chicken poop...and yes, I'm very excited about it.

Current Garden Layout (subject to change)

I've added quite a few new beds to my garden compared to the last layout I posted back in January. I'm hoping that with the additional square footage, I'll finally be able to observe some of the correct plant spacings instead of cramming everything together.

Beds highlighted in yellow are already completely planted.

Doubled, Smothered, and Covered (How To Kill Your Lawn)

This time of year, I spend a lot of time removing sod from my lawn to build more vegetable beds.  Most often, I use a shovel to cut 1 foot square chunks into the lawn, rip to grass and soil pieces out of the ground, flip them over, and put them back where they came from. If you add some compost overtop to smooth out the cobblestone effect, it actually works pretty well. I've grown lots of vegetables in beds prepared this way. 

This year I'm also try to smother the grass with black plastic. Over the course of several weeks the grass dies due to lack of light and also from the searing hot temperatures that can build up under the plastic. Unfortunately, I've found that cultivating the area is still necessary after the plastic is removed. I use the same method as described above (it's just a lot easier once the plants are dead and the roots don't have as much hold).

My black plastic weed killing method seems to be working quite well. Hopefully I can move the plastic to new areas relatively soon and smother some more of my lawn. Less to mow!

I'm also trying a somewhat ambitious lawn killing project this year. I'm planning to put plastic and straw mulch on all the paths between my raised beds and regular beds. I should have done this to begin with because it's a pain to mow around the labyrinth of beds.

I ran out of plastic and straw before I finished, but you get the idea.

Lengthy To-Do List

Here is what is currently on my garden to-do list (in no particular order). Some of these tasks were completed a couple weeks ago (like #6, 7, and 8), some will happen this weekend (#1, 2, 3, 4, 12, 22, and 26, hopefully), and some I've been putting off for weeks (namely #19 and 30) .

1. Start gourd, squash, cucumber, zucchini, and pumpkin seeds indoors
2. Start fava beans indoors
3. Sow peas outdoors
4. Start mapping out garden and assigning bed space
5. Trim hellebore
6. Cut down ornamental grasses
7. Clean up front flower bed
8. Clean up flower bed on side-yard
9. Get oval bed ready for fruit garden
10. Sow more lettuce?
11. Clean up Perennials on west side of house
12. Start perennial divisions for farmer's market
13. Buy new shop light to replace broken one?
14. Transplant tomatoes
15. Measure flower beds for irrigation system
16. Mow grass around mailbox
17. Tear down compost bins and distribute compost
18. Transplant peach-colored bearded iris to sunnier location
19. Clean out basement chicken area and add to compost bin
20. Plant strawberries
21. Order compost
22. Start cat grass for farmer's market
23. Transplant rosemary
24. Start fertilizing vegetable seedlings
25. Root out spider plant plantlets
26. Plant blackberries
27. Plant rhubarb
28. Pot up some raspberry runners for parents
29. Deliver vegetable seedlings to family
30. Send in farmer's market application
31. Fortify the chicken coop with additional netting over the ceiling
32. Mow the lawn
33. Pick up all the big sticks that fell in the yard and driveway over the winter
34. Start hardening off brassicas
35. Relocate all the perennials that were stashed in a vegetable bed last fall
36. Mulch all flower beds
37. Smother grass and then mulch the paths between vegetable beds (I'm sick of trying to mow through this labyrinth)
38. Put up a shade cloth in the chicken run
39. Lay out soaker hoses in front flower bed and mulch
40. Plant onion sets
41. Plant potatoes

Early Identification of Perennials

When I used to garden at my parents house, they would always give me the same old excuse when I asked them to do some weeding...basically some permutation of "we don't know what to leave and what to pull". Here are some photos (pay attention Mom and Dad) of the early spring growth of common perennials in my yard.

Columbine

Hollyhock

Phlox

Chives

Wild Ginger

Bleeding Heart

Delphinium

My Garden Right Now

The bed in the foreground is the only bed I've had time to work on yet. I added a bunch of compost from my leaf pile and sowed some mache and lettuce (no signs of germination yet).

I've got a lot of work to do...lots of weeding, new beds to be dug, brush cleared, paths mulched, etc. If only the weather would cooperate!

Expanding the Garden

I started using black plastic mulch last year in my garden. It is useful for covering large areas of ground and can be used to smother grass in order to prepare an area for cultivation.  Last year I used black plastic to start my pumpkin patch and prevent weeks from growing in between the plants. 

I will be doubling or tripling the size of my pumpkin bed this year.

This year I got a head start with putting down the black plastic. I already used a new 4' x 50' section of plastic, so that means my vegetable garden will be increased by 200 square feet. I am also reusing the black plastic from my pumpkin/gourd bed last year in order to double (or possibly triple) its size this year, which will add another 260 square feet to that bed. 

This bed, which held pattypan squash last year, will be at least doubled in size this year.

Last season I had a total of 706 total garden square footage in cultivation. If I add up the additions to my main vegetable garden and my pumpkin bed for this coming season, my square footage this year will be about 1,170! That will also increase the total percentage of my yard that is in cultivation from 0.023% to 0.036%. I'm slowly making progress on converting the lawn to "farm", but I sure would love to have a lot less grass to mow! 

Garden Goals for 2011

I don't usually do New Year's resolutions, but I have recently decided on a few goals for my 2011 gardening year.

1) Eat more vegetables. I would especially like to try to eat more of the vegetables that I grow. I should try to incorporate veggies from my garden into every single meal this summer. I have a bad habit of growing random vegetables that interest me, but then I never actually get around to eating them! For example, I've grown swiss chard the last two years, but never eaten a single leaf. Swiss chard is beautiful enough to grow for its ornamental value, but I'm probably really missing out on some good stuff!

Swiss Chard: always beautiful, but what to do with it?

2) Keep better records. I usually keep track of the dates that I sow my seeds, but I never remember to record things like plant-out date (if transplanting), date of first harvest, or harvest yield. Generally, I remember things like flavor, disease susceptibility or resistance, and growth habit. Over the years, this knowledge can get a little jumbled and should probably be written down.

3) Plant fall crops. Every year I intend to sow a fall crop of carrots, lettuce, broccoli, cilantro, etc., but I always lose track of time or forget. It's a shame because I could plant all kinds of fall veggies in vacant spots that have opened up over the course of the summer. I also should try to build mini hoop-houses for season extension.

4) Grow strawberries. This will be a first for me.

5) Clean up my wild black raspberry patch and my red raspberry patch. These were engulfed by weeds last year and my harvest was almost nothing.

And finally...

6) Be a better composter. My goals are to chop up my compostables better (I've been meaning to purchase a machete just for this task), turn the pile fairly often (I never do this), and compost more cardboard, tissue, and paper (yes, these can be composted).