2012 Master Plan: The Workshop Quadrant

This quadrant is at the far end of the garden from the house, on the right side when looking out the back door. The brick path that runs along its right side goes from the house to the workshop. Like its mirror image to the left of the center brick path, this quadrant also has grapes and herbs running along the back bed that borders the lawn. 

In the bed that runs up and down along the left side, we marked off five foot long areas. Instead of planting different vegetables in each area, we are using the areas for succession plantings of the same items at different times. In each five-foot section will be carrots, radishes, lettuce, beets, Swiss chard, bok choy, spinach, radicchio, and arugula. These will be planted in 6-inch wide rows (our favorites will be doubled up) that go across the bed the short way — another pretty intensive planting. These plants will be sown directly in the first section on April 14, then again every two weeks until the last sowing on May 26 (that's a half-size section, but by then it will be too warm for things like spinach and raddichio anyway). By the time this whole area is done with, it will be time to sow the fall broccoli and cabbage. If you look back at the spring broccoli and cabbage in the swingset quadrant, you will see that these two areas basically swap positions across the center brick path for the fall planting, which is our crop rotation plan for spring/fall veggies this year.

Across the bottom row is another fairly intensive planting area. In the center will be another narrow trellis of spring peas (that, like the others, will be gone as the summer goes on and the other plants need more room). Behind the peas will be a row of sunflowers from which we are hoping to harvest seeds to eat (but even if the birds beat us to them, they should still be pretty). In front of the pea trellis is a line of annual herbs. Because I like symmetry, we decided to plant them in a mirror image of each other, radiating out from the center. Starting from the center and moving to the outside are borage, chamomile, dill and fennel, celery, and parsley.  

In the bed to the right (starting at the top) are Brussels sprouts. These are to be set out in succession from April 14 through May 26. We are learning from having planted them too late last fall, so we'll see which planting times work best by keeping track of how these do this year. Below that is a pretty large area for potatoes. The two-foot squares that you see are where we will build some boxes that will hold dirt in over the potatoes as we hill them up over the season. The area in between those boxes will be somewhat less hilled up, and will be where we pull our "new" potatoes from. We'll leave the ones deep in the earth boxes to get good and big for the fall and winter.

In the center "C" is our corn. Again, the sections here are divided not by variety but by planting date, so we can harvest corn all summer long (and hopefully into the fall as well). The first planting will be sown on May 5 (pushing it a week before the last frost as a bit of a gamble), then sowings will continue every two weeks until the last one goes in on July 14. There are around 28 stalks of corn in each section (give or take), depending on the shape of the section.