Port Potager

The plan for the final quadrant isn’t very interesting this year: This entire section will be left fallow. That’s not really about crop rotation so much as it is about making repairs to many of the raised beds in this section of the garden. These were built back in 2011, and after seven years of service, parts are rotting or have warped and come apart where they were screwed together. For example: To make fixing them easier, we aren’t planting anything here and instead will be able to move all the dirt we need to get at the joints to patch them up.  Once that’s taken care of (probably in June, after all the planting is complete), we’ll sow cover crop of clover to add nitrogen and generally keep the beds looking nicer for the rest of the season. Next year we’ll choose a different quadrant to repair, thus working our way around the garden until it’s all back in fighting form.

Last weekend was a fairly big planting time for us, and just about all of it happened in the central "C" of the workshop quadrant: In this central bed we have Swiss chard, early and late carrots, cilantro, mesclun lettuce, head lettuce and spinach. Most of this bed is really only in partial sun once a nearby maple tree leafs out, but that usually works for leafy salad greens to keep them from bolting in the heat. I also used some onion sets as dividers between these plantings to mark the rows. Across the top of this quadrant are still perennial grapes and herbs. The right side and bottom are largely empty. We have a few repairs to do in these sections, and after that we’ll plant a cover crop of clover to give these beds a rest for the season. That leaves the left side, which is a much-reduced tomato section. Because the area is so much smaller, we’re not planning to do much tomato canning this year, but we should have enough for plenty of fresh eating and froze...