Port Potager

Here’s yet another section of the garden all planned out for spring planting: The workshop quadrant was pretty easy as well (I think it all went down more smoothly this year). All along the top are more perennial herbs and our grapes, which have been locked in place since last year , and down the right side is a shady section that we had long been planning to use for early salad greens (known on the plan as our "cool season rows"). Last year we had Brussels sprouts fail here because a nearby maple tree creates too much shade once it leafs out. Our cunning plan for this year is to get cool season stuff like beets, carrots, radishes, lettuces, and other greens started in a cold frame in that section long before the tree leafs out in May. If those plants are mature by then, the shade of the tree can actually help keep them from bolting in the summer heat, making good use of a difficult little planting spot. We'll see if it works — we have several succession plan...

Over the weekend we put the finishing touches on this planting season's master plan. To do this, we had to spread out the old drawings so we could keep an eye on our crop rotation, since we don't want to grow plants of the same family in the same areas again. Although it takes some effort to take into account sunlight, rotation, succession planting, and seasonal plantings, I found this to be an easier task this year than it was last year. The garden feels "real" to us now, after spending a full season living and working in it. It's a physical memory rather than just a dream on paper, and that made it much easier to find a home for everything. We also were able to tweak the amounts of food we're going to plant based on last year's yields, so that's another example of how all that research is paying off to make life easier this time around. In fact, it was so much easier to visualize that we cut the scale of our drawing in half — this year a square...

Here we are … the plans for the final quadrant! This section is close to the house and to the right, near the gate to the driveway. The path on the left is the central brick path; the path on the right leads to the garage and workshop. To the far left, a long, skinny row along the brick path will be trellised cucumbers. The section below the gravel entry path will be for pickling; the section above for salads. Behind the pickling cucumbers will be tomatillos. We planted these together at the Red House and it worked well. Behind the salad cucumbers will be mustard plants. These are going out kind of late (in May), but they are mostly for mustard seeds and not for greens (although we'll pick some greens while they are still young and tender to add to salads). We grew mustard and harvested seeds before at the Red House, but did not have time to process them before we moved, so we ended up chalking that up as a loss. We are looking forward to trying again! Along the botto...

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 (th...