September 14,2015

 

avalanche column  Sept. 3, 2015

Every September I like to start planning my next year’s garden. I used to wing this each season and just plant as the season progressed. This really ended up being a very inefficient way to do this. Stocking in the beds, successions, seed procuring was all very haphazard.

I soon progressed to graft paper that labeled each bed by number and I would leave 3 lines so that I could write in the successions.  The problem with this is losing  my “cheat sheet” so to speak.

I used to subscribe to the Mother Earth News and in one article that they had was a garden planner. And they gave a link to a garden planner site. I did the 30 day trial and felt that this is a very good tool. Since finding this planner I have noticed there are more out there. This is the link to the garden planner site that I use. They still have a trial period and then if you like it there is a yearly fee. I want to say $25.

http://gardenplanner.motherearthnews.com/gardenplanner/gardenplanner.html

What I like about this site is that you can have a permanent map of your garden. It is very easy to copy last year’s garden into next year’s. This is handy if you start a bed in 2015 but won’t finish harvesting in the spring. I start both garlic and onions the first of November and do not harvest until May or June. This is the same with winter crops such as beets, chard, and kale to name a few.

You can also custom select or write in your own veggie varieties. It keeps track of successions so that you have a healthy time frame before replanting that bed to a similar crop. This helps control garden pests both wind bourn and soil bourn.

You can easily click through the months to see how your garden progresses through the year. I must say that this is a plan, it is not in concrete and you can wing it through the year.

A very good example was snow peas last fall. I over wintered them as usual but with our cool spring they were slow to produce but when they started they produced into May. This was unheard of!! My plan had tomatoes going into this bed the first of April, but with getting 5 to 10 pounds of snow peas a week, I delayed the toms. A few clicks on the plan and this change was noted.

You can also set bed densities so that you know how many plants are needed for each bed. This is helpful to let you know how much seed that you need or if you are purchasing plants how many plants you need.

Since starting to use a garden plan I have increased the efficiency of the garden and my time. Plus you can print off your plan or view it on line. There also is a record of each year’s plan; this is nice to see how your garden changes throughout the years. I highly recommend doing a garden plan.

Questions? I can be contacted at markdirtfarmer@gmail.com. Or more garden notes at redwagonfarm.blogspot.com