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Lisbet
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| Posted: Feb 03 2011 at 12:53pm | IP Logged
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A few years ago I bookmarked an interactive square foot gardening plan and I simply cannot locate it now. Does anyone know what I'm talking about and where I can find it? You could 'drag and drop' veggies and it would tell you how many you could plant and such?
I have always done tomatoes and peppers in odd spots and containers around our tiny yard. I don't want to take up valuable play space from the children.
This spring, I may actually, finally (really and truly!) have space for a real garden. I want start planning now. I want to utilize my space as much as possible. I am worried that with the amount of people I'm feeding, some things will not be worth my time and space, such as green beans, peas, etc..
Any tips on gardening for a big brood?
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Lisa, wife to Tony,
Mama to:
Nick, 17
Abby, 15
Gabe, 13
Isaac, 11
Mary, 10
Sam, 9
Henry, 7
Molly, 6
Mark, 5
Greta, 3
Cecilia born 10.29.10
Josephine born 6.11.12
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JennGM
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| Posted: Feb 03 2011 at 12:57pm | IP Logged
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This one?
Garden plotting for square foot gardens.
I only found this year! I've been doing them on the computer in Word tables. This is a bit more fun.
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Lisbet
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| Posted: Feb 03 2011 at 1:00pm | IP Logged
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YESSSS!! Thank you Jenn! I've been googling, rechecking all of my book marks, etc.. since lunch. Thanks again!
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Lisa, wife to Tony,
Mama to:
Nick, 17
Abby, 15
Gabe, 13
Isaac, 11
Mary, 10
Sam, 9
Henry, 7
Molly, 6
Mark, 5
Greta, 3
Cecilia born 10.29.10
Josephine born 6.11.12
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JodieLyn
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My tips.. plant the things that cost more and/or are hard to get.
So... I'd plant peas because we'd like to eat those fresh vs green beans because we'd cook those and there isn't going to be that much difference between cooking fresh beans and frozen beans.
I'd plant tomatoes instead of potatoes.. I can get potatoes on a good sale for $1/10# but tomatoes I'm lucky to get under $1/#.
I plant lemon cucumbers because I can't buy those usually.
I plant zucchini because it costs a lot at the store and I can shred it and freeze it for zucchini bread all winter. (everyone likes it especially with chocolate chips added  )
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Jodie, wife to Dave
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Pilgrim
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| Posted: Feb 03 2011 at 2:51pm | IP Logged
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Wow, what a neat site. I'm going to see about putting a link to it on our site! Thanks for the link!
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Servant2theKing
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| Posted: Feb 03 2011 at 3:29pm | IP Logged
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Lisbet, if you're limited with space, going vertical helps a lot! "Square Foot Gardening" can supply quite a few ideas for that.
Last Summer we moved a very large un-used chain link dog kennel to a new spot on our land...we couldn't afford fence to keep the deer away, so we used what we had. We made some really neat supports for vining crops by using metal poles that we had salvaged from a canopy, which had been ruined in a storm. We threaded the poles through 2.5 ft. wide sections of 4x4 in. fencing (left by previous owners), then attached the newly fashioned supports toward the top of the chainlink rail, and rested the base of each support about 3-4 ft. away from the fence....kind of like half an a-frame. We used zip-ties for the fencing and the vine supports...definitely one of my new favorite gardening supplies (much more durable than twine and nicer to work with than wire...also quite inexpensive).
We had very good luck with peppers last year...we chop them up and freeze them. We always plant tomatoes. One of my favorite inexpensive garden plants is chives. They're perennial and there's something so nice about eating a stem fresh from the garden in the Spring. Chives freeze nicely, too, and taste so much better than dried ones. A single plant could keep your family supplied with chives for many years. If you go with mint of any kind, be sure to bury a container in the ground to keep it from taking over your garden.
Most people have good luck with winter squash and there are several types that are very good keepers throughout the long winter.
If you have extra room for a strawberry patch, they'll keep supplying your family for years to come. We planted a five gallon bucket full of runners from a friend a few years ago and they've been supplying us with enough strawberries for desserts and jelly every year after that first planting. If you know a fellow-gardener in the area who has a strawberry patch, they're usually more than happy to share runners with you, especially if you or dc are willing to help thin the patch for them. Strawberries are amazingly easy to plant and very hardy...the bucket of runners we received from my friend sat in water for more than 24 hours before we were able to get them in the ground....I thought for sure they would never take root...miraculously they have flourished in a spot where nothing else grows well at all. I've even seen examples of strawberry towers, where people use salvaged items to plant successively smaller containers on top of each other, when space is limited.
I'm glad you asked this question...that Garden Plotter Jenn shared is great! I drew everything by hand on graph paper last year....that site is so much easier and lots of fun!
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hylabrook1
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Hey, I didn't know Gardner's Supply was still in business! I bought some things from them around 30 years ago (not kidding) - a great company!
Love the garden planning page!
Peace,
Nancy
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Pilgrim
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Oh, I forgot to mention a tip I thought of for maximizing your harvest in smaller spaces. Try block planting, the plant help control weeds with this method, too! I've found helpful info on this on the web last year, with dateiled instructions on how to do it, just Google "block planting". Beans, peas, lettuce, greens, even root crops. A great book that expounds much upon this is "Garden Way's Joy of Gardening", or just "Joy of Gardening" by Dick Raymond. See if you can find it at the library, it talks about getting high yields from your garden. I bet between "Square Foot Gardening" and that book you'll find lots of helpful ideas. There's another book from our book supplier that I saw in the catalog earlier that talked about gardening in small spaces, I'll see later if I can find the title, and maybe you can get that one at the library, too.
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JodieLyn
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another good one to keep in mind is Companion Planting (you can often find basic info on that just by an onlin search).. it's the whole carrots love tomatoes (the book you may have heard of) but it's nice because then you will know if you're gonna "crowd" plants together that they're ones that will benefit from each other instead of the alternative.
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JodieLyn
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Oh and this one..
intensive planting guide
This I find a lot more helpful than square foot gardening.. since the square foot gardening is spacing for the same type of plant in you square foot.
This let's you put different types of plants into a square foot (or any other size or shape)..
Quote:
| To determine spacing for interplanting, add the inches for the two crops to be planted together, and divide the sum by 2. For example, if radishes are planted next to beans, add 2 inches + 4 inches = 6 inches, then divide 6 inches by 2 inches = 3 inches. The radishes should be planted 3 inches from the beans. |
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Jodie, wife to Dave
G-18, B-17, G-15, G-14, B-13, B-11, G-9, B-7, B-5, B-4
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
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Servant2theKing
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Thank you for sharing that page Jodie. The list of 15 plants that have the most economic value, at the bottom of the page, is very helpful.
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momtomany
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hylabrook1 wrote:
Hey, I didn't know Gardner's Supply was still in business! I bought some things from them around 30 years ago (not kidding) - a great company!
Love the garden planning page!
Peace,
Nancy |
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You can order from them through www.ebates.com and get some money back too.
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4Real Forums : Our Lady's Loom, Larder, and Laundry
Topic: Gardening Resources
