2. Step 1: Identify your limiting factors
A. Space Available – how many square feet do you have available to plant in?
• Sun exposure
• Ease of access
• Drainage
• If limited - be creative, and break it up
B. Budget
• If done well, can significantly reduce food budget
• Start small and don‟t overspend!
C. Time
• What time can you commit daily?
• What time can you commit weekly?
• Spring time is the most work, fall has another big push.
3. Dreaming it up
How much food is it possible to grow?
• Jon Jeavons‟ experimental gardens
• All of a person‟s calories (vegan diet) grown in 700 sq ft. burning fewer calories to grow it than
are harvested in the year.
• In 100 sq ft you could grow:
• 200 lbs of tomatoes
• 316 lbs of cucumbers
• 202 lbs of lettuce – in spring and again in the fall.
• 2500 carrots – every 10 weeks
• 1300 onions
• 100 lbs of watermelon
4. Maximum Harvest in Minimum Space
• Methods:
• Bio-Intensive Spacing
• Succession Planting
• Inter-planting
• Starting Indoors
• Considerations:
• Crop Rotations
• Plant Varieties
5. Mapping Your Space
• Bed width
• Bed Length
• Space between beds
• # of beds
• Space for shed or greenhouse
Spacing between beds - 2 ½‟ „
Garden Beds 4‟ x25‟
Garden shed 8x10
Green house
10x12
6. Garden Wish List
Staying in Budget
Seeds and plants
• Find heirlooms locally and online - .99 to $3
• Save seeds
• Buy in Bulk – keep 3+ years if stored right
• Perennials – get cuttings from friends
• Limit # of varieties
• Mountain Valley Seed
• J&Js
• Seed Savers Exchange
• Baker Creek
• Tomato Fest
• Bountiful Gardens
Soil Needs
• Test $20
• Logan Labs.com
• Analysis -
• Amendments
• Organic Matter - Compost
• Phosphate
• Potassium
• Nitrogen
• Magnesium
• Azomite
• Mycorhizza
• Bacterial Tea
7. Garden Wish List
Staying in Budget
Tools
• Tilling:
• Broadfork
• Digging Fork
• Power Tool
• Spade
• Hand trowels
• Narrow
• Wide
• Hand Fork
• Digging Board
• Pitch fork – mulch and compost
Watering
• Irrigation
• Hose and spray nozzle – needs to be very fine
shower
• Hose and sprinkler head
• Bucket and dipper
• Automatic Sprinkler System
• Drip Systems
• Durks Plumbing
• Home Depot/Lowes
• Our Ultimate system - $60 + $15
• Filters weeds
• Slow and Deep
8. Garden Wish List
Staying in Budget
Structures
• Season Extenders
• Cold frames
• Low tunnels
• High tunnels
• Greenhouse
• Trellising: beans, tomatoes, cucurbits
• Plastic Mulch
• Pest control row covers
• Shed?
Seed Starting
• Grow Lights - $25/ set + frame
• Trays or cups
• Tray covers or saran wrap
• Soil
• Soil Blockers
• Germination Mat or space heater
• Mister or bottom watering method
9. How much time?
• Prepping a Bed - first year: 2 to 5 hours,
thereafter 1 hour
• Building a germination station
• Building a hoop house
• Setting up trellises, low tunnels
• Settng up the drip system – 3 hours
Once a year projects
10. The Garden Routine
Weekly
• Planting Indoors
• Planting Outdoors
• Composting
• Weeding
• Enjoying and dreaming
Daily
• Watering Seedlings
• Watering garden
• Checking Plants for problems
• Smashing Bugs
• Harvesting
• Praying over your garden
11. Time Line
• Last and First Frost Dates – Avg. and Safe
• We use a week # and a $2 calendar
• January – Planning
• February – Ordering; start tomatoes for WOW, onions and celery indoors, cold crops
started in cold frames or indoors
• March – soil test, amend, prepare beds for cold plants; continue cold plants; start
peppers and herbs indoors. Transplant perennials.
• April – Prepare beds for warm plants. Cold hardy plants start in beds, water system set
up, start tomatoes indoors, cover brassicas. Starting to Harvest salad greens.
• May – Succesion plantings of cold crops. Start semi-cold hardy plants outdoors, build
trellises, start cucurbits indoors. More Harvest, including peas, carrots, radishes.
• June – Everything else is planted; last succession plantings of cold crops if you have
shade. Weeding, Monitoring for pests, water, etc. Harvesting!
12. Time Line Continued
• July – Succesion plantings; starting fall celery, brassicas; weeding, watering,
monitoring, Harvesting!
• August – Harvesting lots of varieties. Starting fall cold crops. Salsa!
• September – Harvesting and drying, canning, freezing. Still succession planting of
greens, and roots. Start cleaning up beds that are done with summer crops. Set up
hoop tunnels to extend your harvest of fresh produce.
• October – Finish harvest of summer crops; compost all the growth, soil test and amend,
plant cold cover crops, cold frames or hoops over the crops you are continueing
through winter.
• November – Harvesting and last planting in cold frames and tunnels.
• December – Harvesting the cold crops that are happily preserved in the ground, under
cold frames or tunnels. Eating your pumpkin pie! The days are too short to start
anything without artificial lights, but you could start greens indoors!
13. Getting To know your plants
• Alliums
• Brassicas
Family Vegetables in Family
Onion/Allium Family
(Alliaceae/Amaryllidaceae) chives, garlic, garlic chives, elephant garlic, leeks, onion, scallions, shallot
Cabbage /Crucifer/ Mustard Family
(Brassicaceae /Cruciferae)
bok choi, broccoli, broccoli raab, brussels sprouts, cabbage, calabrese, cauliflower, chinese cabbage, collards, cress,
daikon, horseradish, kale, kohlrabi, mustard, radish, rutabaga, swede, tatsoi, turnip, wasabi, watercress
Beetroot /Goosefoot Family
(Chenopodiaceae /Amaranthaceae)
amaranth, beet, beetroot, chard, good king henry, goosefoot, lamb‟s quarters, pigweed, quinoa, spinach, sugar beet,
swiss chard (spinach beet)
Aster/Daisy Family
(Asteracea/Compositae)
artemisia, cardoon, chamomile, chicory, chrysanthemums dandelion, endive, escarole, globe artichoke, jerusalem
artichoke, lettuce, marigolds, safflower, salsify, scorzonera, shungiku (edible chrysanthemum), sunflower, tarragon
Squash/Cucurbit Family
(Cucurbitaceae)
cucumber, gourds (angled luffa, bitter gourd (balsam pear, bitter melon), hardshelled gourd, smooth luffa, snake gourd),
melons (cantaloupe/muskmelon, casaba, honeydew melon, water melon), squash/marrow (acorn, banana, buttercup,
butternut, cheese, crookneck, delicata, golden cushaw, hubbard, kabocha, pumpkin, scallop, spaghetti,
zucchini/courgette), west indian gherkin
Bean and Pea Family
(Fabaceae/ Leguminosae)
alfalfa, beans (adzuki bean, broad bean, chickpea/garbanzo bean, fava bean, french bean, hyacinth bean, lima
bean, mung bean, rice bean, runner bean, soybean, vigna mungo), clover, cowpea, fenugreek, lentil, lupin, peas,
peanuts, tares/vetches, trefoil
Potato/Nightshade Family
(Solanaceae)
eggplant (aubergine), garden huckleberry, peppers (caribbean red hot peppers, chili pepper, habanero, hot paper
lantern, sweet pepper), paprika, potato, tobacco, tomato, tomatillo/husk cherry
Carrot Family
Umbelliferae/Apiaceae) caraway, carrot, celery, celeriac, chervil, coriander/cilantro, cumin, dill, fennel, parsley, parsnip, root parsley
Grasses Family
(Poaceae/Gramineae) barley, corn/maize, mallet, oats, rice, rye, sorghum, sugarcane, wheat
Miscellaneous
lambs lettuce (Valerianaceae); new zealand spinach (Aizoaceae); purslane, portulaca, miners lettuce (Portulacaceae);
rhubarb, buckwheat (Polgonaceae); Okra (Mallow family, Malvaceae, cacao is also in this family); phacelia; grazing rye
14. Step 2: Planning how much of what
• Resources:
• How to Grow More Vegetables* by John Jeavons – quantities
• Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholemew– timing
• 4 Season Harvest by Elliot Coleman – season extending, sequential planting
• Generally you can use the “plant” or “thin to” spacing on an envelope and ignore the
“row spacing.”
• Some varieties take more space per calories produced than others. Brassicas, squash,
melons and corn are some of the worst. Perennials also can take quite a bit of space,
but eventually provide a good harvest for the amount of work.
• What are you most excited to eat?
