Tomatoes

Some of you have tomatoes that need staked!  Also, pumpkins, squash and cucumbers are growing in nicely.

Garden Plot Information

Here is the Garden Plot Information.  The first three pages are the plot assignments.  The fourth page has everyone's contact information.  The fifth page has the key to the plot arrangements.  On the plot arrangements the first chart is the plot numbers, while the second chart has the initials of the person assigned to the plot.  Pay attention to the gate, shelter house and barrel to orient yourself to the proper plot location.

I think this is an opportunity to cooperate with each other by looking to see who is growing the same plants as you.  Maybe you can share seed packets, since in square foot gardening you don't use that many seeds.  They are planted in a two-dimensional pattern, as in 1, 4, 9, or 16 in a square foot.  I will be there tomorrow to mark out the plots with the grid.  Get your seeds or plants and read the directions for when to plant them.  Feel free to ask me questions about planting  in the square foot gardening method.

Let me know that you got this message by emailing me back at larryjoepaul@gmail.com.

Planting Information

If you are unsure where to start with the planting process, there is some information in the Pages links in the right margin of this blog. I am working on assigning plots to everyone now!

Pictures from Last Year's Garden

Click on any picture to see it larger.

 Here's a small sample of our harvest.

 It started to get a little out of control when our lives got out of control and I couldn't keep up with it!  At least the plants had no trouble growing!

Envision the Harvest

Here, let's post the amounts of each item you are interested in harvesting.  An example would be, I want to have enough for a salad a day for a week (small example).  This would be a certain amount of different types of lettuces, some radishes, carrots, etc.  Think specifically what you are interested in having.  If we do 3 4' x 8' beds, that will be 96 ft² of garden that we are trying to plan.  We want to figure out how much of everything that we want to plant at what time.  If you envision your harvest that will help to plan our planting!

Please comment.

Garden Site Pictures

Here are some pictures of the possible site for the garden by the Spangler Memorial shelter house.  We can relocate the fire pit.

Garden Layout

Here's a possible layout for the garden.  I know that we had spoken about only using 3 4' x 8' garden beds to start out.  I made this layout with 6 4' x 8' beds because we could have it laid out for future expansion and just not use them this year.  If we only put in fencing around the 3 4' x 8' beds (as shown in dotted line) that would be a 24' x 14' fenced in area or 76 linear feet of fencing.  However, if we extend the fencing to include the full size (twice as much area for gardening), then we would only be adding 22' of linear feet of fencing.  We would get 192 ft² of garden for 98 linear feet fencing, instead of the 96 ft² of garden for 76 linear feet.  Do you think the extra future garden space is worth the extra fencing?

There are other considerations for space.  Do we want to have the rain barrels inside of the fence?  Do we want to have one side of the fence be the wall of the shelter house?  Would this be a problem for the property committee?  Do we want to have our compost bins inside of the fencing?  Do we want to have storage for tools or anything else inside of the fence?  We will have room for some storage inside the shelter house.  Do we want to have a lock on the fence door or just a latch?

Please comment on any or all of these thoughts or others you have about the layout.