How Does Your Garden Grow?

A Preview of my proposed garden.

I thought I'd show the fine readers and friends of this site my proposed garden space at my home. In full disclosure, I may have two different plots: The one above and a much larger plot at my mother's boyfriend's farm. Since one is certain and the other is only possible, I've decided to just explore this one for now.

What you're seeing via the link to a Google Spreadsheet are my plots. I've decided to use the Square Foot Gardening technique for a majority of my vegetation needs. I don't lose a lot of my small backyard, and I have quite a bit of versatility. Each whole number in the sixteen individual squares is a single plot. Most of the western most plots will be things like radishes, lettuces, and things I can harvest quickly, and will have fast turn around. From seed to vegetable, I can probably get at the very least 4 crops of radishes.

The boxes starting with H are herb boxes that will go on my wooden fence sometime this summer. I use quite a bit of cilantro, chive, basil, oregano and thyme throughout the year, and it will be wonderful to head to the garden and gather some of each.

The boxes labeled C aren't boxes at all, but are in fact 5 gallon pails that I use for homebrewing. Each year, I'd ideally like to replace my pails to ensure that if they're hiding any nasty bugs in low lying scratches, I don't make myself sick drinking tainted beer. For the pails, I'm going to grow tomatoes upside down as well as some lettuce in the tops of the containers. Use all the usable space I can, right? They'll also be mobile so that I can make use of the most sun possible each day.

My biggest issue is unseen in the diagram, but, will likely pose a threat to my home crop, and that's the 100+' maple tree I have in my back yard. The canopy is immense, and while I get full sunlight in my backyard, most of it is filtered through the trees. Thankfully, the leaves aren't broad, and they still provide a good bit of light. In the height of summer, most of the place I've chosen won't be too covered by shade, thanks to the angle of the tree and the sun together.

I'm expecting most of this challenge for 2010 to be experiementation, and if I can get a good 50% of my meals via things I've grown, I'll call the challenge a success.

Participants, tell our adoring public about your garden plans. Kathy's garden plan is fantastic, and far better than my GoogleDocs picture.