Garden planning and planting

I like to keep track of what's happening in the garden so I made a garden binder for myself. I can record what seeds I sow- variety, brand, age (both directly in-ground and in our 'greenhouse' aka Juan Rapido's sunny office window), where plants are in the garden, when I plant, when I harvest, etc. Data keeping over time aids future planning- if no seeds spout from a package after a few tries then those seeds are no longer viable; if I plant a variety of pepper that does well and we love, I want to remember for next year. I also created a multi-year garden journal- just a notebook with a page for every day of the year. When something notable happens, I make an entry for the year and jot it down- bud break on the apple tree, first daffodil, or tree planting.

Since I have nice new rectangular garden beds, I decided to try using the square-foot gardening method. In this, you divide your garden bed into square feet- either physically with string or lath, or conceptually (I used a sharpie on the top of the boards). Then into each square foot a specified number of crops can be planted. I made guides with cardboard to help with spacing. But you can get fancy and make yourself dibbles. For example, in one square foot, you can grow 4 lettuce, or 16 radishes, or 1 broccoli. I started by drawing a plan of the garden, assigning each location a zone number, downloading and printing some grids, and putting this all in my binder. Each 4'x4' or 4'x5' or 4'x6' part of the garden has a grid where I write the date and crop planted. I made a quick list of what I thought I'd want to grow, how many of each plant to plan for, and thought about spacing out harvests over time. How do you think about what to grow? Ex. We eat radishes. But they grow quickly and I don't need more than 5 or 6 a week. So every two weeks I plant a square foot of radish seeds (16). We eat one cauliflower/ Romanesco/ cabbage a week so I planted the new 4x4 raised bed with the first round of Brassicas and I'm saving the middle section of the 4x12 bed for the next round. Those seeds just sprouted this weekend! Having a grid and a plan means I can think about what will go where before I even start sowing seeds.

I also watched the sun/ shade move around the garden before starting. The shady area under the Ceanothus is reserved for leafy greens that don't like too much heat. This past weekend we picked up our plant order from the UC Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners of Alameda County and filled in what they didn't have from Western Garden Nursery in Pleasanton. Sunday was spent adding Sure Start organic fertilizer, plant supports (cages, stakes), and planting the summer crops, mostly in the upper beds. Living somewhere with sun and heat for the first time in 23 years I'm excited to try a few tomato varieties, peppers, melons, winter squash, and eggplant!

At this point, most of the garden has been planted and we've already had two salads of radish, lettuce, & arugula. The next project will be to finish extending the irrigation system to the new beds.

Crop list

Burbank Tomato

Sungold Cherry Tomato

Purple Cherokee Tomato

Sugar baby Watermelon

Sun and Moon Watermelon

Jaune de Canari Melon

Charentais Melon

Black Beaty Summer Squash

Long Island Cheese Winter Squash

Koginut Winter Squash

DiCicco Broccoli 

Snowball Cauliflower

Romanesco

Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage 

Green Beans (variety)

Jalapeno Chili Pepper

Anaheim Chili Pepper

Sweet Banana Pepper

Poblano Pepper "Hot Caballero Red"

Fava beans 

Marketmore Cucumber

Tendergreen Cucumber

Sumter Cucumber

Black Beauty Eggplant

Oregon Sugar Pod peas

Kohlrabi

Blue Vates Kale

Lacinato Kale

Red onion

Hardneck garlic

Purple Top Turnips

Red Beets

Bloomsdale Spinach

Mustard Greens

Basil, Italian Genovese

Basil, Thai

Radicchio

Butter lettuce

White bunching onion

Cilantro

Arugula

Dill

Early Scarlet Globe Radish

French Breakfast Radish