Friday, March 13, 2009

Early Garden PlanZ

A co-worker, upon hearing I was doing garden planning, asked if I used CAD/CAM software. Nope, I told him, Powerpoint! :-)

Usually I use graph paper, but I couldn't find my pad and darn it, I'd been meaning to come up with a template for a while. What I really want are Square Foot Garden colorforms (remember colorforms?!)

First pass at this year's garden plan. 2008 was a disaster since I couldn't compensate for overcrowding with painstaking near-daily garden care: too busy at my employee job.



Note that I have already impulsively purchased two plants which are NOT IN THE PLAN, a Black Krim tomato and a Lolita summer squash. (What are they thinking, naming something that should be picked before it's ripe, with a name like that?! If it weren't an All-America winner, I would not have gotten it. Ugh.

Oh, um, and the tray of Early Butternut was SO CUTE and fuzzy and cotyledon-y with those little sawtooth true leaves just starting. So, um, I picied that up too, but I know just where they are going to go, in that area by the fig tree along the side. (cough)



For our community garden bed, we are planning to do mostly a 3 Sisters setup this year. I blanked at the last minute on whether the beds are 14 or 18 feet long. If they're 12 feet, I am going to have to edit severely, but I am fairly certain they're at least 14 feet.

We were almost the only ones growing corn at the community garden in 2008. There were maybe 3 or 4 other plots, of the 70-plus, with corn, and at least one of those was baby corn.

We're going to go with a nice healthy anthocyanin favorite, Sweet Double Red Corn. It's supposed to be good for fresh, parched, or flour consumption. I'm itching to try my Hopi Blue or to get some Painted Mountain Flour Corn, but let's plant what we already have for now.

My little 4x6 corn patch last year did pretty well, but should have been spaced better. The squirrels ruined a really excessive number of ears-- wish they'd finish one before trashing another. With an alleged top height of 5 feet, the Sweet Double Red should be eas(ier) to net off, unlike the 7 - 9 foot ears of the Golden Queen F1 we grew last year.

I'm happy to make the .PPT file available, as soon as I clear up the question about the CSG bed length.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Ariel said...

I believe they're 4x16 feet long. I'm a new gardener at the garden and my husband, who's from Mexico, really wants me to do the 3 sisters setup as well.

I found your blog last year when researching gardening and asked about you at the garden meeting. Jennifer said that you were in Cherry, which makes us neighbors as I'm in Cherry 9.

Where do you get Sweet Double Red Corn seeds? Since we're neighbors and it's within regulation height it sounds like a good idea to plant that as well.

3:51 PM PDT  
Blogger Strata Chalup said...

Hi Rielab,

Thanks for your note! I got to the garden meeting late, sorry. I was wearing the striped teal n blue poncho, maybe we saw each other there?

I got the Sweet Double Red from a seed swap; we might still have some in the CSG seeds, I think I might have seen some there.

I can count mine and see how much extra I have, but I think it will be very tight just to put in mine. If the seed bank is out of them, and we need more, I'd go in on an order.

Horizon sells the Sweet Double Red at http://www.horizonherbs.com/product.asp?specific=2302

I've heard that Peace Seeds also has it but I don't have a link to them.

4:42 PM PDT  

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