We finally got our plants in the ground a few weeks ago (our mini greenhouses really helped our little plants get strong and hardy for the transplant) and we tried something new this year to hopefully increase our yields. I started reading up on companion planting with a couple books from the library (available
here and
here). The gist of it is that some plant, when grown together, help each other thrive while others can actually keep each other from producing.
There was a lot of information in those books, so I started by making a list of all the things we would be growing and making a column of thing that grew well with it and another column of things to avoid. From there, knowing I would have three garden beds to work with, I did
my best to divide them into three list of compatible plants. In the
first bed we planned tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, eggplant, and some
spinach. Those things also grow well with strawberries and asparagus,
which already grow along the garage, so all these things went in the
neighboring bed. In the second bed we planned broccoli, onions, cabbage,
cauliflower, brussel sprouts, hyssop, and squashes (we have pumpkin,
acorn, and I think zucchini but I didn't label them all and a few didn't
make it this far... so we'll have some surprises!). They also grow well with chamomile which I'd love to add, maybe around the fence since it tends to spread.
The third bed is just a little guy and he got stuck with all the things
that didn't fit anywhere else - potatoes, beans, cantaloupe, and snake
squash and tiny pumkiny things courtesy of my sister. I don't think
those even are supposed to grow together... I do better next year.
Then I grabbed a handy print-out from my square foot garden book to use as a spacing reference during planting and headed out to the garden (which is now fenced in!).
But wait... did I say three beds? We also had to dig up two more. While we love our raised bed and hope to upgrade these in the future, the wood/bricks and especially the compost to fill them was not in the budget at this point. So we broke out the handy shovel and dug. And dug. And dug. Cried a little. Dug some more. Okay we didn't actually cry, but I don't think the neighbors would have judged us if we did. We added another long bed marked with flags in the pic below, and a smaller bed across the end of the garden (perfect for beans since it's right along the fence!).
We worked in small sections at a time loosening the soil, pulling up the grass (make sure you get those roots!), and shaking as much dirt off the roots and back into the bed as possible. Shaking the dirt off is important so you end up with a nice bed full of dirt instead of a big old hole.
Bye bye grass!
When it came time to actually get the plants in the ground I started by laying out all the pots to figure out the spacing and make sure everything would fit.
