by Elizabeth
September 30, 2020

Map It

I map out my garden every year. Mapping out your garden will save you some money. The last thing you want is to purchase lots of plants and seeds and then not have the room to plant them all. By mapping it out you can make sure you are purchasing only what you have room to plant.

The specific planting dates for each plant, I plug into my calendar. So I see, “It’s time to start peppers from seed,” or “It’s time to plant beans and transplant tomatoes” and so on.

Every plant has a home and a planting time on my map. I mark on my paper what plants need a trellis and what direction I’m going to plant for shade or no shade, the general planting time, and of course where they will live. This helps me make sure I’ve rotated my crops and lets me know if I need to come up with other ideas if I can’t fit everything in my small garden. By the time I’m done it looks something like this.

1. First thing I do is make a wish list of all the things I would like to plant and any varieties I’d like to try. I also estimate how many I want to grow. (This number may change as I fill in my chart. )

Veg
Potatoes (2-3 kinds), peppers (3 bell; 3 banana), okra (2 kinds), Green beans, black-eyed peas, butternut squash, zucchini (2) lettuce, cucumber (1), turnips, kale (3 varieties), beets, tomatoes (4 better boy, 4 roma, 1 porterhouse, 3 other kinds), herbs (basil, sage, parsley, cilantro, & lemon thyme).

Flowers
Marigold (2 kinds), alyssum (6), zinnia (4), glorisoa daisy (2-3), bachelor buttons, Mexican sunflower (6), cosmos (3), snapdragon (4), aster (1), salvia (2).

2. After you have written your wish list, decide in which garden bed these plants are going to go. My herbs grow in containers on the patio or inside the house. I have a few herbs that are perennials or are self-seeding. This just leaves choosing which pot to plant the herbs I grow from seed.

The tomatoes grow in the ground. My tomato bed is large enough to plant 12 properly-spaced tomatoes. And, I expanded one of my flower beds to plant the butternut squash. So that leaves me figuring out how to plan my raised beds.

Make sure you have the previous year’s plan with you so you can make sure you aren’t planting the same plants in the same location.

Crop rotation is helpful for disease control. Another reason I rotate crops is some plants like beans, peas, and black-eyed peas fix nitrogen in the soil and I want to spread that love around. A third reason is, it helps with pest control, which I have found to be particularly true with zucchini.

• Light requirements–Full sun, shade etc? Do I need to create shade? This is something I have to think about for a fall garden.
• How the Sun tracks in the yard will determine how you orient your plants/trellis for creating shade or preventing shade.
• Trellis–Will you need one?–Do you want it to create shade or not?
• Timing–When will these plants be planted and harvested?
• Will I have an open space for fall planting?
• Spacing of plants. Don’t overcrowd!
• Did I plant this in the same place last year? Crop Rotation
• If it doesn’t fit in the raised beds, can I use a container?

4. Then just pick a bed and begin. I start with the warm season crops and get them placed before I even think about the cool season crops. Grab a pencil with a good eraser as it takes a bit of rearranging to get it right. (You can also use a computer.) I have to keep in mind, peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes are all in the same family. These shouldn’t be planted in the same space.

Example: Peppers should not be planted where the tomatoes or potatoes were planted last year and visa versa. If the tomatoes had a disease the previous year and you plant peppers in the same place, more than likely, you’ve just infected your peppers. 

I start with the potatoes and peppers first. I look at the previous year’s plan and see where I planted these. Then I plug in my peppers and potatoes in a different location. These are both full sun, so I don’t need to plan for any shade.

5. Then I move on to the next 2 plants on my wish list. My 1st and 2nd year gardening I planted okra and peppers side by side. I had bumper crops both years, but not since I’ve separated the two. I wanted to experiment planting okra and peppers side by side again to see if they really like growing next to each other and hopefully duplicate the bumper crops. (This a great example of why it’s good to keep records.) I plugged them in side by side.

I also plotted out the direction of the okra. I don’t want it to shade any plants, so I marked on my plan how to orientate the rows so they won’t shade anything.

Another consideration I must keep in mind is, I want to plant 2 varieties of okra AND save seeds from BOTH. This means the 2 varieties canNOT flower at the same time or they will cross-pollinate. So, I marked on the plan which variety will be Summer (which will have to be removed before the other variety flowers) and which variety will be Fall. (As I’m replacing the Summer okra with the Fall okra, I went ahead and plugged it in.)

6. Continue plugging in your warm season crops until the garden is filled out. Then it gets a bit tricky to figure out where to plant the cool season crops for Spring and Fall. For the Spring garden, what you need to keep in mind is, if you need that bed for a warm season crop, then anything you plant, needs to be finished, harvested–DONE by the time the warm season crops need to be planted. That’s usually around April 15/May 1 for my area. As I have a very small garden, I have to be very mindful of this since. Otherwise, I may not be able to get my warm season crops planted on time.

To plug in the Spring plants:

• I look at how many days each Spring plant needs from planting to harvest.
• Then, I see when are the planting dates for the warm season crops.
• Once I have these 2 dates, I know where I can plug in my Spring (cool season) crops in order for them to be harvested before the warm season crops need to be planted. I also plant them in the beds with my hoops so I can create row covers to protect them from any freezes.
• For Fall crops, do the same thing. Look at the harvest dates for the warm season crops and the planting dates for the Fall crops and plug them in accordingly. 

Tip: I designed my hoops to be movable, so I can transfer them to any bed depending on my needs. 

7. I find planning the Fall garden easier than the Spring. I want to try late harvest potatoes, if I can find them at my local feed and seed store. I’m not sure when late season potatoes are harvested, other than later. Since Fall okra is planted in June and the potatoes may still be there, I didn’t want to plant okra in this bed.

The early potato bed will definitely be empty when it’s time to plant okra, So that is where I’ll plant some of the Fall okra, using it to create shade for the lettuces. 

What was tricky this year was the okra. I wanted to do 2 varieties: the tried and tested Clemson Spineless and a red variety which is supposed to be good for pickling. As mentioned above, I wanted to save seeds from BOTH varieties.

Which means I had to plan out not just the planting times, but the flowering times as well. Which is fairly simple. I remove half the spring okra to plant the Fall, so I will still get a harvest while the Fall variety is growing. 

Then I just have to keep an eye on when the Fall okra flower buds appear or when it’s time to plant the beets (which ever happens first) and rip out the rest of the Spring okra at that time. 

8. Then it’s just a matter of plugging in the rest of the Fall plants and any companion flowers. The one thing I’m not sure of exactly where it will live on my map is the garlic. Where I plant it next year will depend on where it ends up this year, which I won’t know how that will work out until some garden cleanup is done. I put it on my map where I think it will go.

Garlic is one I want to be very careful rotating around. There are fungi and pesky insects which can attack the bulbs making them small and otherwise not nice. I’m pretty sure I had gotten this fungus in the soil. What made is worse was, I was planting a boarder of garlic around every one of my raised beds. So the fungus was in EVERY bed. I read where it takes about 2-3 years for this fungus to die.

This will be my first time planting garlic in 3 years. My plan is to only plant a boarder around one 8 foot raised bed, leaving the other 2 beds fallow (from garlic). This will allow those beds to rest 2 years before having garlic again. I’m hoping this will keep the fungus from being a problem and hopefully deter pesky insects.

One Last Thing to Keep in Mind!

While mapping out your garden is a wonderful tool, nature sometimes like to butt in. This can work to your advantage or it can cause you to get creative. Please don’t get so locked into your plan that you rigidly won’t make any changes. Be willing to adapt to whatever nature throws at you!

EXAMPLE: There was one year with really cool temperatures. Even though things were planted at the right time, the garden was about a month behind where it should have been. This meant changing up my Fall plan and forgoing some of the Fall crops (like okra). 

Another example: When the slugs decimated my kale. I replanted it in the area which was set aside for my lettuces. All I have to do is move my PBC hoops for my row covers and I’m good to go. So while, I may not get as much lettuce this year, that’s okay. Loose leaf lettuce is one I can plant indoors (if I want) and still get a great harvest!