The Garden Plan version 273465

So it's been a real experience trying to figure out just what we wanted to plant and just how to go about doing it. After a multitude of revisions on what, where and how we now have a working plan to go by.

I also found this really cool online software to use in planning and record keeping for our garden to make sure we not only do it right but to see the results in numbers at the end of the season.

Here's a picture of our plan so far. You can click on it to make it readable.

This is a rough sketch of our back patio area. Seeing as we rent, we don't want to destroy what little grass there is in the back yard so we are going with a mix of containers including leftover 20 inch round pots for the tomatoes, 3 2 foot by 4 foot "square foot" planting boxes, and one 16" by 3' leftover scrap box.

The patio has a pergola installed above it but do to lack of common sense somewhere in the line of contractors and builders, it's actually installed the wrong way, instead of providing shade it creates weird tan lines if you sit under it too long. But that had also given us some vertical posts evenly spaced around the area to which we are going to attach trellising. Which might by the late summer actually provide us with some shade to relax in.

The trellis will be used by the cucumbers, pole beans and squash and zucchini, we'll use tomato cages for well the tomatoes and also the peppers.

We haven't narrowed it down to what varieties we're going to plant yet, that will be decided mostly by what we can find locally as far as seedlings and seeds go. We are also thinking of adding a few dwarf fruit trees since one of the local nurseries had trees already producing nicely.

The plan is mostly laid out according to companion growing charts, which veggies like each other enough to help produce better yield. We haven't seen too many pests in our area except for the overabundance of snails (ick ew ick) which will be discouraged pretty much if anyone wants me anywhere near the plants, and cats, which due to the foreclosures in the area are being abondoned in greater numbers, spayed or not ( the local shelter had been great in helping with this problem).

The software program I used is called PlanGarden it offers a 45 day free trial which I'm taking advantage of and if at the end of the trial looks to be helping then I'll buy the $20 one year subscription. So far just for ease of use in setting up a plan it looks to be worth 20 bucks. If I do make a subscription I'll add a widget to the sidebar.

You can find PlanGarden here.