Who would have thought the weather was going to be as wild as it was on Sunday! I couldn't help myself though. I waited until we had an hour or so that was relatively rain free and headed out to Luscombe Street to plant out the seedlings and seeds I had bought from CERES on Saturday!
As mentioned in the previous post, I have spent a fair amount of time planning out the plot and had a chat to Digga about what I planned to do. It was great talking with him and I made a few changes based on his recommendations.
The basic plan for the garden is to follow a crop rotation plan to help reduce the incidence of soil-borne pests and diseases, as well as catering for different vegetable's nutrient requirements in your garden. There is a great explanation of the concept here if you would like to learn more about it.
There are four types of plants that I have planted in separate beds - Alliums, Root/Fruit, Legumes and Brassicas. Alliums are onion type vegetables, Root/Fruit are carrots, tomatoes etc, Legumes are beans and peas and Brassicas are green leafy vegetables like spinach and broccoli. The idea is that from season to season you move each vegetable type one step across - i.e. Alliums to Root/Fruit, Root/Fruit to Legumes, Legumes to Brassicas and Brassicas to Alliums. Fairly easy right!
So for the late Autumn / Winter patch I have planted;
Alliums
Garlic in the plot for most of the year
Spring Onion - multiple crops over the season
With a quick crop of Silverbeet interspersed
Root / Fruit
Carrots - multiple crops over the season
With radish interspersed - multiple crops over the season with lettuce
Legumes
Broad Beans for the whole season
With lettuce interspersed - multiple crops over the season
Brassicas
Bok Choi - multiple crops over the season
Sprouting Broccoli in the plot for the whole season
Silverbeet - multiple crops over the season
With Rhubarb in the plot all year long
The Winter Plot
The next step was to look at each bed type and apply additional permaculture principles to the garden. The best thing to do when planning out your garden beds is to assess the location of your plants to best suit the prevailing wind conditions and sun requirements of the patch. The broad beans are located on the south eastern corner of the patch to ensure that during winter they will not block out much sun for the rest of the vegetables to grow. By the time the rotation makes its way through two seasons to summer, the bean or pea crop will be on the northern side of the plot and will provide leafy vegetables with dappled shade against the hot weather. In summer the northern wind is fierce and the legumes will help with this and therefore reduce water loss across the beds. Its these simple considerations that really have an impact on the garden and it really means spending a few minutes planning your garden to implement them!
Another principle that is really important is to plant out your garden as densely as possible, providing you with an economical crop and reducing the amount of water loss through evaporation on exposed soil. Its also worth assessing the profile of the soil and cropping times for your various vegetables to get the most out of your garden bed. For example, sowing radish with your carrots. Radishes have a much shorter growing period than carrots, so you can be cropping your radishes when your carrots are beginning to grow underground, allowing the room that they need to mature and gaining a second crop of vegetables in the meantime!
The Planted Plot
I love the bamboo teepee I bought from Bunnings on the weekend for the legume crops. So architectural! I would really love to make one myself one day :)
The Garden Beds
Legumes
I have planted seedlings of butter lettuce as the first crop and planted broad beans around the external edge.
Brassicas
The rhubarb has been planted centrally on the southern wall and will stay there all year round. Sprouting broccoli and silverbeet seedlings have been planted. I scattered some bok choi seeds across the patch as well as a later crop. Its going to be a well planted out bed this one!
Alliums
The spring onion seedlings that I have sprouted at home are almost ready to be planted into this patch. A few more weeks of hardening off and they will be ready to go. I have planted some leftover silverbeet seedlings that will be an early crop. I have planted a heap of garlic cloves in this bed too!
Root / Fruit
And finally the root and fruit crop. It doesn't look like much is happening here at the moment! I have spread a heap of carrot and radish seeds so we will see a lot of little seedlings coming up over the next couple of weeks! Once the radishes have grown and been harvested I will probably spread some more lettuce seeds!
So its all happening now - very exciting! It will be great to see how they all go. With the huge amount of rain we have had this week they are hopefully off to a great start!
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