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In a previous article I touched on the subject of what to grow, some good combinations, identified some plant types, and covered some planting dates. I will now get into more detail on these subjects, layout some beds with different combinations, and plan them through the growing season. When we get to the planting. You should have a good idea what you want to do with the space that you have available.

To plan a bed I will make a template that can be used every time, with different combinations, and different planting dates. In the winter I sit down and make a plan for the garden, determine what I am going to grow, how much, and when to plant each bed to get the results that I want.

Example of Planting Plan Template for 4' Beds

BED NUMBER

SR 1 Lettuce Thin to 12" apart and use thins.
SR 2 Spinach Thin to 3" apart and use thins.
MR 1 Spinach Thin to 3" apart and use thins.
SR 3 Bush Peas No thinning necessary.
SR 4 Bush Peas No thinning necessary.
CR Spinach Transplant Tomatoes May 1, 2' apart
SR 5 Bush Peas No thinning necessary.
SR 6 Bush Peas No thinning necessary.
MR 2 Spinach Thin to 3" apart and use thins.
SR 7 Spinach Thin to 3" apart and use thins.
SR 8 Green Onions Thin to 3" apart and use thins.

Example of Planting Plan Template for 2' beds

BED NUMBER

SR 1 Tall Peas No thinning necessary.
SR 2 Tall Peas No thinning necessary.
CR Spinach Transplant Tomatoes May 1, 2' apart
SR 3 Spinach Thin to 3" apart and use thins.
SR 4 Garlic sets No thinning necessary.

If you use drip irrigation you may not get good seed germination in the main and center rows when using four soaker lines per 4' bed.

However, in the early spring this does not present a problem, there is rain or snow and stays cool. If it is unusually warm here in the spring I will hand water with a hose until the seeds germinate. In some gardens I have had a combination of sprinkler and drip irrigation.

At those locations I wanted to keep planting some hard to germinate seeds into the summer months. Crops like carrots. The best time to grow carrots here is when you plant around June 1. The sprinklers help to get fall crops started also. Crops like lettuce, spinach, cauliflower, broccoli etc.

Some crops that require a cool season will grow well in the fall, but they need to be planted in the heat of summer, here in Utah that would be in August. The sprinklers were set up so they could be adjusted to work with small areas, by changing the heads to quarter, half or full, and were only used when needed.

Once the plants were established, I would stop using the sprinklers, and turn on the drip irrigation. I no longer have enough space for that, all of my beds are planted in the spring, and the beds are still producing at the time fall crops would need to be planted.

In desert areas that I have gardened, there was not any snow, and very little rain. When starting the garden in the late fall it was still hot and dry. I needed the overhead watering in those locations to get the plants started, but there is another option for that situation, by adding four more soaker lines per bed.

Then there will be a soaker hose along every soaker row, the lines would need to be placed right on top of the seed rows, so that the seeds would get direct water, instead of the water being dripped 3" away from the plant row, like in the system that I use with four lines per 4' bed.

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Farmers world-wide have been practicing crop rotation for centuries. The reason for this is that they discovered long, long ago that by growing certain crops in a certain sequence, they were able to optimize the precious resources of the soil.

If one crop is grown season after season, year after year, without a break, the soil will tend to deteriorate in both structure and the content of nutrients. But if crop rotation is practised correctly, each subsequent crop will add nutrients to the soil that were used up by the previous crop. Crop rotation also minimises the risk of nematodes and disease.

The simplest rule of thumb is to grow an above-ground crop and then a below-ground crop. Better still rotate the four crop groups that benefit most from crop rotation. These are:

? cruciferous crops including cabbages, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and kale,

? root crops including beetroot, carrots, parsnips, salsify and turnips (remember that potatoes are NOT a root crop, they are a legume),

? solanaceous crops including both tomatoes and potatoes, peppers and eggplants, capsicums and chillies,

? leguminous crops that include all the beans and peas you can think of.

Cucurbitaceous crops - cucumbers, pumpkins, squashes and marrows, and various melons - and various other miscellaneous crops - from Swiss chard and spinach to leeks, celery, lettuce, endive and artichokes - can generally be included anywhere, unless of course they make a bad companion plant to others planted at the same time.

From this you will see that legumes and then the cruciferous crops, including brassicas, should follow-on from your tomato crop.

Legumes are known to trap nitrogen in nodules that form on their roots, adding nitrogen to the soil. But this benefit is only realised if the whole plant goes back into the soil. Harvesting the pods minimises the nutrients, so leave some plants to die and rot.

Leafy vegetables use up loads of nitrogen - which is why you should plant the brassicas after growing beans and peas. But you will still need to feed the soil and add manure and compost for the crop to really thrive. If they do thrive, leafy vegetables will generally enrich the soil with phosphorus, which the root crops thrive on. The root crops then leave behind some extra potassium that our tomatoes love!

Another factor to consider, particularly in terms of solanaceous crops, is that the different types should ideally not be grown within three years of one another. So if you want to grow tomatoes, potatoes, peppers and aubergines, you'll need to plant different areas at different times, rotating the crops differently all the time.

Annette Welsford and Lucia Grimmer are the authors of best selling books How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes and How to Grow Great Potatoes.

Lucia Grimmer is a world renowned expert in plant disease and nutrition who trains horticulturists, agronomists and professional growers. She has won awards for her technical papers and regularly conducts trials on a range of crops with the objective of improving yield and reducing disease.

Their book on Growing Tomatoes has sold to thousands of novice and professional gardeners in 83 countries, and has been featured on TV, radio and leading gardening publications in 4 continents.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Annette_Welsford

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