New Hampshire Man grows a lot of food. This year marks the 5th year of learning and planting this 75′ x 25′ annual garden, or 1,875 square feet of land.
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The Plan | Seeds | Journal | References
The Plan
If you learn nothing else from me, learn to plan your garden. There are a myriad of ways to do that ranging from pen and paper to an online garden planner. I’m exploring other options, but for now I use PowerPoint to roughly sketch what my garden will look like.
The numbers and variety names next to each plant help me quickly place and reference my seed order from Johnny’s, unless otherwise stated.
It is also worth stating outwardly that I reference the previous year’s sketch to try to rotate crops as much as feasible. I also know the best sun and weed pressure and try to plan my garden around those, and all other inputs that one picks up after working the same plot for several years in a row.
Seed Selection
A quick word and links to the varieties I’m selecting for 2018:
- Rhubarb: This is an annual that I got from my aunt and uncle. If all goes well, I’ll never have to buy rhubarb again.
- Sweet Potato-Beauregard: This will be our second attempt with sweet potato. The leaves and tubers are edible and, most importantly, my daughter loves them.
- Strawberries: I planted this collection last year. The first year they go in you should pinch off some flowers so that they set roots, I’m hoping for a great harvest this year. The hardest thing will be to get them before the critters do.
- Peppers: I think I’m going to buy these as starts from my neighbor. I’m leaning toward foregoing starting plants inside this year.
- Spring Onions: I planted these last fall in the hopes of having an early onion harvest. When this is all ironed out my storage onions from the previous year should just run out when my spring onions come in.
- Kale: I love both the Winterbor and the Toscano varieties. Winterbor just a little bit more. Once it’s in, you can take mature leaves off it and it keeps growing more. I end up eating it every day in my morning scramble. It doesn’t get better than that.
- Spinach: I have a bunch of spinach seed left over from last year. I’ll have to look up the variety.
- Carrots-Mokum: This year I’m trying a carrot with a shorter maturity time than last year. I’m also sold on this ‘top-rated for flavor’ BS they include in the description.
- Tomatoes-Sun Gold: Again, probably not starting plants inside this year, but I might still see if I can get a few of these cherry tomatoes to take off. One year we had the most bomb cherry tomatoes, but I didn’t keep track of where they came from, so for the rest of my life I’ll forever be in search of that cherry tomato.
- Potatoes-Yukon Gold: I had good luck with these potatoes growing to size, tasting great, and storing well into winter. Maybe this year I can grow enough so that I won’t have to buy any more next year. We’ll see.
- Lettues-All Star and Bibb: I still have plenty left over from last year. My goal this year will be to plant some every week for a continuous harvest from late spring through fall.
- Cucumbers-Olympian: Top rated slicing cucumber for flavor. Last year my cucumbers sucked, and I think it’s because of water, or the lack thereof. So my goal this year is to get proper water supply to my cuc’s.
- Onions-Redwing: If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. As I write this going into spring we’re still eating our Redwing’s from last year. Going in big on them this year.
- Beets-Chioggia: Between the edible greens and the super healthy beet itself, we will hopefully get a lot of these out of the ground this year.
- Cucumbers-Max Pack: Pickling still seems to get away from us, but we’re still going to give it a shot with these. I have some heirloom dill from Straweberry Banke that will get cast in somewhere too.
- Cabbage-Farao: The cabbage I did last year was great, but took a long time. I’m hoping to get more cabbage sooner with the hopes of turning a lot of it into sauerkraut.
- Summer Squash and Zucchini: I still have plenty of seed left over from last year.
- Broccoli-Gypsy: I didn’t have much luck with Amadeus last year so I’m going to try Gypsy. I look for variety’s that have good side-shoot production making the plant edible well into summer.
- Swiss Chard-Bright Lights: Going to try it near the Rhubarb.
- Peas-Super Sugar Snap: I have a fence near the main plot that I’m going to run peas on in the spring and then run left over lettuce and kale on once the peas are done.
Three Sisters
Another plot that is part of the Applied Permaculture Project will be a ‘Three Sisters’ bed of raising corn, beans and squash:
- Corn-Robust: Giving Johnny’s a shot at popping corn.
- Beans-Cherokee Trail of Tears: I couldn’t find a pole dry bean from Johnny’s, and I really want black beans because we use them more than any other, so I found these at Victory Seeds. What’s great about these is that if I grow enough of them I’ll never have to buy them again.
- Squash-Butternut and Spaghetti: I reason that if we can grow at least 50 of each we might have 2 meals covered for every week of the year due to the great storing ability of these two types of squash.
Season Journal
This is where the magic happens, an annual journal to look back on and learn all the hard lessons with hopes of not repeating them.
2018-02-23
- Seeds ordered from Johnny’s, Receipt Here for future reference: Johnny’s Order 2018
- Seeds ordered from Victory: Victory Order 2018
References
Northeast Fruit and Vegetable Gardening – Charlie Nardozzi: I don’t even remember where I got this book, but I reference it CONSTANTLY. The content and layout totally work for the way I grow food.
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