Planning

Before we delve into the bowels of the planning process, there is one point that is worthy of consideration, if only because it caused me all sorts of stress and hassle when I first started trying to grow my own food. We who are born into the supermarket culture are used getting what we want, when we want it! Unfortunately the real world ain’t like that.

I caused myself no end of hassle by trying to ensure that we had enough planted of all the different types of veggies we like to eat all year ‘round. It just isn’t possible. So save yourself the hassle and embrace seasonality. In other words plant only the veggies that do well and give you good a crop at the time of year you are planting, rather than bust a boiler by trying to grow out-of-season crops. By accepting seasonality it helps you to understand how artificial our supermarket culture is, gives you an appreciation for crops grown in their proper season and means you are working with nature rather than against.

Any plan will be very family specific because only you know which vegetables your family eats how much of each one you need. If you have the patience, make a list of the veggies you eat and then make a note of how much you buy of each type over a year. If you are not that pedantic (like me!) then just talk it over with your family and wing it. Also, don’t be afraid to try new stuff, there is a wide range of veggies available that you don’t see in the shops, so start out small and discover some new family favourites.

Working out what types of vegetables your family eats, at least to start with, will give you an idea of the sorts of vegetables you will want to grow. Following is a list of veggies that is reasonably comprehensive, tick off the ones that you currently use and then pick a couple of new ones to have a go at –

A copy of the above list is available in the Resources/Downloads area of this site.

Once you have a list of veggies you wish to grow, they can then be fitted into a sowing plan, which will help you maintain a steady harvest throughout the year. For many years I planted up big in spring and then had gluts and shortages for the rest of the year. With a good sowing plan those problems are solved.

It is not possible to take into account each person’s circumstances in terms of climate and favourite veggies so it is time to do a bit of research! Get hold of seed catalogues, preferably from producers of open pollinated heritage seeds such as Eden Seeds, Greenpatch or Phoenix Seeds on the east coast or Yilgarn or The Greenhouse in the west, . Scour them to work out what varieties suit your climate and when you should sow them, talking with existing gardeners in your neighbourhood will also yield useful information on which types and varieties do well in your location and which don’t. You may want to plant different varieties of the same vegetable to spread your growing season.

Then decide on how much of each vegetable you want to plant at each time, bearing in mind that the plan is always evolving and some things you may discover you want to grow more of over time, others you will reduce because you don’t like them as much or as often as you thought you did.

To develop a sowing plan, work out how often you want to sow/plant out your veggies, my system is based on twice monthly sowings and works well for me. Having decided you sowing interval, draw up a matrix with each veggie you want to grow and the variety down one side and the interval of sowing across the top. To make it easy for me to develop and keep up-to-date I use an Excel® spreadsheet on our computer.

The finished plan may look something like this (at least ours does) -

To download a copy of my Veggie Plan or a blank version you can fill in go to Resources/Download section

Strategies for a Small Garden

One of the constant challenges of urban/suburban food growing is that we have very limited land on which to grow and that has to fight with other needs like recreation. We have a total block size of about 600m2 but only 300m2 in the back yard, not taking into account the land taken up by sheds and the greenhouse so like farmers the world over, we always want more land. I do appreciate though that there will be urban farmers out there whose mouths will water at the thought of a 600m2 block so the trick is to make the best of what you have got. To help you out as to how you might do that here are some ideas –

• Think Vertical – many varieties of vegetables and fruits can climb such as beans, cucumber, chokoes, peas, or be trained upward such as tomatoes or even pumpkins. In the 2011 season we got the best harvest of huge pumpkins ever by growing them across the back fence. So maximise your horizontal space by growing vertically against any vertical surface you can, by building free standing trellises, by growing up established trees or even using growing veggies as a living trellis eg by growing beans up corn stems. You can even put some growing medium in a large pot next to a structure and grow fruiting vines like squash or pumpkin up over the roof.
• Use succession planting – This doesn’t give you more growing space, but allows you to get more out of the growing space you have and is, simply put, replacing any vegetable harvested with another one straight away. To make this work you have to be right on top of maintaining your fertility, have a great plan and be constantly sowing so you have seedlings ready.
• Don’t plant too much of one thing – getting the most out of your growing area means only planting just enough of any one vegetable otherwise you get a whole stack of one crop and need to reserve it somehow, but still have to buy in the rest of your veggies. A good plan will make sure that this doesn’t happen.
• Interplant where possible – rather than growing long rows of the same crop with blank space in between, plant out the whole bed with all sorts of different veggies grown together. You can plant so that all the veggies ripen over a period of time so that the beds are producing for a longer period and, again, a good plan will support this and make it easier for you. Intercropping can confuse pests, reduce the amount of bare ground and increase the amount of produce per square metre of garden. This will require ignoring the spacing recommendations on the seed packets and some of the gardening books but a well maintained organic garden will have the fertility to cope with it. We plant so that the veggies grow within about 30cm of each other. Note: This will not work for corn, which needs to be planted in a block to pollinate correctly.
• Be prepared to experiment with unusual vegetables or varieties – One of the fun bits of growing your own is growing and trying new veggies and new varieties. Get hold of as many seed catalogues as you can manager and spend some time reading through and taking note of what will grow in your climate, how long it takes to get a harvest and how early or late in the year each variety grows. This can spread the harvest and perhaps by trying some new types of veggies, allow you to exploit slow times in the veggie growing year when you may otherwise strike a “hungry gap”. We have tried new stuff that we have not been used to eating like Jerusalem artichokes, Asian greens, leeks and broad beans and found the greater variety is good for the garden and good for the cook. There is hardly a day when we can’t go out to the garden and harvest something. Try a small amount at a time and then if they are good, add them to your plan if not at least you tried.
• Consider perennial vegetable beds – The 15 beds we have in the back yard are mainly for annual veggies but we have other beds for perennial vegetables such as Jerusalem artichokes, asparagus and rhubarb that are used exclusively for these vegetables.
• Try medium/small varieties of vegetables – during your seed catalogue research keep your eye out for dwarf varieties and small types of vegetables that allow you to get more vegetable from the same space, like planting bush cucumbers or pumpkins rather than runners, sugarloaf cabbage rather than drumhead types or Cherrytime capsicum rather than the larger Californian wonder.
• Make a place for containers – There will always be some extra space where you can fit in the odd veggie box or self watering container so if your do take advantage of some unused space don’t forget to add that into your plan so you can manage the extra space effectively.

• Make initial thick sowings – work especially well for root crops like carrot or beetroot seeing as these need to be sown where they are going to grow (they don’t take well to transplanting) sow thickly and then thin out as they grow, eating the thinning as baby vegetables. Some leaf crops like lettuce can be used in a similar way.

Some veggies to think about including in your plan

Good yield for space used:

• Broad beans
• Runner beans
• Dwarf beans
• Beetroot
• Broccoli (Sprouting)
• Carrot
• Lettuce
• Zucchini (squash)
• Onions
• Tomatoes
• Silver beet

Snow peas

Easy to grow:

Tolerate some shade

Roots

• Beetroot
• Kohl Rabi
• Turnips
• Carrot
• Parsnips
• Salsify
• Radish

• Leaves and stems

• Cabbage
• Brussels sprouts
• Cauliflower
• Celery
• Spinach
• Silver beet