My raised bed Garden Plan – 2011

Since this is the first year that we are trying the Square foot gardening method in our new raised beds, I wanted to make sure that I had a good plan in place.  Usually I graph out our large gardens on graph paper in long rows of vegetables. Using this new method, each square foot block of our garden will be intensively planted to maximize our growing space and crowd out any weeds that dare set foot in our soil.

I used the very easy to use, and fun Kitchen Garden Planner tool that I found on the Gardener’s Supply website to create our bed plans. You can start from scratch and create your own plan, or use and edit a preplanned garden. I really love that I can edit the names of the plants to include ones they don’t show. It’s also nice that the tool automatically adds the correct amount of plants according to the square foot gardening idea. It makes my life easier!

Also, I have always tried to loosely follow companion planting guidelines in our vegetable gardens over the years. It can be very beneficial to surround plants with ones that help each other grow, as well as try to distance the plants that do not make the best neighbors for each other. Even  though our raised bed are smaller that the normal garden, I can still practice companion planting and think I have done a decent job of it with this plan.

Bed one will be nearest the house so that the pea and tomato cages and bamboo tepees won’t block the sunlight.

Bed two will be farthest from the house as it only has a bean bamboo tepee in the center of the bed.

Some plants, such as the radishes and broccoli will be harvested before the surrounding plants get larger. We will be using the onions as they grow and will try replacing as we pull them to keep a fresh supply all summer. There is full sun for most of the day in the area we selected for our beds so I think the placement of our plants, and the beds  themselves, will work out well. I hope!

Have you planed your garden or gotten plants in the ground yet?