Garden Map

Well, every year before I plant my garden, I make a map. It is not to scale or anything. It's just to show me roughly where I am going to plant everything. A friend asked me to post my map and so I am, but I think it needs some explanation....

I listed the veggies that I plan to plant. The spinach and lettuce are already in and growing, albeit slowly.

The area behind the shed (marked pumpkins and cukes, squash and zucchini) is almost all new. We took down a fence and extended it just this spring.

As you can see, I have two compost piles. I just combined about 10 of them scattered all over the garden. The one in the back is HUGE...almost all goat manure and hay waste. Instead of rotating compost, I let it pile up in one or several areas of the garden, and by the next season it is perfect soil and I spread it out. I had one pile in the back left corner and one at the edge of the current onion patch from last year, that I spread out for this spring.

The little "x"s are places where there are plants coming up volunteer. I think they are almost all pumpkins, although last year, some were cantelopes and they did really well. I will leave them where they are if they don't interfere too much (like the ones in the compost pile), others I will transplant probably to the pumpkin patch.....as that is usually what they are.

The "tomato garden" is actually a newer plot that I started last year. It's actual position is to the left of the larger garden, with a grass walkway about 8 feet wide, between the two gardens. I started that garden because there is a tomato wilt that is permanently in the soil of my shed garden (larger lower rectangle), although a few tomatoes that I stuck in there last year did fine. I was very meticulous about tending my tomatoes in both plots last year - I mulched around them (with goat hay) and bottom watered them, and that really helped to keep any wilty-type activity at bay. I did plant WAY too many plants though, and I couldn't even walk in there. The plants got way to big. So this year I will only plant around the edges and leave the middle completely clear. (Although, my gardening is generally crowded. All walkways are basically gone mid-July.)