You may enjoy having some experienced gardeners work together to do the 100 square foot garden Rosalind Creasy/Mother Earth News challenge in a demo bed to maximize food production. To get the most food from this, you could do a 4x25 foot Jeavons style bed with the 25 side on a north edge to make crop rotation easy and to insure that one crop doesn't shade another unless you want it to.
This one has the potential to provide good media ops while being very inspirational to new gardeners. All together Rosalind Creasy got 235 pounds/106 kg of organic vegetables from her plot. In her area this would be over US$700/470 Euros worth of vegetables. The first year she used very basic, favorite, easy to grow vegetables. For the 2009 garden year she planted some cool weather vegetables earlier in the year and also diversified her summer garden. So this year she had Basil Beans, Pole Cilantro (potentially she would have coriander too if she lets some of it go to seed) Broccoli Chard Collards Cucumbers Greens, Stir Fry Mix Kale Lettuce Peas, Snap Peppers, Bell Scallions Tomatoes Zucchini There's a report with lots more info on the garden in the December 2009 issue of Mother Earth News. http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/Square-Foot-Gardening-Food. aspx The magazine issue has many more photos. They also include some great tips on getting lots of food from a small plot. http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/Square-Foot-Gardening-Food. aspx?page=4 Some updates for 2009 on her website http://www.rosalindcreasy.com/ ************************************* Gardens in the UK planted 10 foot x 10 foot sample food gardens. Here is the link to 12/14 different sample gardens and matching shorter link in case the link splits. The first Harlow Carr plan link for fruit and veg is not working, but the other 11 are ok. http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardening/Grow-Your-Own/Events-Gardens/The-RHS-3x3m-pl ots http://tinyurl.com/y9q7hck And one at a garden show with tiered beds and a dining table where the 4x4 bed is in some of the sample plans. http://mygarden.rhs.org.uk/photos/alison_mundie/picture20631.aspx http://tinyurl.com/ya2a9fd ************************************ The advantage of using a 4x25 foot bed for the challenge would be that all of it was plantable. Using the Jeavons biointensive techniques with the double dug beds would give a larger plantable surface in the space compared to raised beds with hard sides. The advantage of the various 10x10 designs is their visual interest. If you wanted to do the 10x10 style but have the full 100 square feet of growing space, you could have two parallel 4x12.5 foot beds spaced 2 or 3 feet apart for ease of working. ************************************ In terms of what to focus on planting, there are benefits to different themes. You could do different themes in future years. Some possibilities: --A basic starter garden with favorites that are fairly easy to grow in your area. A few cutting flowers for table bouquets. --Maximizing 3-4 season produce with a minimum of seed packets to reduce seed cost --Incredible diversity with less regard to seed cost --Ethnic cuisine themes starting with ones most popular in your area --Cooking themes such as salad gardens, soup gardens, pizza toppings **************************************** Would welcome your thoughts about ways to make this fun and effective. Sharon gordo...@one.net _______________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: community_garden@list.communitygarden.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org
