Layouts?

Garden layout idea 1:

Ground breaking news...

Well, tech. speaking that'd be a lying title as any 'ground breaking' wont happen for another two months after the first real thaw occurs. Right now said ground has a lovely foot to three feet of fluffy semi-melting stuff commonly refered to as either "that white cold stuff" or as I like to call it "snow".

It's late Jan, most first time gardeners haven't yet started to plan out their gardening for the summer let alone the breeds or materials needed. I stumbled across the correct way to plan completely by accident. I was browsing the web seeking for first generation seeds. You might ask why? Why not go for the typical breeds you get at the super markets?

There once was three dozen types of apples available at the markets in the 50's and if you look now there are four or five breeds that every adult can recognise almost by sight. This means all those lovely fields in Niagara and across the world are growing a very limited amount of apples and the other breeds are almost ignored entirely. Not a bad thing on it's own but you look deeper into the lost vitamins that were once in the apples you'd be shocked. Some research says 50-100% of the vitamins in the 50's that were in apples are now gone. Most blame the geneticly modified breeds, bigger fruit at the cost of fewer vitamins.

If you dig hard enough, you can find people who maintain the less widely known breeds of vegis and fruit. Even these ones have lost some of their yummy goodness but at a largely slower rate. This peeked my interest, would there be a slight different taste to these ones? How would they fare when grown in a suburban zone? Were these ones any more benefical to my health then their genetically modified cousins? Thus my project started to grow my own veg on a much larger scale then the summer before when I had only a half dozen veg (mostly heirloom tomatos, pickled-type cucumbers and a handful of herbs).

When searching the web for those pesky hard to find first generation seeds (the first yeild of seeds from mixing two subspecies of the same plant) organicly grown and maintained I got almost 80% of my future seedings. 20% being non-heirlooms and non-organic or just not a first generation. With shipping the price tag came to $90 and I wager I'll spend another $100 for building raised beds (will post about that later), the basics of a compost kit, support stands for heavy load carrying plants like cucumbers and tomato plants etc.

That $200 will yield a lot more then it's value over the four months of growing I'll get from mature plants. What I spend on veg per month would come out to about $100 a month just on veg for 2-3 people now the garden should yield more then that roughly $150 worth a month which isnt to bad.  My garden is long term based, meaning few of the breeds selected will mature early in the season most are medium to late allowing more veg and herbs for late july to early oct.

Now comes the space planning!