A Tour of The Farm...

Yesterday morning I finished the last of the Spring planting in The Farm, so I thought a tour might be in order.  This is a schematic of The Farm's layout (made using Territorial Seeds Garden Planner)...

(click on the photo to see a larger version)

The Farm is now nine raised beds with hoop covers, a 6 x 6" pop up greenhouse, a potting shed with a lighted germination stand, four potato boxes and a few half wine barrels ...  

The first two 4 x 4" beds are pretty much identical...snow peas on teepees in the center, chard (Bright Lights), kale (Red Chidori) and spinach (Bloomsdale Savoy) around the edges and cabbage (Primero and Derby Day) or broccoli (De Cicco) in the four corners.

The Farm #3 is 4 x 8" and has a soil heating cable installed.  This is my "last ditch" tomato bed; if we have a repeat of last year's "non-summer" I'm going to install a couple of lights over the plants and turn this bed into a mini-greenhouse!  I have five tomato plants;  three indeterminate (Sweet 100's, Cherokee Purple and SunGold) in the back and two determinate (Siletz and Oregon Spring) in front.  Next there is a row of lettuces (Black Seeded Simpson and Red Sails) and three rows of carrots (Yaya).  There are borage plants in the corners and a row of onion plants (Ailsa Craig) on each end.

Bed #4 is 4 x 8" and grows mostly Asian vegetables and greens; Tatsoi ,Shungiku, Komatsuna, Turnip Hakurei, Radish Shunkyo, Green and Purple Mizuna, Cabbage Orange Mini and several types of Pac Choi ( I'll be telling you more about these vegetables and how they are used in my "Asian Vegetable" series of posts).  I have some Candy onions tucked into this bed here and there; they will be harvested early as spring onions for salads.   There is also cauliflower  (Snow Queen) growing in the four corners of the bed and a cabbage (Primero) on each end.  The copper wire coils you see on some of the plants in the photo are an attempt to discourage slugs; slugs love Asian vegetables almost as much as I do : (

Bed #5 is 4 x 8" and is home to broccoli (De Cicco), cauliflower (Cassius), cabbage (Primero) and has room on each end of the bed for onions (Copra) which are still in the greenhouse and will hopefully be ready to transplant soon.

As you might gather from what I have planted I am quite interested in Companion Planting, a way of creating what I call a "community" in my garden; one plant helping another " Live Long and Prosper" :)

Here are a few resources for information and lists of Companion Plants:

Companion Planting : The Natural Way To Gardening

Wikipedia : List of Companion Plants

Golden Harvest Organics : Companion Planting

This has gotten quite long and I still have a lot to show you...so I think I'll break the post into two parts and finish it on Thursday...

Enjoy!