The difference between theory and practice

As my regular readers (s) know, I am abandoning the “amateur” method of one spot, one crop whole season gardening for a more extensive succession based plan outlined in Jeavons’ How to grow more… book. The following series I shall dub “Theory and Practice,” will deal with my effort to mimic as exactly as possible the 100 sq ft garden Jevons offers as the introduction to the growbiointensive plan. Jeavons dictates that this plan should be adequate for areas with a 6 month growing season. Since I am not blessed with such the succession timings will be one of the items which will need to be accommodated. I will leave that subject for further installments.

First I intend to deal with the physical layout of the ideal as proposed in the book, and the modified plan I will require to accommodate the physical considerations of our small backyard space. Since copying the page from the book would be a bad thing from a legal perspective I will do my best to relay the gist of it.

His diagram outlines a 5x20 ft area with what are not named as such but I will call succession zones. The first zone, contains for the most part either long season or indeterminate producers like pumpkins, tomatoes, cucurbits, peppers, etc. As indicated in the planting schedule, this zone is not immediately planted, as many of the crops require warmer soil temperatures, and when combined with the expected days to maturity, the result is no time left for subsequent planting in theory. Given my previous experience with peppers and tomatoes, I see no reason why this sector will not be productive well into fall. By and large this is the only zone of the garden I have familiarity with.

The second succession zone is composed of two separate crops, first potatoes planted in spring and harvested at roughly 65 days, and second a main crop of corn to make the most use of the warmer longer days. I call this succession zone 2 (as in two crops).

The third zone seems to be a yo-yo of sorts, and the most interesting in my opinion. Starting with cold hardy salad vegetables and greens (if you have never had fresh peas in a salad you are missing out) and going to an early crop of corn immediately after, then returning back to greens, legumes, brassicas in the fall. This will be Zone 3 (as in 3 plantings)

As indicated before all this lies in a single 5x20 raised bed, certainly the most flexible layout but unfortunately not suited for my case. In planning I quickly found that I could not evenly divide the zones into two beds without splitting the crops and interfering with what I believe was an attempt by the author to ensure that even the border crops in each of the zones are somewhat complementary. Unfortunately the size constraint mandates that I make do with what I have been allotted, and therefore the first zone (long season, will be split into two identical segments, each having half the allotted number of plants. The original plans do not indicate equal size of the zones, so I will make the 3 zones of size equal to the largest zone, in this case zone 2 (the tomato -> corn zone). Since that means extra space in the other zone I will make the plantings larger rather than add additional types. Where appropriate I will try to estimate what the harvest totals would be using the original sized plantings. If you are curious click on the image of the backyard to see the two roughly trapezoidal bed areas, each of roughly 60 feet so as to allow for equal size in each zone.

In the next part I'll go over the schedule and variety of plantings.