It’s spring! It’s summer! It’s garden season, which is the best season. I’m continuing my annual habit of massively over-planting in my relatively small garden, but it’s worked out in the past so I’m going to keep doing it this way. At a glance, things are not in rows, it might seem like a raccoon has planned this garden, but there’s a method to the madness.
Since the space is small, to try to maximize crops but also minimize pests, I started planting in a companion planting “grid” a few year ago and aside from one spring where slugs just absolutely devastated all of the spring plants, I really haven’t had any trouble with pests other than a snacky squirrel, and I don’t spray or treat anything.
Here’s the general layout:
I have run out of space so there are 2 buckets on here with a purple tomato I started from seed(!) and some spaghetti squash that I saved the seeds from last year and the starts are so far great! I’m transplanting into the bucket later this week.
This year I did almost everything from seed except for the tomatillo, red heirloom tomato, and the peppers on the deck (more on this later)
On the right side fence edge I have a raspberry grove, it gets TALL, so it kind of shades the edge of that right garden bed, so I usually plant most of my spring or overwinter crop over there as it has a chance to really get started before the raspberries fill in, and then once they are full (now) it provides some shade so that the more heat sensitive crops don’t burn.
The left hand large garden bed is my main summer crop area. I have a giant echinacea that is a perennial that provides pollinators with plenty of flowers, and I try to intersperse as many small companion flowers as possible like nasturtiums for ground cover, calendula for pollinators, marigolds etc. Everything in all of the garden beds are edible plants, so if I’m planting companions I make sure they’re also edible flowers. The marigolds keep pests off of the tomatoes, and I underplant basil between tomato plants so it helps with their growth but also is protected from too much direct sun.
This is the smaller front bed, with tomatoes, tomatillos, basil, cucumbers, nasturtium, marigolds, spinach, calendula and lettuces.
This is the small herb planter, currently the sage and winter savory that both overwintered are taking over a bit, but I recently planted in a new oregano, parsley, and rosemary. The dill was doing great a few weeks ago but seems to either have gotten sunburned, or some sort of animal has chomped it.
Main garden bed from the fence side, the chives are thriving, and I have high hopes that the cucamelons really take off now that it’s sunnier. They’re a new crop for me this year, I’ve been trying to get seeds every year for one new unique variety that we wouldn’t get to eat otherwise. Last year I did pineapple tomatillos over here, and they were tiny and cute and little garden snacks, but were smaller than I was expecting, not quite enough to make a salsa.
Raspberry grove, and it’s about to fruit so it’s huge and heavy and is leaning over this garden bed a bit.
Garden overflow! These are the peppers, our deck gets really really hot in the summer and peppers really do much better in pots up here next to the house than out in the garden. I got these all as starts as I don’t have a way to start them early enough here to get them going by spring. I think this is a jalapeno, bell pepper, mini bell, and anaheim. There’s also a blueberry bush in the pot behind and a lettuce/salad planter that had lettuce, spinach and arugula.
Small but great harvest from earlier this week, snap peas, garlic scapes, rhubarb and lettuce. I made rhubarb jam with those stalks, it’s my favorite, it’s really tart, which pairs well with toast in the summer.
I have more seed starts going still, some cosmos, sunflowers, nasturtiums, a second planting of kale, the spaghetti squash and delicata squash (both planting out this week!) and some more basil and herbs to slot in in any available spot of dirt.
The garden feels full, but a few things will probably need to come out in the next few weeks like the radishes and lettuces, so it will make space for some of the plants that need more space to thrive.
Happy beginning of summer!