Last year I put together a pretty comprehensive garden plan. It was designed as a multi-year system with crop rotation so that all the planning I would have to do from one year to the next would be to move everything up one row of beds. We tried using this system for 2009 with mostly good results. A lot of it worked really well, but a few things weren’t quite right. After some tinkering, we put together a revised garden plan.

Overview of Changes

• Crops being removed: Brassiscas (cabbage and broccoli) and corn. The brassiscas currently take up one whole row in the rotation so this leaves one row free. The corn was interplanted with squash so their space will just go to more squash.
• Crops being added: Beets. We’ve been warned that several other people at our community garden have been unable to grow beets due to disease. We love pickled beets, so we decided to plant a few and see how it goes. We found an heirloom variety (~1819) that we are going to try in the hopes that it will be hardier. These will get mixed in with the onions and carrots.
• Changes to the rotation: We’re taking one row out of rotation (the one freed by removing the brassiscas). One bed will be a much-needed compost pile and one bed will be the new home of the strawberries and chives.
• Changes to companion planting: We originally had one row (two beds) with garlic and melons on trellises at the north end of the bed. We’re splitting these two crops so each has a dedicated bed. The melons never took to the trellises and different planting/harvesting times led to root disturbances. Additionally, we find ourselves needing less garlic since we selected strong varieties; we now typically only use double the garlic called for in a recipe instead of triple or quadruple.

Revised Garden Plan
For convenience sake, I’m summarizing the new plan here. For rationale behind the rotation order and companion plantings see the old garden plan.
Layout: Currently we have two 15′×20′ garden plots in our community garden. They’re located across the aisle from each other – one on the north side, one on the south side (see pic). Each plot is divided into 4 rows with each row having two beds – one on each side of a central path. The northern-most and southern-most rows of the north plot won’t be in rotation. The northern-most row is planted in raspberries and blackberries and the southern-most row will soon be home to strawberries and compost. This leaves 6 rows in rotation.
Rotation: There are 6 “families” of plants that are rotated through the beds. Each year the families move one bed to the north. The families are sorted based on companionship – plants that are beneficial to each other are grouped together and in some cases plants that require similar cultivation are grouped together for convenience. In general plants are grouped by botanical family and we have tried to include some beneficial herbs or flowers in each bed – to attract beneficial insects and deter pests and diseases. The families are:

• A – Peas and greens (lettuce, spinach, kale, chard…)
• B – Solanacae family plants: tomatoes, peppers, eggplant. Beneficials: marigold, basil, bee balm.
• C – Garlic and melons. Beneficials: sunflowers (in melon bed) and nasturtiums.
• D – Squash (including summer, winter, zucchini, and cucumber) and radishes. Beneficials: borage and nasturtiums.
• E – Beans, potatoes, and leeks. Beneficials: marigold and/or rosemary.
• F – Onions and root crops (carrots and beets). Beneficials: rosemary and/or sage.
  Given where things were last year, we’re starting the rotation with family A in northern-most row of the rotation (just south of the raspberries and blackberries at the far north of the north plot).

Garden plan of the Future
Probably we’ll tinker with this some more next year, but in general I think the overall design is going to work. When we eventually move and get out “forever garden” we’ll likely adopt some variant of this plan with a few tweaks. One idea we really liked but didn’t include in the current plan was to have a fallow row in the rotation devoted to compost. This would precede the most resource-hungry crops like corn or tomatoes in the rotation so they would have extra-specially rich soil. It would also mean that every so often each bed or set of beds would get a break and a serious nutrient boost. Since I’ll be graduating in a year or two we wouldn’t see the benefits in our current garden and we weren’t willing to take a whole row out of rotation in our current space.