Organizing the Garden Chaos

In 2011, I had an organized garden for the first time. I had planned in advance where things would go, I had adequate walkways, I felt good about what I had accomplished. But as I was planting this year's garden, I looked back at old photos and realized I was wrong!

Take a look at the rat hole I created:

What a gross spectacle. I should never have crowded my blueberries with nitrogen stealing plants. And knowing what I do now about lettuce bolting and 1 itty bitty seed becoming a whole head of lettuce, I am planting things much more judiciously. My other beds were crowded but still underutilized.

So...hopefully learning from the past, I am attempting a clean, mess-free garden this year - while still trying to pack in as many vegetables as possible, of course.

Here is what my garden looked like yesterday.

 Everything has been planted. Early!!!!!!!!! But I have plans in case the frost decides to return....

Things always look sparse in the beginning but everything is growing and will soon be quite green. This year I planned everything with a ruler and pencil. Then I measured while I planted. Novel idea, right?

This garden contains tomatoes (black krim, brandwine, roma, sweet 100 cherry, better boy, and big boy), radishes, beets, swiss chard (white/green and rainbow), spinach, 2 types of leaf lettuce, cauliflower, carrots, green beans, snap peas, zucchini, buttercup squash, cucumbers, zucchini, leeks, blueberries (chippewa, northland, northsky and northblue), asparagus, marigolds, and basil!  Yes, it's going to get a lot greener, bushier, and messier(!#@!) than this.

Chives, cilantro, more basil, thyme, oregano, strawberries, more asparagus, more raspberries (including summer red latham, black, purple and fall gold) are all planted in other areas.

Check out how awesome the red heritage raspberries look!!!

 In our garden, this should be a good year for red and black raspberries, another starter year on asparagus, golden and purple raspberries, a fantastic tomato year (crossing fingers), a low strawberry year, an average blueberry year, and hopefully a good year for all the other vegetables. You can't win 'em all.

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