Follow a family on a journey towards self sufficiency. Is it possible for a suburban family with no gardening background to produce 80% of their own fruit and veg?
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Forced to plant in succession
Look what those darling chickens have forced me to do... plant in succession. Because of the chicken tractor slowly making its way around the garden we have only ever had one garden bed available to be planted into at any one time. As a result this has forced us to not plant all our broccoli say in one bed, but to rather fill a bed with a bit of everything. Every 2 weeks the tractor moved on and we got to fill another bed. This way we have ended up with a succession of plants, all maturing at different times that should hopefully provide us with a steady flow of produce.
Mid March, this bed was the first to be planted out, and majority of the broccoli and celery have already been harvested, along with many green leafies. Beneath the soursobs are root vegetables that I hope are doing ok.
Two weeks later this bed was planted out, and the broccoli and celery in this bed have just become ready for the picking, bang on two weeks later. I am curious to see how the self sown sunflowers go. Don’t they realise it’s winter?
The broccoli and celery in this bed still have a couple of weeks to go.
This is the most recently planted bed, and as you can see more broccoli and celery, among others, just starting out.
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Lovely post, Jason! It's so nice to see the similarities and differences in our gardens, especially since we're both following Linda's plan. Our big difference is that we don't rotate the chooks nearly as quickly - we give them 4 - 6 weeks on each bed, which suits our planting regime a bit better, as we don't much time to spend on the garden at the moment. We also fork out for mulch rather than making our own - again, it's a time constraint thing - and lately we've been using sugar cane mulch which we find good to work with.
ReplyDeleteYour crops are doing better than ours - growth has slowed down quite a lot now that it's colder, but having said that, our brocs are just starting to form tiny heads! Cos lettuces are doing well, we've just planted more leafy greens, and peas are just starting to pod.
Hope your root veg are all doing well - we've only got potatoes and celeriac planted so far..
My friend Debbie rotates the chooks even slower, a few months on each bed. I am trying to follow Linda's advise as closely as I can and so far I think it is paying off.
DeleteI wish my peas were just starting to pod :-(
Wow your garden is looking great.
ReplyDeleteWhen I have my own place I hope to use a similar design. After finding a copy of Linda's book in an op-shop it has provided so much inspiration and new ideas.
I too found it a very inspiring book, gets you thinking and feeling very positive that you too can be successful with growing your own. I hope your own garden patch comes along soon.
DeleteThere is a strong argument for mixing up the veg varieties too. Well done, I am not very good at succession.
ReplyDeleteYes there is and I intend talking about that in another post. I was never good at succession planting either, as mentioned I have been forced into it because of the system I am following.
DeleteMark here Jason, from purple pear. The garden is looking great - well done. We choose to plant much closer, with close planting of asian greens such as tatsoi and bokchoi which are harvested well before the brocolli needs the space. Lettuce can fill the same niche, with harvest of the whole plant rather than plucking the leaves, which is what we do with plantings close to the edge.
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