Crop Rotations and Fruit Plantings

With spring rapidly approaching it's time to start getting things ready for planting the new summer crop for 2013/14. With all the raised beds now built and ready to go, this will be the first summer season of full produce production potential. We also finished planting some of the last fruit trees around the back fence that we have room for, that being one dwarf avocado tree and a second dwarf peach to add to the one we already have planted that we received as a wedding present last season. I also stumbled across a very interesting program that lets you map out your garden plot, to keep yourself organized when it comes to crop rotations, plant spacings, etc. I've been having far too much fun playing around with it the last couple days and this is what I've come up with for what I'll be planting for this upcoming spring/summer season. I haven't had enough time to figure out all the cool tricks but so far find it useful just to keep me on track of what I need to plant where and how many for the size of the beds.

So that's what the gardens look like on paper... I thought I'd take a few pictures to show what it looks like in reality.

Bed 1 -Two varieties of lettuce and two rows of carrots
Bed 2 - Snow peas, broad beans and sugar snap peas
Bed 3 - The remaining kohl rabi, broccoli, cabbage and kale. Most of it will be pulled out and used shortly to make way for the new spring crops.
Bed 4 - Just planted zucchini, pickling cucumbers and pumpkin yesterday.
Bed 5 - This bed is still going quite strong from last year, most likely will keep the rainbow chard and fennel in until it stops producing, and plant the remainder of the bed with the new crops.
Bed 6 - Parsley and chives growing well, so again will plant around them with new season crops
Bed 7 - Onions and garlic bed growing well. Will look forward to tasting our first crop of both!
Bed 8 & 9 - Potatoes are growing insanely well. Dave is super excited to try his first home grown crop as he's been involved with these every step of the way. He's so cute when he gardens. :)

Bed 1

Bed 2

Bed 3

Bed 4

Bed 5

Bed 6

Bed 7

Beds 8 & 9

Front yard finishing touches

This Easter long weekend gave us the chance to get a big chunk done on finishing the front yard off once and for all. This included leveling and staking in the final two raised beds and getting two loads of soil from Good Life Soil Co. in Midvale. Then it was onto filling the two beds and taking a load of green waste to the tip in the hopes to get some free mulch to spread in between the beds, but on inspection we didn't like the look of it, so it was back to Good Life to look at what they had, and they recommended some jarrah sawdust, which was actually perfect as it matches the raised beds, looks nice and natural and feels great underfoot, and keeps me from getting too messy while gardening. Plus it just makes the whole front yard look so much better! We sadly ran out of time and material on the weekend so we are going to finish it off this weekend coming, but here are some pics of what we got done so far. :)

Before starting out, beds placed, but not leveled or staked

After staking the bed filling it with newspaper and then weedmat

Filled with soil, Dave showing off his handywork

Weedmat down between the beds, right before starting to add the jarrah sawdust

After some of the sawdust had been put down

How far we got on the weekend, sawdust between the three beds and along the flower bed