Rural/Farm Life

Sorry about taking so long to get back to this. With babysitting the grand kids, doing projects around the homes and being just plain tired, I had limited time to measure, think about this, measure again, think some more, observe how much sun areas of the lawn get, think while pacing, to work on this.

To maximize space, I'd go with the square foot gardening system and use succession planting where I could.

There is an old apple tree on the property that produces an abundant crop of long lasting fruit. One year I stored a bunch of apples in the basement and I was eating apples well past Christmas. This tree is located on the south side of the property and about halfway from the main street to the back alley. The back alley is on the west end. Opposite of the apple tree is a lilac bush where I once had a compost bin made of pallets. I would put another bin there as the lilac bush does a good job of hiding it.

Because of the buildings and trees, there are just a few areas that get at least 6 hours of direct sunlight but I don't have any that gets 8. This isn't a problem for plants that don't need full sun such as beets, carrots, peas, radishes and such but is for crops such as tomatoes and cucumbers.

Here below are the number and sizes of plots I can have:

5) 3'X10'
1) 3'X20'
1) 1'X40'
1) 3'X5' perennial bed for horseradish
1) 1'x24' South side of garage to be used for vine crops
1) 1'X26' West side of house to be used for vine crops

Total square footage is 315'. Assuming my wife stays here with me, this ought to be adequate for the two of us. Providing fresh eating during the summer with an emphasis on canning or freezing for the winter.

Here is a list of crops I could plant:

cabbage (to be made into sauerkraut) - 18' spacing between plants
radishes - 16 plants per square foot
carrots - 16 plants per square foot
beets - 9 plants per square foot
bush beans - 9 plants per square foot
pole beans - 8 plants per square foot
sugar snap peas - 8 plants per square foot
edamame soybeans - 16 plants per square foot
horseradish - 1 plant per square foot in the 3'X5' perennial bed
garlic - 4 or 9 plants per square foot
walking onions - 16 plants per square in a perennial bed

As for tomato and cucumber plants, I could try them on the south side of the garage and the west side of the house. If they do well, that'd be great.

I live in Zone 5a so I ought to be able to succession plant some variety's such as plant beets early in the year, harvest an then plant carrots later in the same plots for a fall harvest. And I should be able to get 2 crops of sugar snap peas. I could plant radishes early in the spring, harvest, and then plant bush beans or soybeans and then after harvesting those, plant radishes again.