Change is afoot.
Finally, after months of thinking about it, I have finally implemented change. I’ve spent long enough second-guessing my logic, but there comes a time when you just have to take the plunge. And sometimes you’re pushed. This time it was my garlic that pushed me. I normally start it in April, so it has an opportunity to get big enough to beat the rust that strikes anytime from midwinter, or sometimes earlier. But then it becomes ready for harvest while I’m away in November. So, I have it in my notes to move the garlic planting to May. Which I did, although a little later than I would have liked due to the post-travel weeds and I’m hoping the harvest window doesn’t fall during the Christmas holidays.
Ordinarily I would have just filled the next bed in the crop rotation cycle that has worked so well for me for many, many seasons, with loads of perfectly spaced garlic bulbs. However, this time I’ve implemented change and done things differently due to the garlic rust, as well as the terrible time I’ve had with my tomatoes. I almost stopped growing tomatoes altogether.
After yet another dreadful, pest and disease ridden season, I took a critical look at the garden. I realised in my desire for order and control I had created a series of monocultures where a pest would celebrate the veritable feast before it and invite friends and family to join it as they worked their way through my plants standing cheek by jowl in soldierly rows. Each season it was getting worse and caused great despair as I saw other gardeners with magnificent hauls, while my plants were barely hanging in there. I know you’re not supposed to compare, but even with an objective eye I could see some of my plants weren’t doing as well as they should have been.
It was Hubby the Un-Gardener’s idea to mix things up that led to what seemed like a possible solution. But I couldn’t bring myself to plant things willy nilly, as it would seem I’m a bit of a control freak in the garden (but strangely not in the house), and still wanted to maintain a degree of control and order. And I still wanted to practice crop rotation to ensure I was doing what I could to reduce risks and prevent soil related problems. So, after a really long think about the garden and how I wanted it to work I came up with a system loosely based on Square Foot Gardening.
My gardens are a metre wide and so it was easy enough to come up with a metric equivalent. Although I’m not using the specialist soil mix that is recommended for the technique, which also means the plant spaces won’t benefit from being that little bit closer than normal because of the tried and trusted methods used with Square Foot Gardening. I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel, but I have the soil that I have and as my problems are with pest and disease, putting plants closer together isn’t exactly ideal. If anything, I need things to be a little further apart, and we’re supposed to be downsizing to suit our empty nest lifestyle so that works as well.
The garden has been divided into one-metre squares and the crops that ordinarily grow together have been stretched across garden. The edible garden had already been divided into three sectors with individual crop rotations so the different groups could have enough time between occupations to allow the soil to recover from their presence. So, I kept the occupants the same but stretched them across the garden so there was no more than one square metre of each in each bed.
Crop rotation is such a nightmare to sort out, because you need to consider if the previous occupants will be gone by the time the new plants need to go in. As well as looking at other factors like – are there beneficial relationships? Or maybe they shouldn’t be in close proximity – not to mention shading and sprawling.
It was more complicated than a sudoku to figure out. The first sector was easy enough; as there were five, five-metre beds so dividing them into five one-metre sections meant everyone was in the same bed just in a spot that was left one and up one from the one before. However, the other two sectors each had six four-metre beds and some already had mixed crops loosely gathered together as ‘leafy greens’ or ‘root crops’ etc. In the attempted downsizing I’d already halved some of them to have zucchini at one end and melons at the other whereas in previous years they’d excessively had their own. So, I ended up with a multitude of categories that needed their own one-metre square, with their own personal preferences about who they wanted to sit next to.
Finally, I thought I’d figured it out and it looked good on paper so off I went to mark the beds to plant my garlic, only to find carrots in one of their spots. So, it was back to the drawing board for another reshuffle, and I think I have it this time and my garlic was planted across four different garden beds with 20 cloves in each. Which should give them plenty of airflow and maybe the rust won’t be able find them… who knows… but I can only but try.
Come again soon – the onions go in next.
Sarah the Gardener : o)