Periodically throughout the growing season, I want to take some time to document our small homestead garden and it’s layout. As I write this, we are in the middle of May.
Right now, our garden consists of 3 in ground rows that measure 30 inches by 25 feet, 2 raised garden beds that are 2 feet by 4 feet, 2 raised beds that are about 4 feet by 10 feet, and some other areas of scattered perennials like berry bushes. Here are some photos of our garden right now:
We are at that point in the season where it feels like everything needs to happen at once. We do still have quite a bit of planting to do, but it should be finishing up within the next 2 weeks. Our biggest task yet is planting all of the tomatoes and getting support and protection up. This means things like tellises, arches, hoops, etc.
How to Plan a Homestead Garden
I want to share some of the tools that I used when planning my garden for the first time. This was our first season at this house and on this land, so it felt like there was a lot of planning to do this year.
First, I started by making a list of all of the things I wanted to grow this season. That ended up being about 25 different crops, for reference. If just starting out, consider the following concepts when choosing crops:
- Ease of Growing
- Amount You Currently Eat
- Your Lifestyle
- Your Climate- Check your USDA Grow Zone here!
I also think that generally when people start gardens, they go small. Don’t be afraid to try a variety of things the first few years just to see what works and what doesn’t. If you spent a few dollars on some seeds or a start and it doesn’t produce anything but you learned something, I think that’s a win. Trying and failing is a great way to figure out your needs and abilities.
Once I knew what my goals were, I used an awesome tool called Seedtime to make a general calendar of events. The best part about this website is that once you enter your ZIP code (for your USDA grow zone) and the crop, it gives you an optimized timeline for seeding, transplanting, harvesting, and more. It will even tell you if that crop typically performs better being direct seeded or started indoors and then transplanted. This is my first year relying on the recommendations from Seedtime for timing, so I will have to come back and update my findings on it’s accuracy.
This gave me a general idea about what needed to get done when. So far, I have generally been following it. At this point I would definitely recommend it, at least to get started and visualize tasks that need to get done in the garden.
Choosing your Homestead Garden Layout
Right after we moved into our house, we started discussing how we wanted the layout of our homestead and garden to be.
To read about some of the important factors that we considered when planning our layout, check out my previous post on planning your homestead garden layout.
We ended up doing onions, carrots, spinach, radishes, asparagus, green beans, cucumbers, and tomatoes in the in ground beds. Lettuce, bell peppers, jalapenos, herbs, potatoes, and strawberries are in different types of raised beds. We also dedicated an area for vine bearing crops like watermelons, zucchini, pumpkins, honeydew melons, and winter squash. The corn is also in this section so that we could plant it in the proper amount of rows that it needed to be successful. Lastly, we have an area for fruit bushes. This is just one example of how to group crops together. Interplanting crops that work well together can increase yield, improve soil health, and help crowd out competitors. Here is a great post explaining some of the basics of interplanting.
When laying out your homestead garden, you may also want to consider succession planting. This is when you plant or seed crops in a strategic way to increase yield and get the most out of a growing season. One way is to seed a crop several times every couple weeks so that your harvest is steady. You can also do this with different crops by planting a new crop immediately after the harvest of one crop. This can be done in conjunction with seasonal shifts for things like cool weather crops. Read more about succession planting here.
