Our Raised Bed Vegetable Garden Plan

My boys and I have finished building a raised bed vegetable garden, so today we finished our our raised bed vegetable garden plan, as well as placing the first plants.  This is a great approach to no till gardening, so in theory its an easier way to get fresh vegetables.  My oldest son and I had quite the debate about how many plants to place, as well as where and when they should be put out.  I think I won that argument – but you can never be too sure with a 10-year old boy…

Our Raised Bed Vegetable Garden Plan

The hope behind this little project is to be an exercise in sustainable living and providing some fresh food for the family.  In theory, its healthier and I know its more delicious.  As I mentioned before, we’ve tried this in the past and not really given it much attention.  Now, with the bed and amended soil, hopefully we’ll stay committed to this for the entire season.

You can take a look at how this plan lays out.  We’re intending to keep the taller plants placed behind the shorter plants, at least early in the season.  As the summer heats up, we may try rotating heat sensitive plants so they’re behind the taller plants so they’ll provide shade.  It gets hot enough here that lettuce, kale, and broccoli grow poorly during mid-summer.

Each square is one square foot, so our raised bed vegetable garden bed is large enough that we’ll need stepping stones to tend it properly.  To avoid compressing the soil, we’ll get some stones and set them in place.  In retrospect, we may have been better to build 16-square foot beds, but it’s too late now…

The big decision here is regarding how many plants that can be set per square foot.  My Square Foot Garden suggests the following number of plants per square foot for the following items we’ll likely plant:

• Asparagus = 1
• Beans = 8
• Broccoli = 1
• Cabbage = 1
• Cauliflower = 1
• Corn = 4
• Cucumbers = 2
• Lettuce = 4
• Peppers = 1
• Swiss chard = 4
• Cantaloupe = One plant per 2 square feet
• Pumpkins = 2
• Summer Squash = 9
• Bush tomatoes = One plant per 6 square feet
• Vine Tomatoes = 1
• Watermelon = One plant per 2 square feet
• Zucchini =  One Plant per 9 square feet

We started today by setting the following:

• A8 – Four lettuce shoots
• B1, C1, D1, B2, C2, D2 – One sweet pepper shoot each
• D1 – Four corn starts
• B7, B8, C7, C8 – Four broccoli starts
• H5 – Two watermelon starts
• H8, Two canteloupe starts

We’ve been using one of the Tabletop Jiffy Professional Greenhouses (Amazon) to get our seeds started, and I’ve got to admit that its done a great job at getting the seeds to sprout.  I guess we’ll see how the shoots fare when placed outdoors.  We spent 3 days letting them “harden” as we tried to get them adjusted to the temperature swings.

I’m going to try to convince the wife and kids to start another round of shoots, and you may notice that beans (pole beans) and corn are listed together.  Our raised garden plan is to try taking advantage of “intercropping” as well, so we’ll plan to use the corn stalks as support for the beans.  We’ll see how it works out.

We plan to set another round of plants every 2-3 weeks in the hopes of having fresh vegetables as they mature throughout the season.  It’ll take some work and documentation, but it should be fun.  The theory is to employ organic pest control in this vegetable garden as well.