My partner and I will be getting involved with our first community garden this year (with a number of policies to ensure safe social distancing, of course). Having never really done gardening before, we've been doing a lot of research about recommended planting times in our area, companion planting, and trellising vining plants. To that end, we've come up with a layout that we think makes sense and will reach a local maxima (if not the best possible) for our garden. We've run into a bit of an issue where we're finding it hard to layout our garden without either
- Removing a companion plant from its friendly neighbors, OR
- Putting two adjacent plants that don't play well together
We aren't sure how significant companion plants actually are (or if some companions are more "helpful" than others), so we thought we would reach out. Our tentative garden layout(s) are below - we have two 10x10 plots that will likely be near each other but not adjacent. The layout was made in Excel; each cell represents a 1x1 sq ft region. We tried to space things out as much as we thought was necessary based on recommendations online (they are numerous, so I won't link them all here), but we also found lots of images of garden plots much more tightly grouped that seemed to be doing well, so maybe that would make it easier on us as well.
We are not especially concerned (nor are we able to be) about year-to-year rotation; the entire community garden is plowed over and the soil spread every year, and members do not get the same plot per year.
Any tips on how to best approach and layout the garden would be greatly appreciated! In the plots below, "top" == "North" (to avoid the trellised plants stealing too much sun).
The plants we definitely want to have are:
- Cucumber
- Zucchini
- Snap Peas
- Sweet Potatoes
- Rosemary
- Green Beans
- Potatoes
- Tomatoes
- Basil
- Celery
- Carrots
Other additions on there are ones that we're fans of, and that seem like they would do well in the garden. If there are better/more appropriate plants for companion planting that would also be helpful information.
Text-version of the plots:
First Plot:
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| | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | |
| | Chard | Chard | Chard | Chard | Lettuce | Lettuce | Lettuce | Lettuce | |
| | | | | | | | | | |
| | Celery | Celery | Celery | Celery | Carrots | Carrots | Carrots | Carrots | |
| | | | | | | | | | |
| | Onion | Onion | Onion | Onion | Garlic | Garlic | Garlic | Garlic | |
| | | | | | | | | | |
| | Basil | Tomatoes | Basil | Tomatoes | Basil | Tomatoes | Basil | Tomatoes | |
| | | | | | | | | | |
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Second Plot:
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| | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | |
| | Cucumber | Cucumber | Cucumber | Cucumber | Zucchini | Zucchini | Zucchini | Zucchini | |
| | | | | | | | | | |
| | Peas | Peas | Peas | Peas | S Potatoes | S Potatoes | S Potatoes | S Potatoes | |
| | | | | | | | | | |
| | Rosemary | Beans | Rosemary | Beans | Rosemary | Beans | Rosemary | Beans | |
| | | | | | | | | | |
| | Potatoes | Potatoes | Potatoes | Potatoes | Potatoes | Potatoes | Potatoes | Potatoes | |
| | | | | | | | | | |
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