How much can I put in in a 20 ft w X 30ft L garden??

[TKD_Kid2]

Ok I staked out my garden today and I measured it out and it came to 20 ft width by 30 ft length.

Here is what I got so far and there all Ferry Morse products

Herbs:

Catnip

Cilantro

Dill

Oregano

Thyme

Rosemary

Chamomile

-------------------------

Little Green Lettuce

Mr. Big Peas

Kitchen King Garden Bean

Golden Sweet Hybrid Onion

Early and Often Hybrid Tomato

Lemon Lime Mix Basil

Big Italy Parsley

Sweet Treat Hybrid Carrots

Halloween Mix Pumpkins

[ejagno]

TKD;

The first thing to do is grow the things that you and your family will in fact eat. Secondly, on every package of seeds it gives you the planting time, spacing and harvesting information. Given the size of your garden you can have 18" pathways between each row which needs to uniformly be at least 2' apart for most plants such as tomatoes, beans, okra....... You can get approximately 9 rows in the 20' width with each being about 26' long which allows for pathways on each side. Get some graph paper and draw the plot out. Now read up on which plants grown well together and compliment one another and which ones detest one another (companion planting). Now decide what you want grown together and figure out the plant spacing for each row and add it to your drawing. Most of your herbs can be interplanted between main crops so you don't actually lose any space and it help to keep weeds down. No one can tell you how much because we don't have the specific information for each crop you've selected. This is something you'll have to do your homework on. It's very easy although takes a good afternoon to plan it all out along with planting times. All of this can be found on the internet as well as your local cooperative extention service will usually have the best plant types for your area as well as the recommended planting dates. Utilize it and it will pay off. Good luck!

[RightWinger]

Just a suggestion... instead of using the hybred seeds, you might want to give some thought to using "heirloom" seeds. With those, you can save the seeds and use them probably for the rest of your life.

The hybred seeds, will usually give you bigger and prettier produce, but normally can only planted once and thats it. Often their seeds are sterile.

There are many places to find heirloom seeds, here is one just to give you 'food for thought' http://www.heirloomseeds.com/

[Belle]

Rather than putting perennials in your garden (the herbs) can you find another place to plant them? That would free up more space for annuals, make it easier to rotate your crops, and make preparing your garden easier next year. Also, you might want to rethink the pumpkins. They take up a lot of space, with less return than many other vegetables. For instance, if you like summer squash (there are many kinds - scallops are my favorite), you could plant a LOT of those in the place of just one pumpkin vine.

[Beaners]

Rather than putting perennials in your garden (the herbs) can you find another place to plant them? That would free up more space for annuals, make it easier to rotate your crops, and make preparing your garden easier next year. Also, you might want to rethink the pumpkins. They take up a lot of space, with less return than many other vegetables. For instance, if you like summer squash (there are many kinds - scallops are my favorite), you could plant a LOT of those in the place of just one pumpkin vine.

I was thinking the same exact thing about the herbs! Most herbs also do well in containers, so if the current location is all you can dig up, you can still stick some pots of herbs here and there in the yard. We are putting in a raised bed for our herbs a little closer to the back door than the main garden. I also second the recommendation for summer squashes. Zucchini is the classic over-producer. :)

I don't see it on your list, but I would probably avoid planting corn if I were you. It doesn't produce hardly anything for the space it takes up. I see you already have bush beans, I prefer pole beans if I have the option because they seem to give longer and larger yields. If you like radishes, plant some of them. They are very fast and very early in the season. They can be interplanted with a lot of other things, and harvested before you need the space for the other crop. I would plant peppers, if you eat them. They tend to be very expensive at the store. How about cucumbers? You can trellis them to take up less space.

What else do you like to eat?

Kayleigh

[Indigo]

You can also trellis melons. Anything that is a vine. The melons would need support once they started to get bigger.

I once had a trellis with melons (cantaloupe). Family in the hospital was keeping me from getting their little melon hammocks tied on to the trellis so I asked a friend to zip over and do it for me.

I came home...and just stared at my 12 feet of fence that I had trained the melons to grow on. She had put up "melon hammocks" alright. But she ignored the ones I had made and left on the kitchen table.

Instead, each melon was neatly tucked into a bra. I kid you not. I about died laughing.

Yeah, I got a few strange looks from delivery truck drivers. And the postman. People who stopped over would ask, "Now, is that a double D mellon ya got growin' there? Or one of those hybrid Bali varieties?"

Indigo

[joyce1954]

Ok I staked out my garden today and I measured it out and it came to 20 ft width by 30 ft length.

Here is what I got so far and there all Ferry Morse products

Herbs:

Catnip

Cilantro

Dill

Oregano

Thyme

Rosemary

Chamomile

-------------------------

Little Green Lettuce

Mr. Big Peas

Kitchen King Garden Bean

Golden Sweet Hybrid Onion

Early and Often Hybrid Tomato

Lemon Lime Mix Basil

Big Italy Parsley

Sweet Treat Hybrid Carrots

Halloween Mix Pumpkins

You have quite a few herbs in there. Herb garden should be separate from the regular garden as the perinials don't want to be dug up with the tiller on a regular basis. And the Catnip is a member of the mint family (mint unless contained is like a plague - spreads and dominates) the chamomile has the same potential to conquer it's area too. I have a 30' x 35' garden that is strictly for veggies. I get enough from that to feed me and my husband for a year or better and that is after giving generously to our two sons' little families. I suppose if I took a little more time in the planning of it I could get more produce. But I figure that I get enough to keep me busy most of the summer with tending and most of the fall with putting it all up. I think you might want to think about more foods like corn, beans and spuds. You know stuff to fill an empty belly. And think about double crops too. Like Beets - you get the root and the greens (tasty as spinach!)

[Tesla'sMom]

The places I've seen of Indiana have been lovely and flat- gardener's paradise!

I didn't see it mentioned yet, so I'll toss this idea out. For your tomatoes, cabbage, broccoli, peppers, get a couple of seed starting trays (the plastic trays with little compartments and get these things started now in your house. Keep the trays near a window that's sunny and warm, or keep them under a fluorescent light about 12 hours a day. There's lots of resources for indoor gardening on the web too.

Sssshhh, don't tell anybody but sometimes I buy plants in the starter pots from the garden center. The big minus with these is sometimes you bring garden pests home with you- like tomato worms. But if you have a "crop failure" and your seedlings don't develop, the garden center is your friend!

Don't get discouraged the first time out. You'll have to learn what grows well in your region. I've also found my successes vary from year to year. Last year, my peppers went bust, but we had an avalanche of cucumbers- we've got pickles to last through this year! The potatoes were great too.

[clhend]

Thank you so much for the laugh.

[greensman]

if you really want to make the most of your space check out the links for square foot gardening in the tiller thread. you might be surprised how much you can pack in a small space.

[Freeholder]

if you really want to make the most of your space check out the links for square foot gardening in the tiller thread. you might be surprised how much you can pack in a small space.

I agree -- if you garden in rows, that's a mighty small space; if you use beds, you can grow a LOT in that much ground. But you'll have to have a lot of manure/compost/fertilizer if you use the square-foot-gardening method, as the plants are spaced closer together.

Indigo, that was FUNNY! But whose bras did she use?!? Were they old ones from the thrift shop, or? Because bras are so expensive that I can't imagine using them for melon hammocks!

Kathleen

[ovendoctor]

we are limited on space so the tomatoes go into climbers made out of concrete wire 6''x6''

can put 4 plants in a hill with the wire around them

used a grape arbor last year worked ok

ether way get the plants off the ground don't waste the root space