The Plan (optimized using Microsoft Paint)
I’m not great with planning. I’m more of a “wing-it-and-see-what-happens” type of character. But, since I do tend to research my fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants ideas, I know that every person who has ever gardened and written about it recommends that you plan. As such, I reluctantly started out with an empty piece of graph paper, sketched in my front yard with some high-level ideas, and develop it as I go. As I dig and plant and fence in, I figure out things that don’t look very good or that are not working, and planting and changing things around.
And I mess up a lot. For example, early this spring I planted the asparagus rhizomes at the front of my raised bed – in front of my strawberries. Go ahead, laugh. Get it out. I’ll wait…
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…Okay. Now of course, after the fact, I know that asparagus can get pretty tall, and so they will inevitably shade out my strawberries where they are. But I don’t even remember exactly where I put the rhizomes, so I’m going to wait until they start showing up above the soil before I relocate them. That will be fun.
Since the yard is southern facing, and in the evening my neighbors monstrosity of a tree (I jest! …sorta) casts a ginormous shadow over my lawn, it’s important that the crops won’t shade each other out during the first half of the day. So, my plan is to put the shorter plants on each side of the front lawn closer to the east, and the taller plants towards the west. I also am staggering the taller plants.
I’ve moving my Jesus blueberry bushes from my backyard to my front yard so they get more sun. Also, I’m hoping to make the soil more amenable to their acid-loving ways. I am partly thinking I should build a raised bed for them. We will see.
