P+M Upstate Adventure: Planning the 2016 Garden – Check out our layout!

Remember I posted about the garden shivers on Monday?  That feeling you get when you’re so excited about the upcoming garden season, you shake from happiness?  Yeah. I got the garden shivers bad.  I’m so excited.. I just can’t hide it.. I’m about to lose my mind and plant way too much corn!

The garden season is always exciting, but this year it has a new excitement to it as it has so many unknowns.  As many of you know, Matthew and I will be starting a larger garden Upstate this year, on our new land project.   To go from growing on our rooftop in Brooklyn to growing in the real ground Upstate, there’s going to be changes and surprises.   To begin with, our garden season is going to get shorter.  Usually we’d start planting our seeds indoors in January but we won’t be planting them until next week as the last day of frost is May 31st in our new zone of 5A.  (by the way, I found this really helpful site that lists growing seasons by zone).  From there, the garden season lasts “safely” until the last freeze free date which is October 1st.  We’ll try extending it as long as we can!   The big change here is size.  Our garden just got a whole lot bigger with the land.   That means we can grow more vegetables and try new things.  It also means figuring out what can grow best in this zone, along with our rocky clay soil (I’m getting a soil test done right now – will post about results!).    I’m also ready for heart break.  There’s going to be heart break.  Animals.  Weather.  Diseases.   A gardener has to be prepared for a few garden tears.  But a gardener also has to dream big in my opinion.  That makes it so much more fun and exciting. 🙂

Knowing that we have to get our seeds planted soon, and being affected by the garden shivers at a very high rate, we sat down this week to plan the garden.  This is not 100% firm as things change once you are in the garden space, but it’s pretty close to what we’ll do.

Here you go (click to enlarge):

Here’s my direct link to the garden layout if you want to get more details.  I use GrowVeg.com to make our garden layouts which is great to keep our garden organized.

New:
Lots of corn!  We’ve grown corn on the roof, but it’s hard.  It either grows ok, or doesn’t grow at all.  Last year, after many corn fights between  Matthew and I we didn’t grow it at all.  This year, I’m excited that we’re going to devote a whole row to it.

Dry beans.  We grew some dry beans last year to much success.  Since going no-meat, I’m a bean eating machine.  This year we’re going to grow much more dry beans and try new varities.

Baby Bok Choy.  I eat about 5 pounds of bok choy a week.  I’m obsessed. So we’re growing to grow lots of it.

Celery. Weirdly enough we’ve never grown it before.

Arugula. Weirdly enough we’ve never grown it before.

Potatoes. Maybe.  We’ve grown potatoes on the rooftop, and it’s only been successful half the time.  Our soil is a bit rocky so we’re not sure how potatoes will grow, but we’ll have to experiment.

Pumpkins.  Basically I would grow pumpkins on all 7 acres of our land if I could.  So we’re growing 3 varieties of pumpkins and lots of them.

Berries.  We grow raspberries on the rooftop but I want to grow much larger amounts.  I also want to start blueberries.

Fruits.  This is a whole other story and not listed in the layout graph, but I want to start growing fruit trees in a separate area of the land.  

Carrots.  Lots of them.  Different varieties.  Matthew is like a rabbit with carrots.

Cantaloupe.  We aren’t growing it this year.  I always feel like it just goes to waste as neither of us love it.

Old:
We’ll be growing our usual suspects:  beans, soybeans, dry beans, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, collards, corn, cucumbers, greens (lettuce and arugula), bok choy, lettuce, onions, garlic, sugar snap peas, peppers, potatoes, pumpkins, radishes, tomatoes, tomatillos and watermelon. And berries.  And herbs.  

WOOOH! That’s alot of vegetables.

So now with the garden planned, we’ll start the seeds soon, and we’ll keep working on the fence!  
Here’s a sneak peek on how the fence is going…..!

Now tell me about your garden! Are you planning already?  What are you growing? What aren’t you growing? Do you have the garden shivers?