Last year I signed up for GrowVeg.com Garden Planner (“The smart way to plan your garden.”)  It was $40 for two years and let’s me play “SimGarden” as much as I want, moving my virtual plants around and adding new ones.  I just discovered a feature that publishes one garden plan at a time.  The Fenced Back Yard garden plan (which is my primary garden) is located at http://www.growveg.com/garden-plan.aspx?p=312234 and also appears in the Garden Plan links to the right.  My goal is to republish every month so everyone can see the current state of my gardens (yes, there are more than one).  I will also post plans and pictures each month so each garden’s evolution can be tracked.

As you can see from the pictures below, the fence is laying (or is that lying?) down on the southern side as I’m increasing my garden size from 50’x20′ to 50’x30′ this spring.  I will be tilling the new area in March or April (weather permitting) because it’s currently lawn, but not the rest as I’m going no-till as much as possible.  Also, in the foreground, you can see the mounds of leaves that I piled up during the fall (thanks to my John Deere lawn sweeper).  All these leaves from my lawn (oak and maple mostly) will be used as garden mulch throughout this year.

The plants you see in the garden plan below are those I wintered over.  The top of the plan is to the north with a big sugar maple tree to the north west.  That means I can’t plant anything that needs full sun in that corner (where the “Vit” corn salad/mache and  “Seven Top” turnip greens are currently).  I found this out the hard way in 2011 when I planted  corn and cucumbers over there and they grew poorly (micro corn anyone?).