Raised Bed Building - Day 3

Day 3 and the temperatures were once again to low to work with mortar mix so the actual beds haven't made much progress.  The fence however, is coming along nicely.

West view:

South-west view:

North-west view:

North-east view:

Raised Bed Building - Day 2

On Day 1 we laid the base layer for the raised beds.  We also drilled the post holes for the fence and concreted the fence posts in.  On Day 2 we moved more cinder block to the beds to be ready for mortaring the second layer to the first, but the weather wasn't cooperating and it was too cold to work with mortar mix  so we had to end there.  

Here's the view from the west:

Here's the view from the south-west:

The north-west view:

And finally, the north-east view:

As soon a temperatures rise above 30F we'll be able to complete the bed construction.

Raised Bed Building - Day 1

The massive amount of snow that had been covering my back yard, finally melted so it was time to start putting the plans into motion.  As discussed in the Planting Plan, the construction of 7 beds started.  In the image below, taken from the west, you can see the beginning framework of the beds laid out as well as the metal posts for the inner fence to keep my dogs out of the garden.

The image below, taken from the south-west, helps show where the passive solar heating barrels are going to go.

The image blow is taken from the north-west angle.

The final image is taken from the north-east angle, right next to the shed.

Unfortunately, cold temperatures (sub 30F) is preventing the use of mortar mix to add the second layer for now.

Potato Companion Planting Plan

We previously completed our Corn Companion Planting Plan, our Tomato Companion Planting Plan, our Broccoli Companion Planting Plan and our Lettuce Companion Planting Plan.  That accounts for 6 of our 7 soil beds.  Now we need to complete our Planting Plan for our potatoes.  As always, we'll reference the Purdue University Agricultural Extension Service's Indiana Vegetable Planting Calendar for determining our dates.  Potatoes are supposed to be planted at 12" intervals.  This is perfect in our SFG layout as it gives us one plant per square.  Since we expect the potatoes to fill out the soil as they grow, we're going to take a different approach to intensive gardening with this soil bed.  The allies for potatoes are beans, cabbage, corn, eggplant and peas.  

We're going to employ a different take on the vertical growth approach with our potatoes.  Since we're already going to be employing "hilling", we're going to take that a step further.  Hilling is when soil keeps being added around the potato plant to bury it deeper.  It forces the plant to grow a long underground stem from which more tubers form.  It's been reported to produce some good yields this way.  Our variety comes with a recommendation to hill 4" upon reaching 8" of exposed plant and to continue to do this until the hill is 12" tall.  Besides the irrigation complexity that such an uneven soil bed can bring, I wondered why not raise the entire bed level?  We'll be pushing the hilling boundary to see how much yield we can squeeze out of our potatoes.  As such, we won't interplant anything with them, but we'll employ a few border herbs for protection.  More on that later.  There really isn't a planting plan other than one seed tuber per square foot and hilling up 24" as they grow.  Using this plan we should get the following yield from our garden:

Our chosen potato variety is a mid season which means 80 days to maturity, row planted at 12" intervals with 1/2 lbs seed tubers, should yield (at 6:1) about 300 lbs / 100' row.  Thus:

1 crops X 1 plants per square ft X 3 lbs/ft X 48 square feet = 144 lbs of potatoes.

Our seed tubers ship late March to early April.  Let's assume we get them in the ground by the end of April, at a 80 DTM, that would put our harvest somewhere around the end of July.  If we were to replant at that point, we could potentially have another harvest by the end of October.  Given that potatoes are considered to be very cold hardy and our October 18th first Fall frost date, it's possible we may be able to double the potato yield by growing that second crop.  Since we can't get seed potatoes in July, we'll need to re-use some of our first crop potatoes for the second crop seeding.

Seeds required for this bed:
Potato - 48 X 1 X 1 X 0.5 lbs = 24 lbs @ 25 lbs/pack = 1 packs X $19.50 = $19.50

Now we need to determine the planting dates for these.  The earliest we can plant our potatoes March 20th however, the planting range stretches to May 10th and we are at the mercy of the seed company because these don't ship till late March.  We'll just have to sow these as soon as we get them.  Unlike our other crops, we'll probably sow this one with the entire bed at once.

Lettuce Companion Planting Plan

We previously completed our Corn Companion Planting Plan, our Tomato Companion Planting Plan and our Broccoli Companion Planting Plan.  That accounts for 5 of our 7 soil beds.  Now we need to complete our Planting Plan for our lettuce.  As always, we'll reference the Purdue University Agricultural Extension Service's Indiana Vegetable Planting Calendar for determining our dates.  Lettuce is supposed to be planted at 10" intervals.  Our intent is going to be to simply pick the outer leaves of the heads as they mature, thus keeping the overcrowding down.  The allies for lettuce are beet, cabbage, carrots, onion, radish and strawberry.  We don't eat beets, cabbage or radishes so per our Golden Rules, we won't be planting those.  That leaves carrots and strawberries.  Since strawberries are perennial, they'll be having a patch of their own and won't be in our annual beds.  Looks like it will be lettuce and carrots in this soil bed.  That led to the following Planting Plan for our lettuce squares: 

The green circles represent lettuce while the orange triangles represent carrots.  Each little square in the background grid represents 1/2".  Using this plan we should get the following yield from our garden:

Lettuce, Romaine, 57 days to maturity, row planted at 10" intervals, yield 50 lbs / 100' row.  With our layout above and the intended continuous harvest, there would be 6 plants per square foot.  The 57 DTM on our chosen variety provides us the ability to yield three crops in the 180 day season.  Lettuce doesn't like to grow in hot weather so we'll plan on allowing the second crop some extra time, bumping the first and last crops out to the extremes of our planting dates.  Thus:

3 crops X 6 plants per square ft X 0.5 lbs/ft X 24 square feet = 216 lbs of lettuce.

Since my wife loves Boston Butterhead lettuce, we'll split 50/50 in this bed for that variety as well.

Lettuce, Butterball, 52 days to maturity, row planted at 10" intervals, yield 50 lbs / 100' row.  With our layout above and the intended continuous harvest, there would be 6 plants per square foot.  The 52 DTM on our chosen variety provides us the ability to yield three crops in the 180 day season.  Lettuce doesn't like to grow in hot weather so we'll plan on allowing the second crop some extra time, bumping the first and last crops out to the extremes of our planting dates.  Thus:

3 crops X 6 plants per square ft X 0.5 lbs/ft X 24 square feet = 216 lbs of lettuce.

Carrots, 56 days to maturity.  Unlike the corn, we'll produce 3 crops for the season.  Considering a 2.5 ounce average weight for the carrots, yield would be thus:

3 crops X 10 plants per square ft X 2.5 ounces (0.15625 lbs) X 48 square feet = 225 lbs of carrots.

Seeds required for the two beds:
Lettuce - 24 X 6 X 3 = 432 @ 250 seeds/pack = 2 packs X $4.95 = $9.90
Lettuce (Butterball) - 24 X 6 X 3 = 432 @ 250 seeds/pack = 2 packs X $4.95 = $9.90
Carrots - 48 X 10 X 3 = 1440 @ 250 seeds/pack = 6 packs X $3.95 = $23.70

Now we need to determine the planting dates for these.  The earliest we can plant our lettuce is April 1st.  This is some two weeks before the last spring frost, but lettuce is super hardy so it's OK to plan at this time.  Given the the 57 DTM we'll have our first harvest on May 28th.

The carrots has an earliest sowing date of April 10th.  With their 56 DTM we'll have first harvest on June 5th.

Broccoli Companion Planting Plan

We previously completed our Corn Companion Planting Plan and our Tomato Companion Planting Plan.  That accounts for 4 of our 7 soil beds.  Now we need to complete our Planting Plan for our broccoli.  As always, we'll reference the Purdue University Agricultural Extension Service's Indiana Vegetable Planting Calendar for determining our dates.  Given that broccoli needs some room to grow, recommended spacing being 7", there isn't a whole lot of crops we can plant with the broccoli for an intensive growing plot.  The allies for broccoli are beet, celery, chard, cucumber, lettuce, onion, potato and spinach.  We don't eat beets so per our Golden Rules, we won't be planting those.  The kids absolutely love celery sticks, so we'll be planting those with the broccoli.  We have a soil bed dedicated to lettuce, so we won't plant any here.  We already have onions growing with the tomatoes and you can only use so much onion so we won't be planting more here.  Potato is the same as lettuce, having it's own dedicated soil bed and spinach, while not having a dedicated soil bed, is grown plenty with the tomatoes.  So it looks like it will be broccoli and celery in this soil bed.  That led to the following Planting Plan for our broccoli squares: 

The dark upside down pentagons represent broccoli while the light green pentagons represent celery.  Each little square in the background grid represents 1/2".  Leveraging the staggered approach, we are able to maintain proper distance between the broccoli while the celery fills in the gaps.  Using this plan we should get the following yield from our garden:

Broccoli, 66 days to maturity, row planted at 7" intervals, yield 100 lbs / 100' row.  At 7" intervals, there would be about 2 plants per feet of row.  Since we are using intensive gardening techniques and in this case staggered planting, we actually have 3 plants.  Because broccoli doesn't like to grow in the heat, and given it's 66 DTM, we'll plan on a spring and fall crop.  Our chosen variety is also reputed to produce side shoots once you harvest the main head so we'll keep the plants in the ground harvesting any side shoots until it's time to plant the fall crops.  Thus:

2 crops X 1.5 rows per square ft X 1 lbs/ft X 48 square feet = 144 lbs of broccoli.

Celery, 80 days to maturity, row planted at 8" intervals, yield 1 lbs (8 stalks at 2 ounces each).  Thus:

2 crops X 3 plants per square ft X 1 lbs each X 48 square feet = 288 lbs of celery.

Seeds required for the bed:
Broccoli - 48 X 3 X 2 = 288 @ 100 seeds/pack = 3 packs X $3.95 = $11.85
Celery - 48 X 3 X 2 = 288 @ 250 seeds/pack = 2 packs X $3.95 = $7.90

Now we need to determine the planting dates for these.  The earliest we can plant our broccoli is April 1st.  This is some two weeks before the last spring frost, but broccoli is super hardy so it's OK to plan at this time.  Given the the 66 DTM we'll have our first harvest on June 6th.  If we restart planting again on July 1st, we'll have our last harvest on September 16th.  I'm thinking with season extension we may be able to have a later harvest, but we'll need to do some experimentation on that.  For now, we'll keep to this schedule.

The celery has an earliest sowing date of April 15th.  Given a 80 DTM, that will give us a first harvest on July 4th.  Assuming an immediate reseed, our last harvest will be on October 3rd.

Both broccoli and celery are good for staring seedlings indoors.  If you have season extension equipment in place that can help protect the seedlings from frost after you plant them out, then the growing can be started indoors some 8-12 weeks earlier.  With effective season extension on the back end of the 180 day growing season, it should be possible to squeeze a third crop of celery into a season.  We'll experiment with that next year, but for this year, I think 288 lbs of celery is probably going to be enough.

Tomato Companion Planting Plan

We previously completed our Corn Companion Planting Plan.  That accounts for 2 of our 7 soil beds.  Now we need to complete our Planting Plan for our tomatoes.  Almost every home garden sports tomatoes.  It's the most common vegetable people grow.  One of the nice things about tomatoes is that they vine and as such we can leverage trellising to take advantage of vertical growth in order to maximize yield.  Research has indicated that asparagus, carrots, celery, cucumbers, onions, parsley and peppers are all good companions to tomatoes.  Since asparagus is a perennial crop (it doesn't have to be replanted every year), it would be relatively fixed in location.  As such, it's not a target for our crop rotation beds so we'll scratch it off the list.  Remember I mentioned carrots go well with most crops.  We'll include carrots with the tomatoes.  The kids love their celery sticks, but I have a plan for celery with the broccoli bed so we'll skip celery with the tomatoes.  Given that cucumbers tend to vine as well, we'll skip them so we only have to deal with the tomato vines in these beds.  Onions is always welcome so we'll include them in the tomato plans.  Garlic repels spider mites from tomatoes so we'll plan on planting some of those around our tomato beds as well.  These choices led to the following Planting Plan for our tomato squares: 

The red circle is of course the tomato plant.  Orange triangles at NE, SE, SW and NW are carrots.  White triangles on the west and east are onions while the green pentagon clusters at the north and south are spinach.  Each little square in the background grid represents 1/2".  We decided to go with cherry tomatoes since they make wonderful snacks in their small size.Using this plan we should get the following yield from our garden.

Tomatoes (cherry), 55 days to maturity, row planted at 18" intervals, yield 600 lbs / 100' row.  At 12" intervals, there would be 1 plant per feet of row.  Since we are using intensive gardening techniques, we actually have 1 plant per square foot rather than 2 per 3 feet.  Our chosen variety of tomato is different from something like corn that ripens and then must be replanted.  Sakura is reputed to keep producing all season long.  That being the case, we'll just plan a single crop.  We will see how this works out.  If the plants do not continue to produce, depending on time, we can always pull them up and replant new ones.  Thus:

1 crop X 1 rows per square ft X 6 lbs/ft X 96 square feet = 576 lbs of tomatoes.

Onions, 110 days to maturity, row planted at 4" intervals, yield 10 ounce bulbs.  Thus:

1 crops X 2 plants per square ft X 96 square feet = 120 lbs of onions.

Spinach, 39 days to maturity.  I don't actually have crop yield numbers so we'll just capture those number this year as we go.  Suffice it to say, spinach is excellent in fresh salads.  With such a short DTM we'll just keep on replanting spinach as we harvest and employ some season extension techniques at the end of the growing season to help bring the fifth and final harvest to maturity.  Thus:

5 crops X 18 plants per square ft X 96 square feet = 8640 plants.

Carrots, 56 days to maturity.  Unlike the corn, we'll produce 3 crops for the season.  Considering a 2.5 ounce average weight for the carrots, yield would be thus:

3 crops X 4 plants per square ft X 2.5 ounces (0.15625 lbs) X 96 square feet = 180 lbs of carrots.

Seeds required for the two beds:
Tomato - 96 X 1 X 1 = 96 @ 100 seeds/pack = 1 pack X $27.80 = $27.80
Onion - 96 X 2 X 1 = 192 @ 1000 seeds/pack = 1 packs X $5.60 = $5.60
Spinach - 96 X 18 X 3 = 8640 @ 1000 seeds/pack = 9 packs X $3.95 = $35.55
Carrots - 96 X 4 X 3 = 1152 @ 250 seeds/pack = 5 packs X $3.95 = $19.75

Now we need to determine the planting dates for these.  According to the Purdue University Agricultural Extension Service's Indiana Vegetable Planting Calendar, the earliest we can plant our tomatoes outside is May 5th, two weeks after last frost.  The reason for such a late planting date is the tenderness of tomato plants.  Frost is a killer for tomatoes so in order to avoid frost, the planting data is pushed back.  If we're going to use the 50% Last Frost Date of April 18th, our plants will need some protection.  This is where season extension comes into play.  There is a lot of information out there about starting tomato seedlings indoors.  The Old Farmer's Almanac recommends starting the tomato seedlings indoors late February to early March and then transplanting them late April to early May.  Given the 55 days to maturity of our variety, either the Johnny's site is wrong or the Old Farmer's Almanac is referencing another variety of tomato.  This is where we're going to have to got with a gut feel.  I no expect a plant to grow more than half it's life inside so I'd say starting seedlings indoors 4 weeks before transplant of this variety, should be the goal.
Using the Purdue date and counting back 4 weeks, we should start our seedlings on April 7th indoors.  In order to stagger the transplanting effort, we'll stagger the seedling starts as well in the same manner we did for the corn.  This will result in our seedlings being planted indoors over a 24 day period.  The seedlings will germinate in 65F soil but would much rather prefer 85F soil temperatures.
After we harvest the tomatoes, we'll keep an eye on them and see how they keep producing.  There may not be a set schedule after the first harvest so it may just be a daily thing of walking through the garden and harvesting any ripe tomatoes we find.

The onions is only going to deliver one crop for the season.  According to Purdue we have a range of March 15th through April 15th to plant the onion seeds.  That's a 32 day range so we'll shave evenly off either side and start seeding on March 19th.  Given the 110 DTM, our first harvest of onions will start on July 7th.

The spinach has an earliest sowing date of March 20th.  With it's short 39 DTM, and a latest sowing date of September 10th, we'll be counting on at least four crops over the course of the season and if we use season extension and protect our plants, we could even get a 5th crop in October/November.

The carrots has an earliest sowing date of April 10th.  Due to our staggering out the planting over 24 days, our third crop of the season won't fully be in the ground by the last planting date of August 1st.  Given that the carrots are in the same beds as the spinach which we'll give some season extension protection, we'll be able to complete the harvest in good time, even before the final spinach harvest.

Corn Companion Planting Plan

At this point, we have a general layout for our garden per our Planting Plan.  Having determined our core crops, we can take a look at Companion Planting techniques in order to bolster yield and health of our crops.

The first core crop we identified, was corn.  Who doesn't love some sweet corn on the cob?!  Even though corn can be hard to grow effectively, we are going to do so in our garden.  Incidentally, Companion Planting dates back thousands of years with the Three Sisters method employed by the Native American tribes, being the most famous example of all.

As I mentioned earlier, we are going to substitute squash in our plan because my family aren't squash eaters and one of our Golden Rules state that we only plant what we eat.  For this reason, we sought an alternative to squash and settled on carrots.  Carrots go well with many crops.  For that reason, we will be employing them throughout our garden as a secondary crop rather than dedicating a soil bed to them as a primary crop.  The recommended minimum separation between corn stalks is stated as 12".  In our SFG type setup, that means that we'll be able to grow 48 corn plants per soil bed.  Considering a growing season of 180 days in Indianapolis, and a Days to Maturity (DTM) value of 75 days for our chosen variety, we should be able to get two crops in a season.  On average, you'll get about 1.3 ears of corn per plant, but for simplicity sake, it's safe to assume one ear per plant.  That's not a great yield for the area employed.  Our chosen variety states that you can sow 2 seeds per foot.  If take a closer look at the Wampanoag Three Sisters Corn and Bean Mound, we also notice that the spread between the 4 seeds is 6".  Keeping that in mind, I designed our plan as follows:

The yellow triangles are corn.  The green circles are pole beans while the orange triangles are carrots.  Each little square in the background grid represents 1/2".  If we place the corn on the north, east, south and west axis with it's 6" separation between north and south as well as east and west, then the pole beans would will out the corners of that square.  Given the little space (2") needed by carrots, we stagger them around the outside of the square foot, offset between the beans and the corn.
As the corn grows, it's roots should fill out the center area while it is kept strong on the outside of the circle by the pole beans as they vine up the corn stalks.  The carrots provide the ground cover with it's greenery shading out weeds.

Using this plan we should get the following yield from our garden.
Pole beans, 65 days to maturity, row planted at 6" intervals, yield 60 lbs / 100' row.  At 6" intervals, there would be 2 plants per feet of row.  Since we are using intensive gardening techniques, we actually have 4 plants per square foot.  We are also calculating two crops for the season in alignment with the corn crops.  Thus:

2 crops X 2 rows per square ft X 0.6 lbs/ft X 96 square feet = 230.4 lbs of beans.

Sweet Corn, 75 days to maturity, row planted at 12" intervals, yield 130 ears / 100' row.  Using the Wampanoag method, we can plant 4 plants per square foot thus:

2 crops X 4 plants per square ft X 1.3 ears/ft X 96 square feet = 998.4 ears of corn.

Though that may sound like a lot, it's the most optimistic outcome.  This is also the entire year's crop total.  Yield may be far less than expected, but if it isn't, we'll have plenty to share with family, friends and neighbors. :-)

Carrots, 56 days to maturity, could potentially yield 3 crops in our 180 growing season, but because we are planting them in support of the corn and beans, we'll only do 2 crops in sync with the other two.  Considering a 2.5 ounce average weight for the carrots, yield would be thus:

2 crops X 12 plants per square ft X 2.5 ounces (0.15625 lbs) X 96 square feet = 360 lbs of carrots.

Seeds required for the two beds:
Corn - 96 X 4 X 2 = 768 @ 150 seeds/pack = 5 packs X $3.95 = $19.75
Beans - 48 X 4 X 2 = 384 @ 50 seeds/pack = 8 packs X $3.95 = $31.60
Soybeans - 48 X 4 X 2 = 384 @ 100 seeds/pack = 4 packs X $3.95 = $15.80
Carrots - 96 X 12 X 2 = 2304 @ 250 seeds/pack = 10 packs X $3.95 = $39.50

Now we need to determine the planting dates for these.  The corn seed needs to be sown when the soil is 65F at 1 1/2".  Carrots can be sown when soil is 56F at 1/2".  Since we're sowing the carrots with the corn, the more shallow soil temperature will be much higher than the minimum.  Soybeans and beans can be sown when the soil is 65F at 1".  Again, when sowing with the corn, the shallower soil will be warmer than the minimum.  Planting dates now have to be determined.  Given that the DTM for our variety of corn is 75 days and considering that we have a 180 day growing season, we can easily fit two full crop cycles into our growing season.  If your growing season is shorter, something like 140 days, you might consider starting the corn seedlings inside.  Seedling starting and transplanting of corn is generally not recommended, but it can be done with a little care.  Since we don't have to worry about seed starting for the corn, we'll simply plan the planting times for the other seeds in our soil bed.

We start by determining the optimal time to plant our corn.  According to the Old Farmer's Almanac Planting Dates by Zip Code page, my best time for planting corn is April 17th through May 1st.  Just enter your zip code on that page and click "Search" to find your dates.  Looking at the calendar, April 17th falls on a Thursday.  At this point you may be tempted to plan on planting all the corn on that Saturday, the 19th.  I would not recommend that.  One of the key components of sustainability is... well... a sustained crop yield over time.  Remember, we're not commercial farmers who want all the corn to ripen at the same time.  On the contrary, we want it to ripen in phases so that we can eat it over time.

Given my growing season, and the corn's DTM, I have 30 days leeway to play with so we'll spread our planting out over 30 days.  Since we have 96 squares to plant, I can do 3 squares per day, however, seeing as the dimensions of the beds are 12' x 4' it makes most sense to just do an entire column (the 4' slice) per day.  That way, we'll have 4 squares ready for harvest each day once they mature.  We'll continue to harvest and immediately replant the square for the second crop, for a period of 24 days.  We can continue to eat corn kept in storage during the 51 days between the final picking of the first crop and the first picking of the second crop.  I have found the best way to plan this kind of activity is simply to add it to my calendar.  Once you've completed the corn schedule, do the same for beans and carrots, adding the difference in DTM to the corn square's plant date to get the plant date for the other two.  For example, since the first row is planted on April 17th, we know that there's a 10 day difference in DTM (75-65) between the corn and the beans.  We add 10 days to the date and we know that we have to plant that row with beans on April 27th.  In the same way, we know there's 9 days difference between the beans and the carrots' DTM so by adding 9 days to April 27th, we know we need to plant the carrots for that row on May 6th.  Fill out the calendar accordingly to complete your planting schedule.

By planning a staggering of the planting dates between the different crops, we have a single harvest date for the entire square.  It also allows the corn some time for a head start before the beans start to vine up the stalks.  I'm not sure if it would be better to stagger the harvest date instead.  It certainly would allow more soil space for the other crops as some are harvested, but we'll try it this way this year and see how it goes.

Companion Planting

The number one principal of our SHAMY methodology is sustainability.  As such, an organic approach to soil supplementation and pest control is essential.  Organic fruits and vegetables aren't just good to the environment, they're also much healthier for you AND much tastier.  No discussion about organic pest control for our food crops is complete without including companion planting.
When we think about the challenges we face in growing a food crop, these basic ones come to mind:

1. Water - Without water nothing grows... Period!  While different plants need differing amounts of water, it's essential to all.  Irrigation methods is used to augment rain, but it's important to maximize the effectiveness of the water we do have.  If water simply ran off our crop soil without being fully absorbed, it would be a problem.  In the same way, allowing the sun to evaporate our crop water from the soil before the crop can use it, would also be a problem.  Some kind of mulching would help retain water from runoff while protecting it from evaporation.
2. Sunlight - While nothing will grow or even sprout without water, light is a close second.  Seeds will sprout in darkness, but light, preferably sunlight, is required soon after.  Without enough light, growth is not sustainable.  This is part of the reason why grass doesn't grow well under big trees.  The other of course is #1 above (water) due to the tree's extensive root system creating intense water competition.
3. Weeds - Any plant that is not edible, does not serve a direct purpose in sustaining life.  Weeds most certainly fall under that classification.  The problem is that since weeds are not encumbered by the requirement to yield edible produce, their energy and design focus on fast growth and self perpetuation.  As such they can often out compete crops for water and nutrients.  For this reason they must be controlled.  Considering #2 above, a good method of control would be to mulch or shade them out.  Even weeds don't survive without sunlight.
4. Nutrients - Most notably here is nitrogen.  A lot of crops depend on it and depleted soil results in diminished yields.  Nutrient deficiencies also lead to weaker plants which encourages our next obstacle.
5. Insects - To be fair,  insects are essential to pollination and good crop yields, but usually insects attracted by weak plants are not the good insects we seek.

Over thousands of years agricultural knowledge was developed to deal with these obstacles.  The most notable being irrigation to solve #1.  Companion planting though, helps to address #2-4.  The most famous of these is called the Three Sisters method used by Native Americans for thousands of years.  After domesticating squash some 8,000 years ago, someone figured out that corn stalks grow well above the squash thus not competing for the same sunlight.  In fact, it helps protect squash from harsh sun.  At the same time, the squash leaves shade out the ground providing a natural mulch to combat evaporation AND choke out weeds.  Then when pole or vining beans were domesticated some 3,000 years ago, someone figured out they could vine up the corn stalks without killing the corn.  In fact, quite the opposite.  They found that the corn crop grew better with the beans than without.  

People living thousands of years ago didn't have the technological understanding of what was happening like we do today.  We know that beans actually absorb nitrogen from the air and infuse it into the soil where the corn and squash can consume it, creating a perfect little symbiosis.  In this manner, squash handles #3 by shading out #2 from the ground.  Beans handle #4 as just described.  The three grow together in this symbiotic ecosystem to provide strong healthy plants which then combat #5.

While this being the oldest example of companion planting, modern science has allowed us to expand knowledge in this field to take the approach much, much further.  It is important to understand that there is a ton of information about companion planting on the internet and in books.  The absolute key to not getting overwhelmed is to complete your personal Planting Plan first.  Once you have determined your core crops, you only need to investigate companions for those crops.

In our Planting Plan, we identified broccoli, corn, lettuce, potatoes and tomatoes as our core crops.  We will therefor focus on companion plants to these core crops.  There are plenty of internet resources available to direct you, but it is important to remember that what works in my garden, may not work in yours.  Every garden is different, from rainfall to ground contour to soil composition etc.  Even the garden between myself and my neighbor is different, so please use all information you reference as a GUIDE rather than a rule.  Some good companion planting resources I referenced in my planning are:

National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service
North Dakota State University
Old Farmer's Almanac

MotherEarthNews.com

About.com Organic Gardening

Planting Plan

In order to achieve best results, it's essential to plan our beds and our garden layout.  Bringing order to chaos will also help us as we move forward in keeping things like crop rotation straight.  In the Row Caterpillar post, we discussed the design of a bed.  The important take away that we got from that, was the amount of space we require for each bed.  It's easy to squeeze a lot of beds together for optimal use of space, but if you're going to do anything with row covers or season extension techniques, it's essential to have room to work with.  To that end, here's the final design of a bed in our garden:

As we can see, the actual growing bed takes up less than half the space required in the floor plan.  The passive solar heating plastic drums and the 6 Mil plastic tapered to prevent the wind from blowing the caterpillar tunnel away, all consume space.  In the end, our available space allowed us to create 7 beds with two compost structures, one on the north and one on the south side.

Now that we know how many growing beds we have, it is time to determine what we are actually going to grow in them.  The golden rule here is to grow only crops that you actually eat today!  It is no use growing something that you're not going to eat.  The Three Sisters method advocates the growing of corn, beans and squash together.  That's great, but my family and I don't eat squash.  No particular reason.  It's just not something that we eat so assuming we'll develop a taste for it would be a gamble at best.  In such a case, we look at alternatives.  What else can we plant instead of squash that would have similar effects of shading out the soil from weeds etc.  For us, it was carrots.  Carrots go well with lots of crops and we love them.  Before we consider Companion Planting, the best approach is to determine the core crops we wish to grow.  Go about this as if you're only going to plant that one crop in a given bed.

Remember NOT to over plant any one crop since we need to ensure proper crop rotation in our beds from year to year.  The recommended rotation is 3 years.  That means that we strive NOT to plant the same core crop in the same bed over any 3 year span.  That gives us a mathematical formula we can use to determine the maximum number of beds we can plant with any one core crop.

Number of beds / 3 = Maximum beds per core crop (rounded down)

Since we have 7 beds we have 7/3=2.  That means we will plant no move than 2 beds with any one core crop.  For Year 1 we will attempt to adhere to keeping the tall crops on the north side of the garden so as to minimize the shade they throw on other beds.  With our beds aligned east/west, here's the plan for Year 1:

Tomatoes are in the north two beds while corn is in the east two beds, leaving lettuce, broccoli and potatoes to fill out the seven beds.  We will keep the corn beds next to each other on the north-south axis in order to help with pollination because the east-west axis would create a less condensed pollination field.  Corn is infamous for requiring a good number of plants to ensure proper pollination.  During Year 2, we will employ the following planting layout:

As we can see, we preserved the north-south axis for the corn, placing them in the middle while moving the tomatoes to the east beds.  This allows the lettuce, broccoli and potatoes to move over one bed each and fill out the western beds.  The tall corn and tomato crops should not shade out anything since they occupy their respective north-south axes.  During Year 3, we will employ the following planting plan:

During this season, we bump the tall corn to the west beds, but keep them on the north side.  Tomatoes take the third west bed as well as the south middle bed while lettuce takes the north middle bed.  The lettuce should do fine as the tomatoes aren't as tall as the corn and we can always prune them back to keep them lower than the other tomato bed.  Broccoli and potatoes fill out the east beds this year.

There we have it.  We now have a crop rotation schedule the avoids planting the same core crop in the same bed for 3 years and at the same time, we know how many beds we'll plant for each crop.  Having these figures in hand, we can start planning the Companion Planting for each bed in order to determine what secondary crops we will have in our intensive gardening layout.  Once we have completed that phase, we will know exactly how many seeds we need for each crop.

Golden Rules

The following are the Golden Rules we employ in our garden:

1. Plant only what you eat.  Do not plant any vegetable or fruit that you don't eat at present.  Assuming you'll develop a taste for it, is a fool's errand.
2. Don't fight Mother Nature. Nature always wins. Work with nature, not against it. 
3. Stay organized.  Confusion will kill motivation.  It's essential to know what we plant and when so some planning will go a long way towards keeping things straight.

Agricultural Extension Services Universities

Every location is different.

Think about that statement for a minute.  Every plot of soil is different.  It's easy to see the difference between a plot of soil in the northern part of the American continent as compared to one in the southern part as temperatures, soil composition, rain fall etc. are all differentiating factors.  Because of this, it's important to leverage your local state Agricultural Extension Services universities.  Each state has a university that has dedicated studies related to agriculture in that state.  Many, many, many resources are published by these universities and it's important to find yours and use the research they've done to your advantage.

My local Agricultural Extension Service university is Purdue University.  The Purdue Agriculture Extension home page is here.  By clicking on "County Offices" in the menu, you can select your particular county to go to the site for that.  As I live in Indianapolis, the Marion County site is my starting point for research.

Find your local Agricultural Extension Service university.  The resources are invaluable and will save you lots of time, effort and heartbreak.

Row Caterpillar

There are many season extension methods, but the simplest and easiest to implement by far, is the caterpillar half dome.  In order to determine the proper spacing of our soil beds before construction, we need to calculate the space requirement for this season extension method so that our beds have enough room and spacing to acomodate equipment involved in season extension.  This is where our Mathematical Formulas come into play.  Consider the diagram below.

Using the caterpillar half dome method for covering the soil bed, we know a couple of things.  We know the width of our bed is 4'.  We would also like to include some passive solar heating.  This can easily be done by adding some black 55 gal plastic drums that are filled with water.  The drums are setup outside the soil bed, to the north side.  This allows the drum to absorb the sun's rays during the day, heating the contained water.  At night, the water passively radiates the absorbed heat back into the atmosphere.  Since it is enclosed inside our caterpillar cover, it heats the air and soil inside thus keeping it warmer than the surrounding air which combats frost.

That said, these drums measure 35" tall and 24" in diameter.  That translates to roughly 3'x2'.  We know that we need to add the 2' diameter of the drum to the base diameter of the caterpillar, but how far does the caterpillar have to extend beyond the drum in order to clear it's 3' height?  Mathematics teaches us that the height of the drum, z, is equal to the square root of x times y.  When we solve for x, we get to 1.5'.  So now we know the width of our beds need to be 4'+2'+1.5' i.e. 7.5'.

Knowing that our diameter for the caterpillar is 7.5', we can solve the radius (d = 2r or r = d/2) which is to say the height of the caterpillar off the ground, at 3.75'.  To make things simple and provide some margin for adjustment, we round up the diameter to 8' and the radius or height to 4'.

In order to determine the size of clear plastic that we need to use to cover the caterpillar, we need to solve the circumference, or more accurately for the caterpillar, half the circumference.  Using another mathematical formula we calculate pi times diameter divided by 2 in order to come out with 25.13' which is the width our plastic will need to be to wrap over and cover the caterpillar.  We already know the length is the same as the bed, which is 12'.  That means that a 26'x12' sheet of clear plastic would cover the caterpillar, but what about the ends of the tunnel?  These have to be accounted for in determining the size of our plastic sheet to use.

The general rule of thumb is to angle the sides inward by 45 degrees until the ends all meet, and then tie it together and stake it.  But how much extra plastic is required to make this staking?  Again, we revert to mathematics, trigonometry to be exact.  Consider the diagram below.

In this diagram, the 8' side at the bottom, is the mouth of the caterpillar.  From our previous calculations, we determined it would be 8' wide.  Trigonometry teaches us that the corners of a triangle adds up to 180 degrees.  We already know that we are angling the plastic inward by 45 degrees so that would make the angle of the corner formed at the stake, 180 - 45 - 45 = 90 degrees.  Therefore, a straight line from the stake point to the mouth of the caterpillar, would divide the width of the caterpillar in two at the same time as dividing the stake corner in two and forming another right angle with the caterpillar mouth line.

OK, I know that can be confusing, but bear with me.  We need to know how much longer the plastic needs to be than the 12' length of our soil bed.  Therefore, we need to solve the value of Z in the diagram.  We also need to know how much further the beds stick out on the sides in order to plan the position of other beds.  For that we need to solve the value of X in the diagram.

We know the angle of C is 45 degrees and we know that B is a right angle (90 degrees) so that would make the angle of A equal to 180 - 45 - 90 = 45 degrees.  We know the length of Y is half of 8' so that makes it 4' long.  Trigonometry teaches that a right angle with equal opposite corners at 45 degrees has equal length legs thus we know that the length of X is equal to Y so X is also 4' long.

Now that we have the lengths of X and Y, we can calculate the length of Z using the trigonometric formula for calculating right triangle leg areas which states that:

Z² = X² + Y²

That makes the square of Z equal to 16 + 16 = 32 and when we square root that, we get 5.66' which is the length of Z.
Now we know that each mouth end is going to need 6' (rounded up for convenience) extra so doubling that for the two ends gives us 12' extra.  Incidentally, the shortest we could make this overshoot piece would be half the width of the caterpillar mouth which is 4' so 8' for both ends.  The reason we do it at an angle is to provide a gradient for breaking the wind.  If the ends of the caterpillar were just enclosed with minimal material, it would form a flat surface which could provide too little resistance to a wind gust, resulting in the caterpillar being scooped and blown away.

So now we know that we'll need a 26'x24' sheet of plastic to cover one 12'x4' soil bed WITH passive solar heating.

Mathematical Formulas for Maximized Yield Production

When it comes to maximizing our production yield from our limited soil area, multiple techniques come into play.  Most prominent of these are the use of raised beds and vertical growing with trellising.  As such, mathematics become important as we calculate volume, area and everything in between.  Waste elimination is important, not only from a financial perspective, but also from a sustainability perspective.  The following are the mathematical formulas that I've needed in order to make calculations as indicated for planning and operation.

RECTANGULAR CALCULATIONS

Area (a) = Length (l) times Width (w)

a = lw

Volume (v) = Area (a) times height (h)

v = ah

v = lwh

CIRCULAR AND CYLINDRICAL CALCULATIONS

Circumference (c) = pi Diameter (d)

c = πd

Diameter (d) = 2 x Radius (r)

d = 2r

c = π2r   

(also written as 2πr but since it's all multiplication, it equates to the same thing)

Area of a circle (a) = pi Radius squared

a = πr²

Volume of a cylinder (v) = pi Radius squared times height

v = πr²h

π²

Raised beds' raw materials arrive

We had ordered the materials needed for the construction of the raised beds.  We had opted to construct the beds using concrete cinder block for longer durability.  These bad boys weigh about 38 lbs each so for the 7 beds we plan to build, we got just shy of 14,000 lbs of block.  Big job ahead!  

The entire delivery below.  Even though we were in sub zero temperatures, we were still able to take delivery.

The 6 mil clear plastic rolls that will be used to cover the caterpillar tunnel for season extension and the Quicrete that will be used to hold the cinder blocks in the beds together.

We also got fencing materials required to erect a fence around the beds since we have a Weimaraner and a Dachshund and will need to keep them out of the beds.

Besides the fencing, we got some 3/8" rebar which will serve as the anchors for the caterpillar tunnel's ribs as well as some 1/2" EMT conduit that will be bent to form the ribs.

Boy that's a lot of block on one pallet!

And we have 4 pallets!

Now the construction can start and the vision can take shape.