Garden Layout
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DanH
Location: Washington, Puget Sound Corridor
Posted: Apr-23-2005 at 8:34pm
Also, I was curious about the general layout of my garden. It's a 25'x20' rectangle, situated lengthwise due NNW by SSE, with a shade-producing apple tree at the SSE corner and a 6' tall fence along the eastern border.
It would be so much easier to just draw a picture!
My dilemma is: where to situate which plants? My general understanding is that plants that fruit from flowers like tomatos and eggplants and peppers need fullest sun, root crops will do well with less sun, and leafy vegetables like greens will do well with the least amount of sun.
Any general advice?
In addition to general tips, I'm curious where this leaves cole crops. Will they thrive best here with moderate sun? I may inteplant them with the lettuces so I'm eager to see if the shade-dilemma of this garden will present any issues on this score.
Thanks again folks!
gary
Location: Washington, Puget Sound Corridor
Posted: Apr-24-2005 at 4:26am
Dan,
I've got a trip to my daughter's Ballard garden and the new OPH there for breakfast coming up this AM so I'll just make brief comments now.
Do draw it now and then mark/color the sunlight/shadow patterns today at 10AM, 1PM, and 4PM PDT. This will give you your morning, noon, and afternoon sunlight areas. We just got into our 14+ hour days (6:03AM to 8:10PM) and we won't drop below that again until 20 Aug. The actual sun transit (solar noon) today in Seattle is 1:07PM PDT. The sun will reach 55+ degrees above the horizon at transit today and will only be about 10 degrees higher on June 20th. Again it will not drop below 55 until Aug 20th.
I realize with the weather forecast today that you may have to walk your garden and peer into the clouds for a bright spot to tell where the sunlight will be. Buy you should get a good idea of which areas are morning or afternoon sunlight. You'll also know about when each day the tree or fence become non issues.
Save the drawing and then I would do the same sunlight plan on June, Sept, & Dec 20th. Then you'll have a year round sunlight layout (Sept=Mar).
There are two general rules to apply. Tall crops to the north and heat loving crops in PM sunlight when you must make choices. An example, my tomatoes and melons move around only the eastside of the garden each year so the western neighbor's trees shade them last in the afternoon.
I'll get back later with some more and on your planting question below.
One more sun note; early to bed folks will find the sun rising 20 degrees north of East today. In June it will 35 degrees north of due East.
You can get the sun or moon altitudes/azimuths from the US Navy Observatory for any place or day at:
"Sun or Moon Altitude"
Gary
cjmiller
Location: Oregon, Willamette Valley
Posted: Apr-25-2005 at 5:34pm
My Dad told me to plan so the rows go north and south, then the plants get sun on both sides as it goes from east to west and wont develop "leaners". and Gary taught me to plant tall north to short south end of the row. Keep the water spouts trimmed on that apple tree so that it doesnt shade the garden heavily. They are best pulled off as they just begin to sprout any time of year.
Carol
catplus
Location: Oregon, Willamette Valley
Posted: Apr-26-2005 at 5:53am
This is a great thread for me! I like the sun map plan. I will do that as soon as we get some some here in Portland. It has been raining the last day or two. Good rules of thumb with beds north south and tall plants to the north. Thanks!
Last year I planted tomatoes in a place wher they didn't get that late afternoon sun and they produced poorly. The year before they were wild with juicy fruit into October! Sometimes I forget to think about location very thoroughly, but this year I'm going to be more aware.
gary
Location: Washington, Puget Sound Corridor
Posted: Apr-26-2005 at 10:28am
Dan,
With your 500 sq. ft. garden, I would advise that you layout raised beds and paths. These should not be permanent to begin with until you figure out how to best use the space. If you are NNW/SSE and run beds the long dimension of the space, that means that you are 22.5 degrees off N/S. This means that the sun will pass the row parallel just an hour before local solar noon.
You didn't say anything about access to the space other than the fence. How are you going to get tools, etc. to the garden? If the fence is on the long side, you might want to try beds that run parallel with the short sides to aid access.
Reich may be a foot shorter than I am so I use wider beds than he suggests. However, a quick math solution and a place to start would be to build up 30" beds with 18" paths (don't forget that plants will overhang). This means that you would have a bed every four feet down the either direction of the space. Running the beds the long dimension would give you five 25' foot long beds (375 sq.ft. of bed). Adding a 2' access path perpendicular to the beds at the midpoint of the 25' side drops 30 sqft to a 345 total.
Six 20' long/3' wide beds would give you 360 sqft of bed.
My garden area is sun deprived by trees on the E/W/N sides with the house to the south. I built a dozen 4x14 wood frame beds that run east/west. The paths are 3' wide on the long bed side and 4' between the ends because the wood frames constrict carts and wheelbarrows more than non-frame beds. My base soil is very sandy loam so I wanted a tall loam bed and used 2x12 lumber to build the frames. The foot tall is also easier to reach across too.
The 14' length was based on putting 3-beds end to end across the 50+' wide garden space. (The farther north the beds are, the more the trees constrict the sun.)
Gary
Gardening for the Homebrewer: Grow and Process Plants for Making Beer, Wine, Gruit, Cider, Perry, and More
By co-authors Debbie Teashon (Rainy Side Gardeners) and Wendy Tweton