First time for me to write into this wonderful garden community. To be honest I will use this post to stop myself from planting and sowing like crazy, because suddenly we have spring and 20 degrees Celsius … and this very deceptive, very deceptive. I already googled long term weather forecast and night with temperatures below zero degree will come again. So, I decided to behave myself and only write about my planting plans instead of putting cucumbers or squash into the earth.
The 
Fun… :-DDDD
After a lot of bramble-fighting (which continues to the day) unburying a lot of waste like old lawnmowers or petrol canisters, repairing the shed (which is again hurt because we have crazy storms) I am finally ready to try growing veggies for real.
Many of you may laugh at me and say ‚come on “just plant, no big deal” but you do not know me. I am a mix of perfectionist, gardening noob and animistic being who is afraid to hurt slugs (we have a lot). This does not make the planting easy :-DDD
My go to weapon is always research. I started out with google, worked through some books, and ended completely lost. I became afraid of either violating the rules of mixed culture, crop rotation or permaculture. I became afraid of being too early or too late, of having the wrong soil or using bad seeds… I was frozen in fear. Ok, maybe I am exaggerating a bit. But honestly, I am always in danger of loosing fun because I want to do it „right“.
This year I wanted to be prepared (for my thoughts of impending plant doom) and I again sat down to sketch a planting plan for our 5 patches (which are a mixed bundle: two raised beds, two patches with a not working slug fence and a new mound bed). For the planning I used procreate and I love the app. For all who want to plan gardening digitally I will briefly explain which layers I created, so that I can reuse the plan for the years to come.
First layer are the empty beds. I also included all bigger pots (one „pot“ is a broken rain barrel we found in the garden) and flower boxes.
Second layer are the actual plants I want to grow. Currently this layer is a mix of sketches and writing (sorry, its in German). But I am working on the plan and trying to create a bundle of plant sketches I can reuse every season.
Third layer are the patch numbers, because I found a book with example patches for mixed culture and crop rotation which I customized for our needs. The book uses a system of 10 crop mixes which can be planted successively. So, if you only have one patch, the examples are planted over a period of ten years. I have five, so I need to remember which plant mix is on which patch, so that I can rotate them successfully.
Forth layer gives the time frame for planting. Here I write down when to start sowing at home on the windowsill and when to plant outside.
Fifth layer collects all information about the nutrient supply, which variety of manure or which kind of soil is needed for the plant.
Sixth layer is an overview for me which plants I already have sown. Just a tiny red checkmark, so I know whats are already in the pots or soil.
Did I already mentioned that I am a perfectionist and very frightened to make mistakes?
On the sketch you can see (or not, because some things are written in German) I plan to plant beans, peas, cucumbers, red beet, kohlrabi, zucchini, chard, kale, broccoli, palm kale, several salad varieties, leek, celery, chives, garlic chives, garlic, onions, basil, strawberries (fruit I know, but they are on the veggie patch), topinambur, potatoes, red orach, squash, bell peppers (not yet sketched but already growing on the window sill together with a lot of salad and cabbage varieties) and potentially corn.
It was not easy to apply the patch-designs from the book onto our garden, as I already had things planted the last year…and you know crop rotation and and and but I hope I managed and everything will grow wonderfully and defy the slugs, deer, bunnies, hare, cabbage butterflies, voles and all the other animals which live in the garden (yes, it’s a zoo :-DDD)
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