Gardening for Good: Week 5

This week was full of designing and redesigning the garden layout. My son "assisted" for a few days, which was a lot of fun. However, I did have to go back and modify some of his proposals... We continued to look at various companion planting guides and considered how to plant more of the items best for donation.

My son doing some garden planning

I posted a couple days ago about some tips for donating produce. This post was based on feedback I received from Loaves & Fishes food pantry. As I mention there, it's a great time to get feedback from a food pantry because I am still designing (and redesigning) how I plan to plant this year - so I can take that information into consideration.

Although we made some good progress with the planning, I may still end up modifying the plans as I go. This will especially be the case if I am able to add more or less extra space this spring. I also need to try to be realistic, as I don't always have as much time as I need to maintain everything. If I invest a lot of time upfront, it helps, as I can incorporate things like weed mitigation with paper and leaves to save time later.

Here is a snapshot of what my plans look like right now:

The colors in Excel didn't save correctly in the photo, but at least it gives you an idea! I am also still looking into growing some mushrooms, but that is another project to follow later!

Another item of interest for the week is that I did a little research into biodynamic gardening techniques. I purchased Maria and Matthias Thun's 2019 Biodynamic Almanac (here is its listing on the publisher's site). I am very curious about these somewhat controversial methods; the controversy is due to lack of scientific evidence to support gardening by the lunar calendar. However, I find it intriguing, certainly don't think it's validity is an impossibility, and there are farmers who swear by the methods. This edition also includes a section about beekeeping, which I found interesting.

This morning we have a fresh coating of snow, but I am enjoying all the planning for spring. I hope you are enjoying what I have to share about it! Feel free to reach out with the contact form if you have ideas or questions. Thank you, and have a great day!