Sharing all our garden secrets! Blake dives into the garden map and extensive seed spread sheet. Using Figma, they specify which varieties go in each bed as well as google sheets to organize all of the different seeds and growing information.
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Hey friends welcome back um glad you’re joining me today I’m just working through some of the uh 2024 garden seed plants and I thought I would bring you along I have my laptop next to me and I think I’ll just show you we have like a map of like where things were’re
Planning on going and then I also have a spreadsheet that I’ve been building out it’s taking lots of time um it’s my baby so I’d love to show that to you and hope hopefully that’ll inspire you to get uh organized for your growing season so let’s get into
It okay so um the program I’m using in this today is figma um me and Adrian are both graphic designers so we use figma a lot in our jobs which makes it handy for garden planning so let’s just jump into it this uh chaotic mess is our garden
Currently um so I can just show you some highlights some places where we want to put stuff and um where we’re expanding our garden because there’s a bunch of new patches and beds we are planning on doing so I can start with the main Garden at the moment this is the current
Setup we have these four trellises on each of the entrance to the garden and then three beds in each quadrant uh the brown boxes are areas for compost at the moment we haven’t built those inground compost beds so uh this one’s a hole and this one’s nothing it’s just empty
Um we are mixing things up a little bit this year I’m going to have a bunch of peas obviously in these rows um and for each of these beds 8 went and numbered all of them on the sides so I know what I’m talking about and then in relation
To that I’m going in with kind of like a Post-It type thing um and writing exactly what I want to put in these beds and how many and that helps me to know how many seeds I need to start and once I get into the garden to direct so um it’ll
Also tell me which area I I need to put them in this is all based off a square foot model bed um so when it comes to spacing a lot of things can be grown by the foot if you will um some of them are different so like for example carrots um
Can do 16 in a square foot so I have five areas where there’s carrots so that’s 5 * 16 and that’s how many carrots we’re going to have in this total bed um with onions you can put six in so that’s 6times 9 UM in each of these different areas
So that helps me to tell like what how many things we’re going to have um and if I’m over I’m I’m if I’m putting too many things in the bed see I do tend to get Kung ho I was looking at Tomatoes this morning I was like o that’s a lot of
Tomatoes but I’m also like I like tomatoes so maybe I’ll keep it I don’t know um so we have the all these beds laid out and uh what we’ve just done for the icons is just like look up icons online to find something to visually represent what’s going where um so like
I said before this was the existing Garden that we made yes yesterday last year um as well as this corn three sisters bed but basically everything else besides that in the strawberry beds is going to be new so I can start on this side ignore all
The I was looking for a good zucchini thing but ignore those uh we have three hazelnut trees here we want to have a pathway that we can still walk but there is a lot of land over here so I was thinking we could do a squash SL pumpkin bed SL watermelon
Bed and again with these these take up more space so I’m giving them quite a bit of room um and I have all of the different types listed out here and then below that we are doing a bunch of potatoes we did like two grow bags of potatoes last year and that was
Nothing that was like a meal so I ordered a bunch of potatoes and I’m super excited and they’re going to be coming in the spring so we have plenty of potato beds to create I think we’re just going to Mound them up we’re not going to like bury them um I’ve seen a
Lot of people have success with that so we have a German butter ball Yukon gem uh CA C CA gold and then more German butter ball and then with these beds we’re going to pair them with theams and maragold and probably some other flowers um cuz those are good companion
Plants I wanted to try doing like a little teepee like circle area with some of the peas again I’m trying to grow a bunch of peas um because we love garden peas and I’d like to not buy any peas like frozen peas just like throw in dishes um because they’re super
Super easy and adorable and I yeah I’m a pea person now that sounds kind of weird anyo um I’m going to do two little things over here and Surround it with flowers I also have um some icons where I’m going to have random Carousel flowers around these are dwarf type of
Uh sunflower and I think they only get to like 3T and then multiple heads on them so I think that will be fun to have like a little pop of sunflower throughout the garden um we are expanding our our beds further towards the house so we’re adding these two beds this one’s going
To be mostly a hot pepper bed um along with beans and carrots and whatnot and then this is going to be our Brasa bed we have a tree over here a maple tree and it does cast some shade so so I was thinking this would be a good area for
Brastias cuz they don’t need like super direct light at all times so we just have our broccoli and cauliflower and uh bok choy and stuff like that over here and then if we expand over to the right side of the garden we’re going to have two major beds of um carrots
Onions celery and cabbage along with like uh herbs like basil and flowers um we got pelleted Bolero carrot seeds like a a good amount from I think it was Johnny’s and so pelleted seeds you can’t really store as long or as well as like regular seeds so it is my goal to plant
All of them I think there’s like over a thousand so I do I do want to plant them and I think we are going to like succession sew um carrots this year so hopefully we can get through those I love carrots I love just eating like if you guys have
Not grown carrots it’s a whole experience like you it the sweetness is unfathomable like go and grow your own carrots cuz it they taste so good and we also use them in a lot of different dishes just as an additive or U for making stock so um super handy and again
With the onions like we want to have a bunch of onions cuz we love onions and we go through a bunch and it would be nice to not have to buy so many so those are those beds and then we have three like three sister no we have two three
Sister like u shaped beds with corns with corns with corn squash SL pumpkins and beans we got um a good amount of this honey and Cream Sweet Corn I believe it was from Botanical interest so that’s going to be these two beds um and between these I have a bunch of
Different squash I got so many like squash and gourd and pumpkin seeds so we’re going to load up on those and then um I also got a bunch of bean seeds so we’re going to Three Sisters this area over here which is exciting we grew corn last
Year and it was doing really well but we think a raccoon was like climbing up to eat our corn and then just knocked all of it down we had all of our corn in these three areas here and it all got pulverized before we could even eat it
So if we can get corn this year oh my God I’m going to die it’ll be great um so once you walk past the garden down kind of this slope this is like a sloped area and we have like a pear tree here so this is our original pumpkin patch we
Did pumpkins over here last year and what happened is it got pretty overrun with weeds um we did get pumpkins out of it like it was it was okay but I do think I want to do landscape fabric or something underneath um and these ones too you don’t really want your your
Pumpkins or your squash or your watermelons touching the soil because they can rot so I’m thinking maybe we’ll just try landscape fabric or some sort of covering of some sorts over here to manage the weeds and also to protect our pumpkins but yeah I have a bunch of different varieties here very excited
For those I’m thinking too on on the opposite side we have this like really large burn pile slash like fire pit area um it has a bunch of huge rocks around it so that’s not like moving anytime soon but I would love to do like a cute little sunflower patch I love
Sunflowers um so maybe we can do that this year too and in addition like what I have kind of like on the border of the walkways again the walkways are just like grass and clover they’re not like we don’t have like wood chip or gravel walkways we’re just indicating that we
Don’t want to grow anything in these spaces cuz we need to get places um but on the border I really want to put as many flowers as we can nerum marold basil to try to deter pests and also to bring in pollinators let’s see what else we got
Um oh yeah by the corn beds the three sisters and kind of across from the maple tree um we have some more potatoes um so I want to do our fingerlings we have a magic Molly fingerling and strawberry pot and I want to put those over here again with more flowers um surrounding
Them and yeah I think besides that’s where most of the seeds are going to go again we have more growing spaces in the front of our house um and a bunch of different places around our yard but that’s like this is the main growing space um but what I can
Show you actually is our spreadsheet so I’m going to switch over to that all right so This Is Our Big Daddy seed inventory list this has all the information that I need on it for the growing season so I can start off with our major categories up at the top so we
Have each of our different vegetables or flowers um so these are peppers and then we have the specific variety name red bell pepper Greek pepper CH came in the north Etc this um column has the seed number in it like how many seeds are in each
Packet and then I have the total amount of plants that I want to put out in the garden this is important because it references back to that map of knowing how many seeds I actually need to start this is a check mark for if it is an heirloom or open pollinated again
Very important for seed saving so that I know that these varieties I can save and REO every single year I I have the packet from which they came whether they should be started indoor or outdoor and then also their start date as well as the main location
Next column I have is whether we save the seeds or not um so anything with the check mark we saved from last year I also have the year available um to mark down some of these seeds are from earlier years 2022 2023 so I am just referencing that to know
That these guys I should prioritize in using up I also have a column for price um I like to just know that and have that off hand and uh I’m curious to see the fluctuations from year to year and then below I have it categorized by flowers herbs gourds and
Melons beans and peas tomatoes peppers root vegetables onions and garlic brastias and greens other which is a asparagus celery corn cucumber eggplant mix and then our cheat sheet so there you go this is our flowers section we have amaran bbal EA Hol Hawk hiup lavender Lupin marold sunflowers
Sweet peas blah blah blah um pretty straightforward the next category we have is herbs um look at all that basil oh my God we love basil um it’s a great pest deterant it’s great for pollinators a lot of the different versions are just so good smelling like the sacred basil
Tulsi Hol holy basil is like one of the best best smells I’ve smelt in my life um just fantastic plants so we’re growing a bunch of that next category is gourd SL melons they’re not really related but they do have similar growing areas so I decided to put those all together and I
Categorized by summer versus winter then I have my watermelon I only bought three different types this year but I’m very excited to have watermelon and then we have all our pumpkins I yeah we we have a lot of squash this year next category is beans SL peas for
The beans I have um them categorized by drying snap pull and Runner and then the peas I’m shelling snap and snow next category is tomato tomes and peppers um so I have Peppers up here divided by sweet versus hot this also includes my overwintered Peppers so I
Think we did already put that in one of our videos but we overwintered four different pepper plants that did the best in our garden last year and we’re going to try to plant those out and see if we can have like a seconde pepper plant which is really cool so we have
Two two red bells a Pano and a rainbow jalapeno that we save so I’m going to put those back in the garden and we’ll see if we can actually uh do that and then with our Tomatoes I have them divided by Roma slicing cherry and then I also have tomaas and um ground
Cherries I’ve never grown ground cherries before and I’m very excited to see this I don’t know I think I’ll really enjoy that so very excited for that and then next category is root vegetables so we have our carrots radish and potatoes then we have our onions and
Garlic so aliums and garlic uh we have yellow onions breed onions leaks and then our garlic we already planted all our garlic in the fall next category is brastias and greens so we have our broccoli broccolini brussels sprouts cabbage cauliflower and pack Choy and then in the greens we have
Lettuce other greens like arugula spinach um collards and then kale we have a other section for things that don’t really fall into anything um in there we have asparagus celery corn cucumber and eggplant the next thing is just the the cheat sheet for referencing
The frost so we start off with 10 to 12 weeks before last frost 8 to 10 6 to 8 4 to 6 which is also the same as as soon as possible or as soon as the ground can be worked but I do like to if it says as
Soon as the ground can be worked I do like to put ASAP but those are basically the same thing and then we have two to four 1 to two after Frost 1 to two after and then 2 to four after so have all of those in there right now I
Think this is going to really help organize us as we get our stuff going I can just like pull this up and be like okay I want five Ace bell peppers I’m not going to sew the entire freaking packet of 25 and now that’s going to be really
Hard because it when we’re still soil blocking I want all the plants I want all of them and it’s going to be really hard to be like okay like let’s sew I’m going to sew more than the ones I actually need so I’m going to sew probably
Seven um just in case two die but I’m not going to do more than that we’ll see if that happens but anyway so that is what we’re planning on right now I’m still actively working on it I’m having a very hard time not buying more seeds um even though I
Really don’t need any I think recovered but it’s it’s hard it’s hard um it’s an addiction I fully admit but yeah this has been a lot of work and I think it’s going to pay off and hopefully this is a system that we can use going forward for
The next growing seasons and we can continue to improve it and add to it and make our live streamlined um which is always optimal the less time we can spend thinking about our garden and like planning out the more time we can actually just Garden so I definitely have a few things
I’m super excited for um that we’re going to be growing one of them is the Dr white cheese yellow tomato um another one is just all the different types of peas uh maybe specifically the king Tutt those look really cool I’d love to hear what vegetables or flowers or anything
You guys are excited to grow in your Gardens and also I know I said I shouldn’t buy any seeds but if you guys have any recommendations for your like favorite things that you’ve grown or tried uh put them down below because I need I want a reason to buy more seeds
So help me feed my my addiction thank you if you guys like this kind of stuff and enjoy gardening and want to follow along on the adventure go ahead and subscribe click the Bell um we’re going to be posting a lot more content obviously it’s still January so we’re
Not going to be gardening just yet but I think we can start our very first seeds in February so it’s coming up so glad to have you guys here and I’ll see you in the next one bye where’s the camera there it is that was stupid I don’t know how people do that
Bye bye I need to end the video bye
1 Comment
How many acres is this garden? This looks so ambitious but based on your last videos you got a lot done in your first year. Can't wait to see a walk through!