Garden Rotations - Thinking About the Plan.

The spring harvests have been on the light side.  Mostly I can pick enough lettuce or spinach for a dinner salad, or kale for a side dish.  In the last week though I have found that my broccoli has formed small heads that unfortunately I had to harvest early.  They want to bolt shortly after they begin to form, so I have cut a couple off and am hoping to do better harvesting the smaller side shoots.  I have also been picking the occasional handful of peas to add to my dishes, though they are suffering from the heat as well.  They have been putting out small pods and seem to be trying to ripen as quickly as possible.  I will probably end up pulling them out of that bed along with the spinach that is bolting and becoming bitter.  I was thinking about planting my fall garlic in this bed, but there will a gap of several months before I can do that.  In the meantime, I might fill it in with another patch of carrots and turnips - something that will be harvested by fall.

The next thing that I will be pulling is the garlic patch.  I had some chopped up scapes in a stir fry and they were tender and delicious!  The majority of the garlic leaves are quickly turning brown and I hope to start pulling it sometime this weekend.  Once this bed is pulled I think I might try planting a crop of cabbages here.

The onions have begun to form their bulbs and I hope they fill out in the next few weeks.  I hope to use this bed to grow a crop of fall peas.  Hopefully I can squeeze in a second harvest of peas before winter sets in.

The three different varieties of potatoes have been flowering for the past couple of weeks, so I know that they have started to form tubers beneath the soil.  I hope they stay growing long enough to make some good sized potatoes.  I may steal some new potatoes in the next couple of weeks, but I want the main crop to be harvested after the plants die back, so I can be sure they will store well.  If I harvest them by late July or early August I will probably try planting a fall crop of lettuce and spinach in these beds.

If all goes well in the garden this summer I think I will produce some really good sized crops of a wide variety of vegetables.  I will be thrilled if I can get two crops from one bed during my growing season.  Like having twice the garden in half the space!  And the best part will be going no further than my backyard to get some groceries!