Garden Plan and Sowing Schedule for 2021 - Live Slow Run Far

Garden Plan and Sowing Schedule for 2021

För att komma till inlägget på svenska, klicka här: Odlingsplan och så-schema för 2021

Now it’s finally time to share our garden plans and drawings for this year – how exciting! As the snow is melting and the birds are tuning up, we’ve really been itching to get going the past few weeks. A whole range of seeds has found their way into the soil already, and the most magical time is thus ahead of us.

For the first time, we’re approaching a new season without any new additions to our garden (well, except for this LED grow light shelf). This is our fourth year growing, and all the previous have seen new patches or boxes, but as our hands have been baby busy since May last year, it seems totally in order we haven’t expanded. And even though Theo might not qualify as a baby anymore – he’s almost 10 months now – it feels rather obvious that we won’t have as much time for our garden this year. Does that mean we’re downscaling and will be growing less? Definitely not! It just means that we’re even more meticulous with our plans and have tried to design them so that our garden will be low maintenance but still yield a lot per invested hour of work. We’re still aiming to harvest from the same space several times, and feel happy with the drawings.

For those not too familiar with our garden, we have two hugelkultur inspired patches measuring 0.6×6.0 meters each, two smaller patches of roughly 2-3 m2 each, ten garden boxes of 1.5 m2 each (if these intrigue you, please see our Guide to Building Your Own Garden Boxes blog post for all the details) and a small greenhouse of about 4 m2 where we only keep potted plants. Conclusively, we have about 30 m2 of space + the greenhouse (in which we typically fit 15-20 pots), and can usually say that we’re self-sufficient for at least six months out of the year (potatoes, cabbage and carrots excluded)

These are the varieties we’ll be growing this season:

Vegetables

Tomatoes (San Marzano + Red Pearl + Ida Gold + Katja + Chocolate Cherry + Karoline)
Cucumber (Moneta + Beth Alpha + Telegraph)
Bell pepper (King of the North)
Hot pepper (Hot Portugal)
Eggplant (Diamond)
Summer squash (Dark Fog + Primula)
Winter squash (Butternut + Delicata)
Green kale (Westland Winter + Curly Half-tall)
Dino kale (Nero di Toscana)
Broccoli (Premium Crop)
Pak choi (Bonsai)
Spinach (Nores)
Chard (Five Colors + Fordhook Giant)
Lettuce (Little Gem)
Fennel (Fino)
Celeriac (Mars)
Leeks (Northern Lights)
Garlic
Corn (Incredible)
Green beans (Provider + Sunray + Saxa)
Pole beans (Neckarkönigin)
Sugar snap peas (Cascadia)
Snow peas (Norli + Märta + Lokförare Bergfälts heirloom grey pea)
Parsnip (White Gem)
Radishes (French Breakfast)
Potatoes (varieties not determined yet)

Annual herbs

Dill (Tetra)
Parsley (Gigante di Napoli)
Basil (Genovese)
Cilantro (Marino)

Flowers

Cornflower
California poppy
Cosmos
Poppy
Calendula

Perennials

Roman chamomile (we grow this for tea)
Peppermint
Green mint
Oregano
Tarragon
Thyme
Sage
Rosemary (we keep these in pots and store them above freezing during the winter)
Lavender

New varieties this year include celeriac, fennel and leeks. We really hope they’ll all like it here, but perhaps leeks most of all. Not just because we love leeks, but also because we’ve failed miserably with our previous onion growing attempts. Scallions and garlic we’ve definitely nailed, but we’ve only ever managed to grow pea-sized yellow and red onions. Sure, we’ve only tried growing them from seeds and not bulbs, but still – we’re ready for allium success! And fennel and celeriac are both vegetables we appreciate infinitely in cooking, so we hope to add these to the self-sufficiency list and be able to skip buying. When it comes to our greenhouse, it’ll be something like eggplant (3-4 plants), cucumber (5-6 st plants), bell pepper (7-8 plants), hot pepper (1-2 plants) and some (but not all) tomatoes in pots. 

The drawings below show the 2021 design. Our patches are all located in a shadier part of our property and typically only offer up one round of harvesting, but most of our boxes will see an early and a main season (these we thus have double drawings for). One box we’re actually shooting for three harvests from – lots of pak choi spring and fall, and then green and dino kale to enjoy as we please in the summer. Then we’ll grow tons of kale elsewhere and let it grow massive for late fall and winter harvests.

To have clear plans and drawings help us so much in being able to harvest a lot from a (relatively) small space. A proper sowing schedule is also immensely helpful, and below you’ll see this year’s edition. Some varieties you’ll see occur several times, which is simply due to the fact that we sow more than one round of them – and some we direct sow outside as well as start up inside.

Seed starting indoors

February: tomatoes, eggplant, bell pepper, hot pepper, celeriac, leeks

March: green kale, dino kale, broccoli, pak choi, parsley, lettuce, potatoes (put to sprout – will be planted outside around early May)

April: corn, summer squash, winter squash, basil, cucumber, cosmos, snap peas, green beans, pole beans, cilantro, fennel

May: green kale, dino kale, broccoli

June: lettuce, pak choi

Direct sowing outdoors

(November: garlic)

March: spinach, parsnip, dill

April: poppy, California poppy, calendula, cornflower

May: lettuce, chard, green beans, snap peas, snow peas

That’s that! If you’d like to learn more about vegetable growing, we can’t help but to recommend our Vegetable Growing for Beginners and our web shop, where we have complete digital guides that will take you from seed to plentiful harvest in your own garden. These come in different sizes depending on your space, and suit beginners as well as more experienced green thumbs. Good luck, and have a wonderful growing season!

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