Companion planting charts

I have been busy reading over the winter and finding more information about Companion plantings, Inter-planting of vegetables and flowers, and rotations in the vegetable plants.
Companion planting is based on the idea that certain plants can benefit others when planted close to each other so that some cultural benefit like pest control, disease prevention, nutrient support and higher yields, can be utilized by the plants growing together. Knowing what plants can be planted together helps to utilize your beds better, because you can plant denser, the technique comes from the Bio-intensive garden philosophy. It also helps with the succession planting, because you use the space around larger or later plants, planting quick maturing and smaller plants between them. Granted it takes much more planning to do it successfully and to make the planning easier, I came up with the idea of making a chart. Which I will tape into the lid of my seed box to have it always available when planting outside.

There is a lot of information out there in books and the internet but I found many of the charts lacking for my use. Most of them gave you some but not enough information. Some of the information I didn't need. I just don't need to know when I am outside planting, why I plant them together, just give me what I can plant together and what I need to know for the task. Many of the online charts usually just cover the basic vegetables. Many didn't even give you all the kinds of vegetables one could grow together, keeping their information very basic.

For a gardener that goes for the unique and unknown vegetables to add to the common available ones basic just doesn't cut it. I am such an information hog, I just needed more!
So I decided I would learn as much as I could about companion planting and then put what I have learned into a chart, utilizing all the information I found.

 Some of the best information I found in the book I got last year
The Kitchen Garden Grower's Guide by Stephen Albert

This book is so full of the basic information to help you grow your garden and covers many more vegetables then most garden books I have come across and the best is it is all in a simple Encyclopedic format.

So here are the charts I made. They are large and I had to break it into 2 files. If you click on the picture it should pop up into a larger file. I probably will keep adding more information to the charts as I learn more about companion plantings of some of the newer vegetables I am getting. I also added some basic fertilizing and bed preparation information but didn't add the herbs and perennial vegetables into the chart, because I have my herbs in a separate herb garden area close to the vegetable garden and the perennial vegetables aren't planted in the raised garden beds in my garden.

Chart number one from Arugula to Eggplant

Chart number two from Endive to Turnips

                                                                      Enjoy!

Kitchen-garden planning?

I have been so busy the last few week working in the garden, getting my beds ready for this season, organizing what goes where and what to plant I hardly have had time to share with you what I been up to in my endeavor of growing my Kitchen garden.

I am trying to be more organized this year. I know, it will be quite a task.

I want to do more of an organized crop rotation rather then this
haphazardly rotation I normally am doing. Most years I just watch out where I planted my Tomatoes, Peppers, Eggplants, Cabbages, Broccoli and Cauliflower, Squash, Melons and Cucumbers, those I always rotate to a new bed each year, where none of their sisters have been growing. The rest of the smaller vegetables I normally just tuck somewhere, wherever I have a place for it. I have been known to loose a few vegetables because I could not remember where I tucked them in and my label got lost. And all of a sudden I see something shooting up, bolting and go to flower.
'Oh, there it is!' unfortunately it is to late to eat it now.

I have been using my garden software 'IG pro Garden' to get organized. I got all my numbered, raised garden-beds entered in there, all my vegetables, grouped by their Vegetable name and each one designated a rotating group.

group A - Cucumber/Squash Family
group B - Legumes
group C - Solanum (Peppers, Eggplants, Tomatoes, Potatoes...)
group D - Roots and Onion
group E - Brassica (Cabbage, Cauliflower, Broccoli...)
group F - Greens and Lettuce

since some vegetables like to grow together, but they are not necessarily in the same family and some even they are in the same family don't like to live with each other, and some can be almost grown with any other vegetable I also added these to different groups.
One example is Radish. Radish really goes along with almost anything and as long the soil drains well, is light and it has water it grows almost anywhere. So I added it to Group A, Group D, and Group F. Lettuce, Arugula, Beets, Carrots, Endive, Chicory, Corn Salad, Onion family are in Group D and F, Kale is also in this group but also in E. Basil, Parsley in Group C and F.
There are others I added to multiple groups which I am not mentioning now.
It makes the rotation a bit more complicated but since I grow such a large variety of vegetables it helps me to spread the crops a bit more around. I came up with this rotation after working through the book 'The Kitchen Garden Grower's Guide The Kitchen Garden Grower's Guide: A practical vegetable and herb garden encyclopedia'. This book is really nice to use if you just need the facts for each vegetables. I used the book to add the most important growing info into my garden software for each vegetable. The book showed which vegetables grow well together and what combination to avoid and the rotation for each plant.
To plan the placements of the vegetables I made a document with my numbered beds, each bed has a square foot garden grid to help visualize the area I have available. I wrote all the names of the vegetables in the proper space on that paper and then made several copies.

The IG Pro garden software lets me input tasks with a date attached. So I can make a task for example called  'indoor seeding' for a specific vegetable, add the varieties to the task and set up a date and when I open my program I open the task program of IG Pro and then I can look either at the task by culture type 'indoor seeding', 'outdoor seeding', 'transplant', 'fertilize' or by date, that needs to be done this month. So far I mainly input the seeding and planting/transplanting tasks for most of my vegetable crops but already it's making a big difference especially in my sucession sowing. I can print out a list with all the vegetables which need care for that month, listing every seeding date I planned or I can select a specific vegetable and then print out an report giving me a choice of all it's succession seeding dates or only the one I choose and also some growing notes for that specific plant.
Now I can print out a seeding and planting report from the  task program of the IG Pro Garden program take it and a copy of the garden bed document with me out to the garden and I know exactly where to plant my seed.
Next year I can see exactly where I had my plants. It will make my rotations much more easy to organize.
Already it is helping me quite a bit with my succession sowing and so far I have been keeping up with starting my plants at the proper dates.
Once I have all  my data input into the program I will be so organized.
If I only now could have a program to keep track of my tools I frequently loose in my large garden.........

Tools for the Kitchen Gardener

I have been buying garden things from Gardener Supply Company for years. They always seem to have the newest accessories to make gardening easier and I have been really happy with their offerings and service.
Look what they came up with now. The Gardener Supply Company now offers an online Kitchen Garden planner.
It is build on the concept of the 'Square Foot Garden' method and geared toward their popular
3' x 6' raised garden beds. It gives you a few options of pre-planned Kitchen Gardens, for the new Gardener just starting out and a bit unsure what to plant.
But the fun really starts with the 'Design your own Kitchen Garden'. This feature let's you choose from 30 different type of vegetables to drag and drop into a grid of 1' x 1' sections, which resembles your garden bed, it puts just the exact amount of vegetables in that grid as you can fit in that space.
I wished they had some more different types of vegetables, the selection right now is limited. Although you can substitute different vegetables which use the same spacing, instead the ones you actually want to plant, it sure would be better to be able to use the ones you have.
Hopefully they add more varieties with time.
After you are done, you can save and print out the garden with growing information or email it to yourself.
The program also offers a 'Step by Step Planting and Care Guide' and a 'Vegetable Encyclopedia'
which right now only has the vegetables they use in the program.
It also will let you link to garden accessories in the online catalog, you could use to grow your Kitchen Garden.
All in all it is a neat program to plan your Kitchen Garden and the best is, it is free.