Name: Maria
Location: Edmonton, AB
Type of space: Garden
Tell us about your outdoor project and how you enjoy it: This is my second year trying out this thing called gardening. I have switched from having one huge bed to having 3 boxed beds and what I like to refer to as the Free Range potato patch. It is a strictly vegetable/edible garden that I have planted using Companion Planting strategies.
I love going out in the morning over the weekend and just picking weeds, smelling the tomato plants, and making sure my babies are healthy and strong. I can't wait for our first harvest! We have 46 potato plants growing so I see a lot of potato dishes in our future. Yum!
The vegetables we are growing include: Carrots, Beets, Parsnips, Swiss Chard, Tomatoes, Herbs (Parsley, Lettuce, Dill, Oregano, Thyme, Rosemary, Chives), Red Potatoes, White (baking) potatoes, Cauliflower, Spanish Onions, Red Onions, Spring Onions, Red Cabbage, Zucchini, Butternut Squash, Spaghetti Squash, Sugar Snap Peas, Yellow Wax Beans, Green Beans, Scarlett Runner beans.
How did you create it? We rototilled a 20' x 15' patch in our yard and only used about 3/4 of it. My father in law built us 6'x6' boxes with a divider down the center. These I filled half way with soil and began planting by the square foot.
Everything has approximately 1 square foot of room, except for the root vegetables like carrots, beets, and parsnips. Those have less room as I was able to fit 3 rows per foot. It's a tight garden space, but things are filling in and shading out the weeds!
Recommended store, site, product or resource? I referenced a local website done by an organic farmer.
• Alberta Home Gardening
How did you squeeze 46 potato plants in a 6'x6' bed????? My 20 plants are in a 10'x10'block of garden. I can't imagine having enough room between plants in a 6'x6' bed to get large tubers. Good luck. Which varieties of potatoes did you plant, standard red and baking or unique varieties?
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I have 18 plants in one box and the rest are planted "free range" in that grassy patch to the left of the boxes (away from the house). I had so many seed potatoes left that I figured why let them go to waste?
For red potatoes I used the Norland variety as it is a really hardy potato here in Alberta. I can't remember exactly what variety the white is except that it isn't a russet burbank.. some other kind.
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