Sunday, February 28, 2010

Help Plan My Garden Expansion!

This past fall we got rid of my nemesis and it was a good thing, too. My nemesis was an oak tree that overhung the garden and the house, putting both into shade around 1:00 PM during the summer and dumping its weight in acorns on the garden in fall. We decided to only take the one overhanging branch off, but when the tree climber went up, sure enough, the whole tree was split and would have come down on its own...right on top of the house. I feel like we dodged a bullet AND got more sun for the garden in the process.

So, this more sun means I may be able to get one or two more 8x4 beds in that could be trellised. Now, my problem is two fold. I'm just itching to get out there and put the beds in. I hate having something in mind and not being able to act on it, but I know I need to have patience. I need to wait until the leaves fill in so I can see exactly how much and where the additional sunlight has been granted, because it would be my luck to put the beds down directly in the shadow of the remaining trees.

My secondary problem comes with how to place them since I'm notoriously spatially challenged. My garden now is laid out more for aesthetics, not taking into account the shading of one box on another. So....help me plan this out, hypothetically assuming it all remains in sunlight in spite of the tree growth. I can adjust it from there. Here's the garden as it is. Usually there is a trellis on the back of the last box, if you need that to account for shading.
The sun travels over on the far left from front to back. It doesn't cross right over it. I volunteered the boy and the neighbor's boy to stand in for the boxes since I'm not good at any mapping programs to do it digitally. Here we go:
I could do them in rows:

I could do them next to each other in a line:I could also do them L shaped:

Any thoughts? I also suppose I'd have to do them in line with the back bed or the trellis would shade them out if I placed them behind it, right? Or maybe not if it was far enough to the right.

This kind of stuff drives me nuts until I have everything in place. I just can't afford to make a mistake on this one.

Thanks for the advice!

4 comments:

  1. Is the trellis something that can be moved from bed to bed? If it is, I would probably continue in the same line you had them in. Keep them out of the kids' way, but still make them convenient to take care of.

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  2. I'd make the trellis removeable, yes. You mean keep on extending the line of the back bed, right?

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  3. Things will only be so long, shadewise, and there are ways to determine that. I wish I could get an Answer Person out to tell me if my shade-producing ideas are too much, too.

    The "L" shape would be welcoming for you. Have you used graph paper yet?

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  4. Yeah, I've used graph paper.

    Silly girl. ;)


    I just can't work out the shading on it. I suppose I'll have to wait it out. It's driving me nuts.

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