Garden Cartography

This is a map we drew of the garden at the beginning of last season. We'd built all the beds and planted some spring things, but the rest was left empty for summer stuff. We wanted a map of what we planted so we could remember for future seasons. Unfortunately, for a map like this to work, you have to actually write things on it. We were pretty good at first–I even marked different varieties of flowers!–but but we soon became bored and stopped keeping track. Consequently, the end of the summer was filled with moments of, "Hey! Parsley!" and, "Did you plant these carrots?"

We figured it would be best to finally finish the map, so we could think about crop rotation and things for next season. I Photoshopped labels onto the picture (which you can probably only read if you click it to make it really big) and upped the contrast so the pencil became more clear. Here's the garden:


The gate is right at the top of the picture, and it faces east. That's the only way in right now, but we're planning to add another gate on the north side (left side of the picture) for next summer. Nearly all of the rectangular beds measure four feet by eight feet–the exceptions are the looong bed to the left of the gate, the blob-shaped bed to the right of the gate, and the two little beds below that. The garlic, in the southwest corner, is long gone–that was last year's crop. It's been replaced with four-by-eight beds, two of which are currently planted with cold weather vegetables.

We're going to make a map on the computer that we can muck around with. The seed catalogues are rolling in, and we are already counting down the days until we can sow potatoes and start the spring crops under the hoop houses.