Sustainable Garden Planning

It's the beginning of the year and that means it's time for one of the most important stages of farming; planning. Planning is an important step not only because it will determine what produce you will be harvesting and when but because it can affect your soil health and agroecosystem for years to come! On January 18th, armed with the crop plans from previous years, our class got busy selecting the crops we will be planting in the terraces in front of the Richmond campus. Since we employ organic methods in our production system a strong crop rotation system is essential. The main objective with our crop rotation is to avoid duplicating crop families in the same area for several years. This will help with pest/disease management and help reduce the nutrient demands in a particular area. We also want to insure that we are providing food for pollinators throughout the season, spreading out our expected harvest dates and avoiding the duplication of crops we grow in the orchard! Whew! It's a lot to think about!

After spending some time selecting what we would like to grow we went on out to the terraces to learn more about the soil and previous planning strategies. The terraces up front are man made garden planters. They are built in cement terraces which increases the soil temperature, allowing us to get in early and create an optimal environment for heat loving crops. Okra or sweet potatoes anyone?

Along the edges of the beds we would like to include more perennials so that we can have some areas where we aren't pulling plants out every year. Perennial plants can improve soil health with their deep root systems and reduce soil disturbance. We already have some asparagus planted in one spot and in partnership with the KPU design school we have also included some perennial dye plants such as indigo and turmeric! We'd like to include some more perennial food plants but this perennial area would make a great space to include some pollinator plants. I like the idea of including lavender, anise hyssop and perennial calendula so that we can multipurpose those pollinator plants for edible/medicinal uses. We also get the added benefit of those plants beautifying our gardens!

Our class dug a few holes so that we could take a look at our soil composition and horizons. As I mentioned previously our terraces are man made structures and have been filled with soil from external sources. When observing those holes we noticed about 2 different horizons, the top horizon which we have been adding compost to for a couple years and the bottom one which is mostly composed of sand.

 

The soil composition isn't amazing but the work that the sustainable agriculture program has been putting into those terraces over the past couple years has definitely improved what we’ve got to work with. One advantage to the sandy base is that we will have good drainage.

With so many considerations to be made we are nowhere near done our farm plan for the season. Getting the planning right is a step that should not be rushed as it can make all the difference in a successful season and future agroecosystem health!