Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Designing our next expansion

If you've been following our blog a little while, you know that we opened up a 20' x 20' concrete area for cultivation. It used to be the drive way for our back-facing garage. (weird home design!) Basically, you have to do a 3 point U-turn in order for us to park IN the garage! We've think it's too much hassle so we never used it as a car port.  Anyways, so far the land has laid fallow because we haven't decided quite what to do. This pic below displays red where in this property the new opening is:
Below, I have 6 designs on how to utilize the new space.
The dark brown is the land for growing crops. The lighter brown is for paths.

This is the most mundane: more rectangles in neat rows...
Here, I went over-board with the key-hole design,
which maximized tilling space, but convenience is minimized
On this one I scaled back a bit, opening access paths a little more
This fourth one even less on the tillable land
This one utilized path and tillage the best, plus it is easiest for watering access. (our family's favorite)

This one is pretty good too, but the Hen House might be too big.

We'd like your feed-back on which design you like,
or even suggestions to the designs! Thanks!

3 comments:

jake said...

They are all similar.. the keyhole designs. So its hard to pick one. I think its interesting and will add something special to the garden, so I would try one of those over the typical rectangle boxes.

I kinda like #4 or #6 the best, as they seem easiest to walk around everything. One mistake I did last year was boxes too close together with difficult walk space. This year I opened things up a bit so I can get a lawn mower in between the rows and since the walk spaces a wider, its just easier to water, fertilize, harvest, etc.

I love the keyhole idea though! I hope you do one of them!

cards4ubylouise and other treasures said...

I like the last one ~ #6. It seemed the most simplist. Once you get those chickens going, you just might want a large chicken coop.

When we lived on our 20 acres, the chickens shared space with the cows. So I would find eggs all over the place.

I like the idea of the paths, you are able to get to every part of your new garden....way to go. Will be fun to see how it grows.

Anne said...

What about figuring a way to also incorporate the chickens into the rotation? By that I mean possibly to incorporate a chicken tractor. May as well let them debug, scratch, fertilize the patches that are going to be fallow. Just a thought.

Being able to reach the plants definitely is a consideration. The less you have to step into the garden to reach things the better. Good soil loft makes for better root system and avoiding it compacting makes a big difference.

Awesome job :) your garden looks wonderful!