Organic Design for the Organic Garden
(or Plan for the Unplanned)
by Scott Vlaun

Planning an organic garden can be a joyous undertaking and a deeply inspiring process during the darkest days and the coldest of winter weather. Planning for summer's bounty and beauty is a great way to get the family together around a pile of seed catalogs and learn what is important to each of us, as we dream about what a garden could provide and how it might look. Volumes have been written on the subject of garden design and, of course, everyone has a different vision of "garden." That being said, there are some fairly simple concepts that can be helpful in any garden design project, concepts that can ultimately save labor and increase the productivity and beauty of your garden. Some of these concepts come from permaculture, others from my own experience or from other sources.

Gardens have to be one of the most difficult things to plan. You can figure out a day-by-day schedule for every square foot of your garden but have it dashed before you get started when the weather fails to cooperate, or a pest intervenes. This does not mean that starting with a well-conceived plan is a bad idea. The exercise of mapping out a garden and assigning crops to specific locations and timeframes is extremely useful and increases your understanding of the possibilities at hand. If you're lucky, most of what you conceived will turn out as envisioned, but there will always be surprises along the way; some good, some not so good. Crop failures are a fact of life in gardening and how we approach them can go a long way towards our satisfaction with our "plan."

Stay flexible and observe. If something is not working, try to figure out why, remove what's left of the crop, maybe add some compost, and try the crop again. Or, if the window on that crop has passed, or there is severe pest pressure, sow a shorter-season variety or a species that is not susceptible to the pest in question. I like to keep some seedlings on hand to replace those that don't survive transplanting or that succumb to pests or disease. Fast-growing salad crops like Arugula or Komatsuna can be great for filling in spaces that might open up, or for taking advantage of spaces around squash or other seedlings that will ultimately occupy a lot of space. Bare ground can also be a good reason to sow a fast-growing annual cover crop such as buckwheat (the leaves are also edible); cover crops will suppress weeds and create organic matter that you can cut and leave as mulch as other crops take over. When left to flower, buckwheat also attracts pollinators and other beneficial insects. Other fast-growing crops that take advantage of vacant space include radishes, broccoli raab, amaranth greens, huazontle greens, bush beans, and baby spinach.

Again, careful observation in the garden is essential. In effect, you will be "designing" your garden every day; I like to call it organic design for the organic garden. To be able to do this effectively, placement of the garden and placement of crops within it are important. The best rule of thumb here is to plant the items that need the most attention close to your door, and those things that need a little less love further away. In the lexicon of permaculture this is called zoning. Zone 1 is the area just outside the kitchen, a place for culinary and fresh tea herbs and a perpetual salad garden: here, basil, parsley, and mints mingle with cherry tomatoes and a bed of spinach, all woven into a fabric of edible greens—many self seeding, wintered over or perennial—and, of course, of flowers. We eat fresh from this garden multiple times every day and pull a few weeds as we go. Tending to this garden is more like shopping and grazing than hardcore gardening. Because we are in this garden all the time, we catch any pest or weed issues before they get traction, and we pick our food at the peak of perfection.

We started this little garden with a careful plan several years ago. We sketched out beds to be as wide as we could make them, while still allowing us to reach the middle without stepping on the soil. All the things that we love to eat every day were dotted across the drawing; we allotted more space for our vegetable "staples" such as spinach, mesclun, and small amounts of different lettuce varieties and other salad greens. When the first mustard greens began to flower and some of the spinach beds expired, we realized that we needed to photocopy the drawing of the beds and update it regularly. To maximize our production on this little garden, we constantly updated based on whatever we could squeeze in. Once lots of crops started flowering, we realized that the flowers of mustard greens and other brassicas attracted beneficial insects; in addition, they added beauty and dimension to the garden and an elegant edible touch to salads. Before we knew it, we had seed crops going and either collected them for later planting or allowed them to "shatter" in place. Often when a few tall plants have "gone to seed" in a bed, we'll either direct-seed or transplant another crop underneath them to take their place when they've completed the cycle. These days there is rarely a shortage of seedlings sprouting up in the beds from crops we introduced in the past; these random "volunteers" actually are part of the "plan," which has gotten looser and looser as we observe what nature has in mind for these crops. Now our plan is to add compost when beds are changed over and allow for as much self-seeding as possible, while plugging in new favorites as space or whimsy allows.

Once Zone 1 is established it will pretty much take care of itself, if you give it a little love every time you harvest. This will free up your gardening energy to move out into Zone 2. This is where the "real food" grows; food that might be harvested every few days throughout the season, such as summer squash, slicing tomatoes, or green peppers. The far reaches of Zone 2 are reserved for storage crops like potatoes, rutabagas, onions, garlic, or winter squash that are happy with a little less attention.

I still try to visit Zone 2 every day for a kind of "constitutional," an almost Zen-like walk up and down the paths, but I rarely tend to these crops more than once a week. Heavy layers of mulch take care of most moisture and weed issues. On a good year, most of the work is thinning, harvesting, fertilizing, and dealing with pests through row-cover applications and hand picking. Rotate crops around the garden on a yearly basis, and don't plant too much of one thing in one place if you've got pests that you are trying to outwit.

Cultivating lots of flowers among the vegetables further confuses pests, helps keep a good ecological balance by supporting beneficials, and makes for an enjoyable, ever-changing stroll—during which you constantly observe for clues as to how to plan better next time. Watch how the sun and wind play out. Is there a better place for a windbreak of trellised legumes or tall amaranth? Is that corn crop casting too much shade on the yacon? Where does the soil stay moist the longest? What part of the garden goes into shade on late summer afternoons? The more information you can gather, the better you can plan future crops. Again, if something's not working, don't be afraid to yank it out and try something else. There's always something that can be planted, whether it's a quick crop of radishes or a winter cover crop.

Maybe Zone 2 is as far as your garden will take you. Maybe a few containers on the porch satisfies your needs. But if you've got the space and time, you might think about perennial food crops such as apples and grapes, large stands of medicinal herbs for tinctures or salves, or perennial cover crops for soil building and livestock or wildlife habitat. This Zone 3 area, a step further out from your home base, can take on a vertical dimension with shade-tolerant crops thriving under an overstory of fruit and nut trees.

Of course, all of the above are only recommendations and each person's garden will evolve differently, reflecting needs and desires, as well as unique aesthetic. Whatever scale and style your gardening endeavors take on, a plan built on flexibility and diversity and informed by close and careful observation will enliven and hone your senses. May your plans infuse and inspire your on-going design process for greater satisfaction and production.

Scott Vlaun
Editor

Photo captions: (1) A perennial herb border (2) Mixed greens gowing in a Zone 1 bed (3) Flowers attract beneficial insects (4) Zone 2 illustrated at the Maine gardens (5) Yacon growing in the shade of corn