The Raised Bed

Crops demanding the most water are grown on the raised bed. These
include a succession of lettuce plantings designed to fill the
summer salad bowl, summer spinach, spring kohlrabi, my celery patch,
scallions, Chinese cabbages, radishes, and various nursery beds that
start overwintered crops for transplanting later. Perhaps the bed
seems too large just for salad greens. But one entire meal every day
consists largely of fresh, raw, high-protein green leaves; during
summer, looseleaf or semiheading lettuce is our salad item of
choice. And our individual salad bowls are larger than most families
of six might consider adequate to serve all of them together.

If water were severely rationed I could irrigate the raised bed with
hose and nozzle and dry garden the rest, but as it is, rows 1, 2, 7,
and 8 do get significant but lesser amounts from the sprinklers.
Most of the rows hold a single plant family needing similar
fertilization and handling or, for convenience, that are sown at the
same time.

Row 1

The row's center is about 3 feet from the edge of the raised bed. In
March I sow my very first salad greens down half this row--mostly
assorted leaf lettuce plus some spinach--and six closely spaced
early Seneca Hybrid zucchini plants. The greens are all cut by
mid-June; by mid-July my better-quality Yellow Crookneck squash come
on, so I pull the zucchini. Then I till that entire row,
refertilize, and sow half to rutabagas. The nursery bed of leek
seedlings has gotten large enough to transplant at this time, too.
These go into a trench dug into the other half of the row. The leeks
and rutabagas could be reasonably productive located farther from
the sprinklers, but no vegetables benefit more from abundant water
or are more important to a self-sufficient kitchen. Rutabagas break
the winter monotony of potatoes; leeks vitally improve winter
salads, and leeky soups are a household staple from November through
March.

Row 2: Semi-Drought Tolerant Brassicas

Row 2 gets about half the irrigation of row 1 and about one-third as
much as the raised bed, and so is wider, to give the roots more
room. One-third of the row grows savoy cabbage, the rest, Brussels
sprouts. These brassicas are spaced 4 feet apart and by summer's end
the lusty sprouts form a solid hedge 4 feet tall.

Row 3: Kale

Row 3 grows 125 feet of various kales sown in April. There's just
enough overspray to keep the plants from getting gnarly. I prefer
kale to not get very stunted, if only for aesthetics: on my soil,
one vanity fertigation about mid-July keeps this row looking
impressive all summer. Other gardens with poorer soil might need
more support. This much kale may seem an enormous oversupply, but
between salads and steaming greens with potatoes we manage to eat
almost all the tender small leaves it grows during winter.

Row 4: Root Crops

Mostly carrots, a few beets. No irrigation, no fertigation, none
needed. One hundred carrots weighing in at around 5 pounds each and
20-some beets of equal magnitude make our year's supply for salads,
soups, and a little juicing.

Row 5: Dry-Gardened Salads

This row holds a few crowns of French sorrel, a few feet of parsley.
Over a dozen giant kohlrabi are spring sown, but over half the row
grows endive. I give this row absolutely no water. Again, when
contemplating the amount of space it takes, keep in mind that this
endive and kohlrabi must help fill our salad bowls from October
through March.

Row 6: Peas, Overwintered Cauliflower, and All Solanaceae

Half the row grows early bush peas. Without overhead irrigation to
bother them, unpicked pods form seed that sprouts excellently the
next year. This half of the row is rotary tilled and fertilized
again after the pea vines come out. Then it stays bare through July
while capillarity somewhat recharges the soil. About August 1, I wet
the row's surface down with hose and fan nozzle and sow overwintered
cauliflower seed. To keep the cauliflower from stunting I must
lightly hand sprinkle the row's center twice weekly through late
September. Were water more restricted I could start my cauliflower
seedlings in a nursery bed and transplant them here in October.

The other half is home to the Solanaceae: tomato, pepper, and
eggplant. I give this row a little extra width because pea vines
run, and I fertigate my Solanaceae, preferring sprawly tomato
varieties that may cover an 8-foot-diameter circle. There's also a
couple of extra bare feet along the outside because the neighboring
grasses will deplete soil moisture along the edge of the garden.

Row 7: Water-Demanding Brassicas

Moving away from irrigation on the other side of the raised bed, I
grow a succession of hybrid broccoli varieties and late fall
cauliflower. The broccoli is sown several times, 20 row-feet each
sowing, done about April 15, June 1, and July 15. The late
cauliflower goes in about July 1. If necessary I could use much of
this row for quick crops that would be harvested before I wanted to
sow broccoli or cauliflower, but I don't need more room. The first
sowings of broccoli are pulled out early enough to permit succession
sowings of arugula or other late salad greens.

Row 8: The Trellis

Here I erect a 125-foot-long, 6-foot-tall net trellis for gourmet
delicacies like pole peas and pole beans. The bean vines block
almost all water that would to on beyond it and so this row gets
more irrigation than it otherwise might. The peas are harvested
early enough to permit a succession sowing of Purple Sprouting
broccoli in mid-July. Purple Sprouting needs a bit of sprinkling to
germinate in the heat of midsummer, but, being as vigorous as kale,
once up, it grows adequately on the overspray from the raised bed.
The beans would be overwhelmingly abundant if all were sown at one
time, so I plant them in two stages about three weeks apart. Still,
a great many beans go unpicked. These are allowed to form seed, are
harvested before they quite dry, and crisp under cover away from the
sprinklers. We get enough seed from this row for planting next year,
plus all the dry beans we care to eat during winter. Dry beans are
hard to digest and as we age we eat fewer and fewer of them. In
previous years I've grown entire rows of dry legume seeds at the
garden's edge.

Row 9: Cucurbits

This row is so wide because here are grown all the spreading
cucurbits. The pole beans in row 8 tend to prevent overspray; this
dryness is especially beneficial to humidity-sensitive melons,
serendipitously reducing their susceptability to powdery mildew
diseases. All cucurbits are fertigated every three weeks. The squash
will have fallen apart by the end of September, melons are pulled
out by mid-September. The area is then tilled and fertilized, making
space to transplant overwintered spring cabbages, other overwintered
brassicas, and winter scallions in October. These transplants are
dug from nurseries on the irrigated raised bed. I could also set
cold frames here and force tender salad greens all winter.

Row 10: Unirrigated Potatoes

This single long row satisfies a potato-loving household all winter.
The quality of these dry-gardened tubers is so high that my wife
complains if she must buy a few new potatoes from the supermarket
after our supplies have become so sprouty and/or shriveled that
they're not tasty any longer.