Growing Twice As Much From The Same Area

I love getting as much out of my garden as I possibly can and although it is fairly large as vegetable gardens go I still try to increase my production. 

This year many of my beds are already on their second crop, by double cropping like this I can probably get around 50 crops out of the 32 beds in my main garden, some crops on the other hand need to be in a for a long time and I have some I'm growing out for seed and that takes much longer.

Yesterday was a great example of this, I'd finished harvesting my first bed of kohlrabi and straight away I amended the soil and sowed five rows of carrots in it's place. 

Here's a video of me talking about how I'm trying to get more from some of my beds by double or even triple cropping them in a season.

Normal yearly crop rotation rules have to go out of the window when you do this though. 

Do you get more than one crop from your veg beds?

What fast growing crop do you love?

View Of The Garden

Having the scaffold up on the house has given me a different view of the veg garden.

Here it is in all it's glory!

I've been steadily altering the beds down the right hand side to be narrower, 30" wide rather than 4ft wide. I'll alter the left hand side in the spring after I've had my winter crops out. 

I'm also digging up my nursery bed at the end which contains around 100 young fruit trees or so to be put back into production as veg beds. I'm hoping to either plant or sell the fruit trees (mainly apple trees).

Hopefully down this main strip that should leave me with thirty 30" by 10ft beds, fifteenth either side, plus two larger beds at the top, by the greenhouse, to be herb, flower and experimental beds. This should be great for crop rotation and to mean we can grow more, as we've become a bigger family over the last few years we're suddenly eating a lot more, so the more I grow the less it costs! 

All good in theory, I just hope I can keep on top of them. I have big plans to use plastic mulch, green manures, cover crops and inter-cropping to make sure I don't have too much space bare for weeds to take hold (again). 

I also have plans for other areas to be used as growing areas, but I know I need to learn to not bite off more than I can chew all the time!  

What do you think? Will I keep it under control?

Sowing Swedes

Or to Americans Rutabaga, which I think I almost prefer! 

There's not many things we can sow this late and get a good crop but I always sow my swedes in June to hopefully follow on from something else.

 The trouble with them is they come from that ultra high maintenance group - Brassicas. The footballers wives of the vegetable world. 

You can't do enough for them! They need plenty of well rotted manure, careful sowing away from pests, slug protection, netting from birds, netting from cabbage white butterfly, collars to stop the root fly, the list goes on. 

Cabbages and purple sprouting in the ground

Your winter plot looks pretty bare without brassicas though! And I do love the humble old swede. Mashed with butter on the side of your roast or mixed in with your stew after you've been working outside in the cold all day it takes some beating! The girls seem to love it as well so I'm planning on putting plenty in this year. 

Does everyone else have this love hate relationship with all the brassicas (not just swedes?)?

Veg Planting Plan & Crop Rotation

I finally managed to draw up a "proper" planting plan for the veg garden this year (not including the soft fruit garden) and then the baby took a bite out of it! Never mind, I'm not doing it again!

I'm working on a 6 year rotation using the groups: potatoes, alliums, roots, legumes, curbits & brassicas. 

Each has two 4ftx10ft beds and the whole system moves clockwise two plots at a time each year. So as an example the roots will follow the legumes each time.

The herbs and salad beds at the top stay put and the strawberries will get moved every three years onto a fresh plot. There's also one plot to grow any "random veg" that I come across and want to experiment with (and my leeks as I haven't room in the allium beds this year).

In amongst the veg will be plenty of flowers to encourage the bees and down the right hand side of the garden there is small 2ft by 2ft gaps for flowers at the end of each path.

I will also be adding more perennial veg in the future, but further down the garden in raised beds as it lies wet past these annual veg beds, and I'll complete my line of cordon apple trees with some of the trees from grafts I did this year.

What crop rotation do you use (if any) and do you stick to it religiously like I do? Also do most people go to the bother of drawing it all out or just keep it in their head?