If you’ve visited the Soil&Water garden, you might be wondering why we created a layout with mixed edibles in small rows.

“What’s the philosophy behind small-scale garden rows, anyway?”

I thought it would be a nice way for people visiting the garden to consider ideas for planting edibles mixed together in a small space. If you have limited planting space at home – and who doesn’t?! – how would you plant it? There are a ton of cool ideas out there for small garden plots, container gardening, even vertical gardens. (Check out this article on 16 cool raised bed designs from Sunset.com.) 

Our small-scale garden layout is based on an article from Sunset Gardens that plants mixed edibles in a 16′ x 16′ plot which came down to two main beds 11′ x 3′ approximately with beans and sunflowers along a back fence.

In the Soil&Water garden, our garden rows are 3′ wide already so where two rows come to an apex was perfect to mimic the same idea. Thus I used their model for planting our small scale garden ‘plot’ with mixed edibles. 

Another reason this is a nice method is because you can consider companion plants, natural pest deterrents, even pollinator attractants in the plantings. I modified the design slightly based on veggies that made it on our planting list.  

The small scale garden was planted pretty early in the season (for stuff like tomatoes, squash, and eggplant) so another thing this will provide is a comparison of how these crops do with an early planting vs. regular suggested time.  

A quick update on what’s been happening at the garden…

• We planted a small-scale garden a couple weeks ago.

• We finished building the raised beds, coated them with an eco-friendly stain, and filled them with dirt. So they’re ready for planting! 

• We planted the 2-tier raised bed in the center of the garden over the past two weeks.

• The children planted one raised bed with sunflowers (so far).  

• We moved the dirt pile. 

• Irrigation is nearly complete as we connect to the city water system.  

Please come join in the progress, gardening is fun!

A lot if you hold a garden egg hunt.  Yesterday, April 12, kids hunted for eggs around Heritage park and found seeds hidden in some of them (and candy too!, of course).  One of the main seeds they found were Petaluma Gold Rush beans.  A variety that Soil&Water has been asked to grow for the Silicon Valley Grows seed bank.  
Silicon Valley Grows has an annual project where gardeners in the community all grow the same seed.  The 2018 project is the Petaluma Gold Rush bean and we are excited to participate in growing some this season.  We’ll get to try them out and save seeds for the seed bank.  In fact, they may be available next year through the Mountain View public library’s free seed library.  If you don’t know about this great resource, the public library has a seed library where you can go and take seeds for your personal use for free.