Garden Plan Evolution

I always find it interesting how my original garden plans take on a life of their own as the season progresses.  Sometimes plans must be adjusted because the number of plants is more or less than expected.  Take my potato beds for example.  In my origianl plans I only had two beds.  Then I went out and bought far too many seed potatoes for two beds, though they fit perfectly into three beds.  So I needed to find a new place for the beans I had planned for that extra bed.  I basically shifted everything one bed over and cut back on a bed of bush beans I had planned.  That is the nice thing about gardens - nothing is set in stone.  You just shift things around a little and you will find room for everything that you want to grow. 

I also want to work more with the seasons of gardening by using succession planting where I can.  I imagine that once some early season plants are finished producing I will pull them out and replace them with something that will mature in a short time period.  This way I can get more food out of the same space by using it for two crops in a season instead of only one.  I just haven't decided what crops will be going where once the first crop is gone.  This year's lettuce patch will probably become next years garlic patch.  After the early season peas are finishing up I will start adding lettuce to that bed until it is time to plant the autumn round of peas.

I also have ended up with a section along the side of one of my garden extensions where I had nothing planned for it because that space simply didn't exist on paper.  I was thinking about using it for a wheat bed or maybe planting some wildflowers in it to attract pollinators to my garden.  I noticed even a difference in the kinds of visitors that come to the garden in the past few years.  The first year there were the regulars: bees, flies, mosquitos, gnats, grasshoppers.  But last year I think I saw more things like praying mantises, ladybugs, all kinds of spiders (which I don't adore, but I do think they are useful) - a nice array of predator insects to help control bugs in my garden.  I also noticed many more butterflys and different kinds of bees. 

I think the final picture of each year's garden will always become more complex than the year before.  There are so many things I would like to grow, but I need to work towards it slowly.  I only have so much time in a day after all.  My future garden will extend to the limits of my backyard and imagination.  It would ideally include a fruit orchard complete with raspberry bushes, a variety of fruit trees, a rotating pasture for my chickens (and possibly some other medium sized livestock), and a veggie garden that would sustain a small family for a whole year.  Lofty ideals again. I do know that if I work towards it one tiny step at a time, then one day it could really be mine, one seed, one egg, one flower at a time.