This garden is currently planted to garlic with about 5 feet on one end open for something this spring. Then the area that is currently garlic will be planted with other greens and root vegetables in the late summer to early fall.

In the open end this spring, we are going to plant parsnips and radishes together. The biggest challenge with parsnips is that they generally take about 3 weeks to germinate. Often they don’t get sufficient water or attention throughout that period to have good germination. They can also get lost in weeds if you aren’t careful. We are going to be co-seeding to try to beat that problem. We will plant the parsnips and then thinly seed radishes in the same row. The radishes should be ready to harvest in about 4 weeks, just as the parsnips are showing up. We’ll see if the technique works!

You can see that I have 3 horizontals rows in each section, rather than going perpendicular to the bed. We are going to be planting right along the drip lines, since most of these vegetables have small seeds that need to stay moist. Because of that, we chose during planning to plant 3 varieties of each thing…one variety next to each drip line.

There are some fun varieties in this garden…Black, pink, and white fall radishes. Purple, round orange, and yellow carrots. Gold, pink & white striped, and cylinder-shaped beets. Red, yellow, and white turnips. Three parsnip varieties, each of which claims to be “the sweetest” variety. It will be colorful this fall, even if only the worms appreciate it!