Week 8 · Design

Plan on paper first

Edible Landscapes

August catalogues arrive with seductive photographs. Your block remembers last year’s blight, drought, and glut. Write rotation before order: solanums follow legumes; corn follows nitrogen fixers; leave garlic bed marked for eighteen months.

Support NZ seed growers where varieties suit your climate — open-pollinated lines you saved from summer link directly here. One or two new trials per season beat twenty impulse packets.

Ordering discipline

  1. Draw beds to scale

    Include paths and perennial zones — not fantasy 50m² of corn on 20m² lawn.

  2. List failures and wins

    Repeat winners; drop varieties that never ripened in your frost window.

  3. Calculate succession dates

    Back from first frost and last frost for your nearest climate station.

  4. Budget includes potting mix

    Seed is cheap; trays, mix, and labels are not.

Four-year minimum for potatoes and tomatoes in same soil — longer if disease appeared.

Children can colour bed plans and choose one novelty crop — ownership reduces “I won’t eat that” at harvest.