When you have a mini-farm, you need to get the greatest productivity from the smallest amount of space. Maintaining and enhancing the fertility of the soil organically is a big part of making that sustainable; but one thing often overlooked is the importance of planning so that the maximum amount of food can be grown during the growing season. This is extremely important up North where I live, as our frost-free season can be quite short -- as short as 95 days in some years. 

In my book, Mini Farming for Self Sufficiency, there is a table detailing when crops should be started indoors or planted outdoors based upon the date of "last frost" for your area. In another chapter is a description of how to apply this for growing a second or fall crop as well. The idea is that, at any given point in time, there should be no bare earth. 

In order to make this easy on myself, every year I pick up a cheap daily planner. I mark the "last frost" and "first frost" days, and then I use my own table to count backwards and forwards from those dates to determine when to start my plants, plant my seeds or move my transplants outside. So, starting in late February and continuing through the middle of June, I'm starting a new set of transplants inside every weekend. Starting in April, transplants for onions, broccoli and similar crops get moved out into the garden. By the time I move out my tomatoes and peppers on Memorial Day weekend, I'm also starting my second crop of broccoli inside even though the first crop won't be ready for another three weeks. 

There are a few weekends where I don't have to start any transplants or plant anything out, of course. But by knowing these in advance, nothing takes me by surprise and gets done shoddily and my wife knows when she can get away with booking me for family get-togethers and such. This also lets me know in advance what supplies I may need so that I can have them when they are required rather than running around at the last minute looking for something.

When your farm is small -- a mini-farm -- you need every advantage you can get; and planning is one of the biggest! 

I mention growing corn and beans together in my book. This works great as corn loves nitrogen and the beans make it abundantly -- so the synergy is great. But there's an important point I want to stress.

Corn sprouts slowly, while beans sprout quickly. If you plant your corn and beans at the same time, the  beans will shade out and suppress the corn. You don't want that. So, instead, plant your corn a couple of weeks before you plant the beans. By giving the corn a head start, you'll maximize the synergy.