Garden Preparations

The garden around late June

Slowly every year our garden grows. Our goal is to survive off our garden for the year, freezing and canning what we harvest. This year our garden at "The Coop" is our trial run. I'm testing out different ways to do things like stake vs. cage tomatoes. And what varieties work the best. I've started a garden chart or journal of sorts to help me remember year to year.

A glimpse of what the chart looks like

 This garden is about 20' x 30' and we have some other pumpkins and tomatoes outside of this area.

 

Current state of the garden. Eeeks, this picture doesn't do it justice, it really is a bit more tidy than it looks.

sweet corn left, root veggies, peas, beans, broccoli and cabbage

tomatoes back, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, garlic, brussel sprouts

What we've determined, is our future garden (if we're actually going to survive off of it) needs to be over twice as big. We're starting to plan and prepare for next year's garden at Glory Acres. We are going to try to model the Back to Eden garden philosophy. If you're at all interested in gardening or would like to learn how to create your own garden, I highly recommend watching the documentary. (linked above) We've watched it probably four times and learn something new each time.

Photo courtesy of little O-ster

We have our area mapped out, are working up the soil a bit and plan on mulching it over the winter. There's nothing like maintaining a garden and preparing one at the same time.

And it never fails, every year I feel that I have so much more to learn about gardening. That's the beauty, I suppose.