Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Early Spring Planting 2013

Well, in the past several weeks we have been getting out new garden built and our old one tilled and ready to plant.  I created a raised bed that is 3.5 feet off the ground at the base and 4.5 feet at the top where the plants are.  I did this so we could raise spinach, lettuce and such without having to worry about the chickens getting into it and be able to move it around the yard to get the best sun.  Here is a picture.

While you can't tell how tall it is, it is 3ft x 8 ft x 1 ft on the inside for planting.  You can see our spinach and lettuce with onions down on the far end.  We also have carrots and mesclun planted from seed, so they aren't up yet.  All of these are cooler weather plants, so hopefully they will do well before the heat sets in.

Over in the larger garden, we have planted some brussell sprouts and bok choi with the left over onions in the smaller bed where we will plant tomatos in about a month.


We added the black fencing this year to keep the chickens out while everything is still growing.  It won't be such a big deal once the plants get established.  The garden beds are 2ft x 8ft and 5ft x 8ft so we have decent planting room.  We added about 8-10 bags of cotton burrs for compost and tilled the crap out of it.  I prefer to use cotton burrs rather than manure, Dad usually buys manure and I tell him it is because he is just shitty.  :D 

Kandle also cut back the grapevine and I'm planning on building a trellis for it in the next few weeks.It should look nice.  Plus over in that area we also added 10 bags of topsoil and 8 bags of cotton burrs and Jay tilled it and tilled it until the dirt really worked a lot of the clay loose and mixed well.  This is where we typically plant the okra and where Jay likes to plant his corn.

Overall we have really gotten a jump on our gardening this year.  Normally it is April before we get started and then we are late and so this year I'm really trying to plant according to the Farmer's Almanac.  So we shall just have to see how it goes!

No comments:

Post a Comment