Covering the Garden Expansion

[digitS']

I am having to do some major covering this year. Yeah, I got myself really "exposed."

For the last several years, I have had a 25' by 300' "row crop" garden. It was in another location from the big veggie garden, the little veggie garden and its neighboring dahlia garden & shady corner. Yeah, it made for an additional stop during a busy summer schedule - right in the middle of a farm field, down a bumpy lane. After 4 or 5 years, I gave it up.

So, 2012 was an easier year. What to do with myself . . . suggest to the property owner at the big veggie garden - an expansion! What was I thinking of??!

cell phone photo. the "big veggie garden" i've had since 2005 is out of the photo, off to the right. i'm standing with the camera on another neighbor's driveway.

He claims that it is "about 1/4 acre." I've got to step it off, I think it must be bigger than that! He and I will share and I've tried to make him understand that I need about 1/10th of this ground! I think there is fat chance that he will take more than a narrow strip of it and leave the rest for me to take care of . . . I can see myself out there again & again this summer running over it with the tiller! Oh no!!!

Cover crops!

Steve

 

[lesa]

Steve, let me gently remind you- there are still only 24 hours in a day!! Don't kill yourself with all that work! That soil looks a lot less rocky than your usual... or are we just to far away to see them? Good luck with your expansion. Keep us posted....

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

and 8 of those 24 hours in a day should be for getting some rest! you don't want to overexert yourself. good luck with keeping up with all these gardens!

 

[ninnymary]

Steve, silly question...why do you do it? Do you want more crops to sell, grow more varieties, better land? How much of all this gardening can you do by yourself? Seems to me that you are already pretty busy. If you expand, will you still keep the other gardens? Perhaps if you consolidated them it might be easier. Just thoughts/ideas.

Mary

 

[digitS']

Well, one part of it was to consolidate to only 2 locations. Which is what I've done, Mary. One problem is that expansion was only possible where the soil conditions are not the best. There are drawbacks everywhere I've gardened. Adjust & adapt - it is what I've been doing all my life. There is some, continuing opportunity to sell what I grow.

I appreciate my neighbors. I can think of problems but they probably don't need half a second to come up with some critique of me. Everyone is on their own path and has their own hopes and expectations.

The neighbor with the driveway is a retired farmer with major acreage about 100 miles away. Even his retirement lake home is about 2 miles away from his garage. Yeah, he just has a big garage on about an acre of lawn . . . & driveway. It is where I park the pickup .

He is a real nice guy but he sprays weedkiller on all sides of his property and began spraying even before the tractor guy showed up to till the new garden. That ground is part of the hay fields hereabouts and owned by the other neighbor.

That neighbor gardens but has others do most of his field work. Five sons are all grown and gone so he has made some adjustments, but not too many . He gathers boys at his church and they help him with bucking bales and such. He wasn't really a farmer, just a guy with a big family and some land. He and his wife actually spent 2 years outside the country shortly after I showed up in his backyard . Some people will go to great lengths to get away from me!

I've got seed like this:

this is bok choi seed but what i'm thinking of is using mustard seed.

With this sudden onset of hot weather, i am a little late with sowing mustard seed but, who knows, maybe we will go back to Junary yet this spring .

Of course, I've got my usual black-tip wheat and hull-less oats but, Good Heaves(!), I can't cover that much ground nor have a use for those things. Yeah, toss in the fox tail millet and edamame soybeans . . . With ALL of that, I suppose that I could cover what I don't need . . . I'm thinking out loud.

It would be great to use spring, summer, and fall cover crops. I'd like to see how oats would do tilled in next spring after a winter-kill.

Steve
scratching his noggin