Plot Plans

Our farmer reminded me that this time last year we couldn't plant veggie gardens because it was too dry. This year is just the opposite:



Rain all week. My scooter is sitting unused in the yard, waiting for the sunny summer days to arrive.

At least this year I'm a little ahead in terms of garden planning: the third bed has already been tilled once and I have a plot plan for which vegetables I'll be growing in each of the two beds we are using. The third will be planted with green manure - mixture of peas, vetch and some other nitrogen fixers to help increase soil fertility. This year I've included a few rows of kale, way more tomatoes (I've had to ration my frozen supply all winter) & more green beans (they did really well last year but still not enough). I'll plant the same number of zucchini and cucumber plants since we had enough to do pickles and store in our cold cellar for a bit of time. I've dropped the carrots entirely (soil too clay-like), the cabbage (whatever, I'll buy my locally grown cabbage from the store for 0.69 cents a pound), turnip and corn. I'll retry growing peas and golden beets because both of those were underperformers last year yet I love to eat them AND they cost too much to buy. The garlic bed is thriving with about twice as much garlic as last year (probably still not enough).

As for perma-landscaping around our yard, this year we are going to focus on berries. A bed of everlasting strawberries, and either blackberries transplanted from a friends' yard or domesticated raspberries (both if we are ambitious). Hubby wants to build a wood shed near the raised septic bed behind the barn. Eventually the mound of dirt will be camouflaged by tall raspberry/blackberry canes and a (timber-framed?) wood shed with no walls. We were inspired by our visit this weekend with friends who built a timber-framed strawbale house. Combined with all the dead trees we lost over the winter, we have dreams of constructing some useful outbuildings with the logs we salvaged from the fallen trees.

Inspiration picture: Back near the river by the strawbale house: plans for a second timber structure:


Our bees didn't make it through the winter and I think we could use more chickens so round two involves buying a new batch of each. Last year I thought having chicks around was really cute but now I'm not really into the idea of looking after them or cleaning up after them. The novelty wore off quickly, unfortunately those lovely buff orpington chickens are only avaible as day-old chicks so unless I want some nasty Rhode Island Red (they're mean, comparatively) then chicks it is.