Waiting for a Garden

Ethan and I have been discussing our garden plans a lot this spring. With moving, we have had a twist thrown into our garden plans though - mainly, where to have it.

We do have a nice here that has been established, fertilized by chickens and coffee grounds, and has a nice community of earthworms and other little creatures that benefit a garden. The problem with this garden plot is that we will be moving away from it. We aren't sure when the house we are in now will sell, but it could very likely happen that someone else would be harvesting what we plant if we put our garden in here.

The other garden location is at our new farm. There are a couple problems with that location though. One, we don't live there yet so keeping it weeded and keeping animals out would be a lot more difficult. Two, there is no bare ground. As of now, the land is in CRP and has a pretty good cover of tall switch grass.

I thought about starting a spring garden here, and then putting the plants that produce their crop later in the summer out at the farm, but after talking about it, we decided that we are just going to do one garden at the farm. So right now my garden is on our deck in planting pots waiting for the ground to be broken up on our new property.

Last night, however, we got one step closer to getting our garden started. Ethan's uncle sent a plow down for us to use with Ethan's dad, who was passing through. We still have to buy out the CRP before we can break up any land, but this Thursday or Friday we hope to get our garden plowed. We will then rent a rototiller from the farm store and hopefully be ready to start planting seeds.

As far as the animal and weed concerns, I think that I will mulch the garden pretty heavily between the rows and just do spot weeding where needed. This will help keep moisture in and encourage the worms to come make their home in the garden too. We'll definitely have to put up a fence to keep the rabbits out, and we might end up having to put up an electric fence around it to keep the deer out. We'll see.

It sounds like a lot of work and hassle to even do a garden this year with all of our transitions and building projects, but it is really important to us to grow and preserve as much of our own food as possible, and we also want to do some more experimenting with the garden this year. So we'll see how it goes, and hopefully we will be moving onto the farm sooner than later!