Boxes and Seedlings

We took some pictures of the raised boxes we built in the fall last year. Here they are (three of them) all lined up. Hoping to add about 10 more for the summer. You can expect to feed one adult for the season for each box planted, and two children per box. We have 9 adults and three children who will be sharing the produce harvest this year.





As I talked about before, we planted some things way late in the season and they sprouted, but seemed to hibernate over the winter months. The snow peas and green peas are starting to take off since the weather has been warming some.







Here is a good picture of one of the pea plants wanting to vine. We will be setting up some supports soon to that they can vine vertically.








A nice picture of our spinach, which is also starting to take off a bit since the weather is warming.











Swiss Chard is also showing a little growth since most of the little seedlings actually did make it through the winter.











I tried to add a calendar for our planting schedule to the page here, but I am still figuring out how to do that. We planted brocolli, cauliflower and cabbage in line with the planting schedule for our hardiness zone. With these, we were to start them as seedlings indoors. Here are a few pictures we took of our little pods and seeds. The brocolli actually started to come up in two days! I was amazed at the fast germination.


































Baby brocolli! Hopefully, the cauliflower and cabbage will start to come up soon as well.






I will check back in when we make some further progress. So exciting to get this going on a good note this year! Keeping fingers crossed that all of our changes will make for a great harvest.

Learning From Past Mistakes

This year, obviously we needed to address some of the issues we faced last year. At the end of the summer growing season, this meant that we needed to research and learn. Thanks to books and the internet, this has become a much easier task than it would have been years ago. Of course, a generation ago, we probably would have learned it all from our parents while growing up tending the garden with them. It amazes me the things we have lost in just one generation in the rush to have it all in a fast, convenient, prepackaged way. But that is for another day....

The first thing we needed to address was the problems we had with space and soil. Our garden needs to produce enough to feed my family of 5, my sister's family of 5, and my two parents. We have a nice plot of land at my parents' house to use, but it is limited in space somewhat. When we started thinking of a way to produce enough for all of us, we really could not feasibly achieve full production in the space we have there. Row gardening last year was nice, but there was so much wasted space between rows and plants. In the ground, weeds also easily took over sometimes. We used much more water and effort than we have the time and money for.

In my research, gardening in raised beds began to intrigue me. I purchased All New Square Foot Gardening and began to study. The thought that I could grow the same amount of food in 20% of the space needed when using row gardening seems amazing to me! With this type of gardening, there are benefits that we are looking forward to taking advantage of.

1. LESS SPACE: If we cut out the need to have space to walk in between rows of the garden, we can be grow more efficiently.
   
2. LESS WATER: The raised boxes have a special mix of materials that hold water for a longer period of time and the mix is the only thing receiving the water. Thus, no wasted water resources.
   
3. BETTER SOIL: This mix also helps to solve the problem of our soil here in North Texas. We have a hard, clay soil that is not quite as conducive to the type of production that we would like to see. By creating the mixed growing medium, we eliminate the problem of poor soil and years needed to condition the earth for our needs.
   

We will be starting our conditioning of the soil in the ground this year with compost, tilling, overwintering with plants like turnips, and perhaps learning to use biochar as a resource (I am just beginning to read up on this technique). Since some of the plants we grow (okra, corn and squash) will still actually be placed in the ground, soil improvement will be important.

We wanted to get an idea of how the boxes would work, so we set up four with cool weather crops like spinach, snow peas, baby carrots, Swiss chard and cauliflower. We planted in late fall and they sprouted, but have been green, but dormant since. We are anxious to find out if they will begin their production when the temperatures start to warm. We will be adding (hopefully) ten more boxes to the collection for the summer crops.

Summer gardening...Now is the time to start prep work!

So, it's that time again. The winter ground will soon warm and it will be time to start the work for that beautiful and productive summer garden. Quite possibly my favorite time of the year!

Last summer we used as a practice year, throwing together a summer garden way too late in the season. But, we did have a good turn out of yellow squash, okra, cantaloupe, corn and some brussel sprouts. We learned many things from this garden. Here is list of the main points of interest.

• Plan ahead! We started our plants in the ground in mid-June. That is way too late for a summer garden to start here in North Texas. We lost our brocolli, watermelon, tomatoes, peppers were lacking, corn was sad, eggplant was a no go and cucumbers failed to thrive.

• Our soil (red clay) would need lots of conditioning for the types of plants we would like to produce this year.

• Row gardening was very time consuming and the weeds sometimes took over the produce.

• Planning is essential to timing the harvest for plants that produce consistently or plants that produce one thing and then are finished.

• Heirloom seeds produced much better than the newer 'hybrid' seed.

• There was no need for anything other than organics in fertilizing and pest control. We had nothing we could not handle with the use of all natural products.
• We gathered seed from our top producing plants so that we knew the quality of the seed for this year.

So, obviously the art of gardening and good production was one that was a bit out of reach last summer. But we learned so much and have studied, researched, documented and planned for a fantastic crop this year! Our progress will be chronicled here on the blog with frequent updates and pictures of our processes and harvest.

We hope you will enjoy watching things grow as much as we enjoy working the earth with our family and learning with each and every success and failure!