Prepping the Garden

The husband was hard at work Sunday and Monday

getting the veggie garden ready for planting.

This past fall we dumped quite a bit of composted manure

onto the garden- something we neglected to do the year before

and we paid for it in lack of production.

So Big E went to work tilling in the compost.

He also went to work making the edges perfectly straight.

Finally, he limed the garden good.

We have one more bag of lime we need to finish up one corner

but for the most part, it's done.

 I spent my evening making a to scale drawing of the garden

so I could get an idea of where I wanted things to go.

We wanted to make sure we rotated the various veggies

in the hopes that it would help with squash bug issues

and that rotation and added compost would boost our crops.

I paid special attention to companion planting 

and spacing (something I never really paid much attention to).

I ended up having a little extra room for a small herb garden-

on paper at least.

We'll see how well I planned once it's time to get the seeds and plants in the ground.

 

Black Gold

 Recently, Big E and I managed to get the garden weeded 

and tilled and ready for the winter.

We have a large pile of straw mulch and weeds that need to be burned 

(to hopefully kill off some of those squash bugs that lived among them)

but other than that, it's all good to go.

 We also began carting wheelbarrows full of composted manure

up the hill from the barn to the garden.

(and after pushing a few wheelbarrows full I realize we have a crap ton lot of work to do to get in shape for the 40 for my 40th)

It's black gold.

We're hoping this helps with some of the issues the garden was having this past growing season.

We had a great year the year before, but this year was less than stellar.

I blamed our lack of fertilizing.

(Not to mention we had that little thing called a wedding to plan)

There's about 3/4 of the garden left to fill with all that warm composted fertilizer

and once that's done,

we plan on covering it with black plastic.

I've been told the black plastic will heat up and kill off bugs and weed seeds.

At the very least it will help the soil warm up in the spring 

so perhaps I'll have quick germination for those spring veggies.

Now we just have to wait out the winter...