Garden Plan 2015

Redivided the beds, making each a little smaller (3 1/2 feet in width) in order to fit 12 beds in the garden,necessary for a 4 year rotation of 3 beds each of 4 categories of plants.  Each year each category of plants moves down to the the next quarter of the garden, not returning to the same soil for 4 years.  I'm hoping that this is a natural and wonderful way to control soil-borne pests.  Since the onions and garlic get harvested so early, sometimes an autumn planting of lettuce, spinach, broccoli, and radishes in the onion and garlic beds deviates from the plan a bit.  So fr I've not had trouble with pests on those 4 plants so I'm hopeful it will be okay.  If not, we'll have to come up with plan B!
Crop Rotation Plant Categories:
1. Beans, Peas, Lettuce, Carrots, Cabbage, Broccoli, Radish, Spinach
2. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers
3. Cucumber, squash (zucchini, summer squash, winter squash, pumpkins)
4. Onions, Garlic, Celery, Chard, Beets, Corn

Plans for 2015 include

1. Strawberry Bed: after harvest, dig up 1/2, lift landscape fabric, add manure, lay down new landscape fabric, replant strawberries grown from spring runners.

2. Blueberry bed---lift landscape fabric, add manure, new landscape fabric, plant strawberries.

(probably give up on blueberries)

. 3. Allow raspberries to continue to invade and take over grape bed (probably give up on grapes)

(The strawberries and raspberries have been so great.  Seems a waste to use the garden for grapes and blueberries which never really produce!)

4.  Still considering 1 more apple tree and/or plum tree for southmost fruit bed.

New path through mint bed separating it from veggie bed 1.

5.  Helping to supply produce for the SAGE pig roast in August!!

November --last harvest and putting the garden to bed for the winter

 These are the sweet potatoes I grew in a big huge flower pot.  Some are monstrously big!

The common sage up by the SAGE barn grew beautifully.  

 The garden is ready for winter.  The garlic for next summer got planted in October and is marked off by the strings with white flags in the front of this photo.

The beans needed to dry on trays for a few weeks to be sure they were dry all the way through before being put in storage jars.   Lots of black turtle beans (easy to shell), Vermont cranberry beans (easy to shell), and tons of white beans from the bush beans that I let dry out (really tough to shell).  It was a good lesson.   The beans bred as shell beans are much easier to shell than the thicker skinned bean pods that are bred to eat fresh.  All in all, a great harvest of about 8 pounds.

October Harvest

 Cleared the bean patch today and harvested so many bean pods!  Decided to leave them on the plants and just cut or pull up the entire plants.  Then spread them out on a ladder laid horizontally between two garbage dumpsters in my garage to dry out.  Even moved the whole operation a few inches at a time out the door on a sunny day to assure they were dry.  Finally stripped off all the pods and laid on trays all over my breezeway for further drying.  Rich helped my shell the beans.  I estimated that all together it took about 10 hours to get about eight pounds of beans out of the pods.  I have a new appreciation for Thoreau who tried to live on beans and potatoes he grew at Walden Pond.

First heavy frost on October 19--but not wind, so I easily covered the veggies with frost blankets from Breda--just enough protection to keep the morning frost from settling on the garden.   (Oct 18-19 was the women's overnight campout on Indian hill---we froze, but the garden survived!) 

The pineapple sage on the east side of the SAGE barn has done really well.  Seems to love it there!   (Tried to keep it going until the Nov. 21 SAGE farm-to-table dinner, but we finally cut and dried some of it for tea just before the rewst of it froze.

The veggies on the other hand, we went all out trying to protect.   In late October and early November, Amy, Kathleen and I built a tent of frost blankets and plastic sheeting, with sawhorses under it strung with light bulbs.  It worked to protect the lettuce, broccoli, and parsley.  We also covered the chard, carrots, and some herbs with rubbermaid containers and plastic.  It worked!  We had a couple of nights of temps in the low 20's, then uncovered it for a few warmer days, then covered it again when the temperature dropped, then uncovered for a day, and picked evrything just before a disastrously cold night.  We put everything in the big rubbermaid containers in the walk-in cooler at the lodge and almost everything lasted 10 days for the SAGE dinner Nov. 21.   A do-it-yourself freeze-protection success--except the red leaf lettuce which looked too funky after 10 days to serve..but we had plenty of green!  

September abundance!

 Red Cabbage finally headed up----- from seeds Laura gave me--thanks Laura!

 My two favorite tea herbs: lemon verbena (rear) and stevia (foreground) for a hint of sweetness.

 The raspberry bushes have gotten huge!  And are producing so many berries!

 Several cantaloupes from one hill.  (but not really good tasting...might give up on these!)

 A few really big watermelons...ok, but not as good as the ones from the store or farmstand.  There must be tricks to growing melons which I haven't learned yet!

Chamomile....flowers are great for tea.

August Abundance!

Two harvests of Raspberries this summer.  A small number of big plump summer rraspberries.perhaps a dozen or two berries per day.  Then an enormous crop again from August (thru early Nov.) of countless pounds of wonderful berries...enough for lots of jelly, plus bags in freezer, and some individually frozen berries for garnish for the Nov. SAGE dinner.  I suspect we need to add compost to the patch next year.  Can't expect the raspberry patch to just keep putting out without our putting back in!

Winnie's 10 foot tall sunflowers by the aAndersonCenter!  

Great veggies this month....beautiful beets, tomatoes, corn, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, and even some green peppers!

Zucchini!

Summer Squash!

And time to replant beds 3 and 4 for the fall:  lettuces, parsley. broccoli, spinach, cilantro

Seems like I can harvest everyday and it just keeps coming!

Pickles in July!

 Bread and Butter Pickle-making class!   with pickles, garlic, and white onions from the garden.

 Pickles in the crock to bring for 3 hours!  During the wait, we made herbal tea bags and herbal vinegars with herbs from the garden, and had lunch....with the last of 2013's pickles!

Esther putting on the lid--upside down since that jar wasn't put in the canner.  I like to be sure they don't seal if we haven't put them in the canner--don't want to create an anerobic environment for bacteria if we haven't destroyed the bacteria first in the canner.  Each student made one jar in the canner and one to eat right away!
The class was originally scheduled for late August but you've got to make pickles when the cucumbers are here, so we moved it up a month.  (then managed to have another picklemaking class  in late August with the very last of the cucumbers.)

July 2014--Mid summer in the garden: Campers!

 Collin's kids just being goofy!

 Olivia's girls scooping woodchips to define the paths between the garden beds.

Spinning the composter!

July 22-Pulling the last of the onions and garlic.