Hello friends, spring garden planning is well underway in Our Wood Home. I've been thinking about what I want to grow all winter but some considerations have to be made, which I'll share about in today's post.
REGENERATIVE PLANS
We have 2 main vegetable gardens areas: the first one is made up of 2 large garden beds separated by a wide path in between them. The whole area is fenced for wind protection, privacy, and to keep neighbour dogs out (my own dog knows not to walk through the gardens except when given permission). These beds are about 400 square feet total and everything grown there is for preserving to eat later. The remainder of my vegetable growing space is scattered through a few raised beds and whatever is grown there is eaten fresh.
We made our first vegetable garden in 2013, the first spring we lived in our house. It was just 10 by 10 feet, so the next year we made it 10 by 20.
That original garden makes up half our preserving garden, and since we have used it for so many years, the soil is depleted. We decided not to plant anything here until next year. Well, we will still be planting but not for harvest. Currently we have lots of organic matter thrown in there and my husband will till it all in. Then we will sow some lentils and peas, which will add nitrogen to the soil. I might also scatter some miscellaneous herb seeds. We will not be watering or weeding this garden. In the fall when I clean out the chicken coop I will put all the manure into this garden. We will also add wood chips that accumulate from out firewood delivery. Everything will get tilled into the soil, including any plants that have been growing, and it will all be tarped for winter. In spring 2025 we will remove the tarp, till as needed, and prepare the soil for normal planting. Below is a photo of the current space (taken last year), and as you can see, it is quite large!
A LACK OF SPACE
I am losing 200 square feet of space that I rely on for tomatoes and root vegetables, so where am I going to grow them now? I am not adding any more gardens right now, so I had to decide where to make space in existing gardens. One of the solutions I came up with was to avoid planting things that take up a lot of space this year. For example, gourds like pumpkin have a massive sprawl and can easily take over a garden. In the photo below you can see some pumpkin vines behind me and another squash plant to the front left.
In addition to taking up lots of space, I struggle with the squash vine borer, which is a pest that kills the plants in a matter of days. I have tried many solutions to this problem but the one I am doing now is to avoid planting any gourds for a few years so the moth that lays the eggs (that hatch, to then bore out of the plant, which kills it) will leave my property since there is no food for it. Not only will I avoid losing a whole crop of gourds, I will be saving a lot of space in this garden, but others as well.
WHAT I"M PLANTING AND WHERE
I am including a photo of my not to scale garden layouts so you can see what I'll be doing.
In the preserving garden I will grow tomatoes, beets, carrots, potato, beans, and corn. Once these are all harvested, they will be canned. Everything else that grows in the other gardens is meant for eating fresh if we want, or it can be preserved through canning, freezing, dehydrating, or freeze drying.
In the herb garden I will continue to cultivate what already grows there (oregano, parsley, calendula, and echinacea), as well as adding a few others.
There is an L-shaped planter my husband built a few years ago, and it acts as a wind barrier for our bbq. It gets a lot of sun and we have trellises , so I have decided to do a few zucchini (technically a gourd, and therefore prone to the borer but I have a plan for it), lettuce, and spinach strawberry.
My other main growing space are the planters on our patio. Again, L-shaped and very large. When my husband built these in 2015 I had them filled with flowers. But a few years ago I decided I wanted more vegetable space, so that's their purpose now. These planters have lattice but one section of it was destroyed and we never bothered replacing it. Where there is no lattice I am going to plant pink popping corn. This variety is meant to be dried out and used as popcorn! I will also grow some peas, eggplant, and bell pepper along with mouse melon, which is a tiny little fruit that looks like a doll sized watermelon but tastes like a lemon. In the other planter I will do more tomatoes and radishes. Throughout all the gardens I am sowing marigold seeds. There are also a few places I will plant sunflowers.
WHAT ABOUT FLOWERS?
I have an old flower bed at the front of our property,and I mostly let it grow as it wants to. There is a peony bush, and I added many irises, tulips, hostas, and daylilies. I think we might have also done some wild roses and lilac too. Near our front steps is a flower garden with more daylilies and hostas as well as columbine and some hyacinth. We also have a retaining wall garden around our patio, which has an assortment of wild and cultivated flowers. Speaking of wild flowers: we are in the process of turning part of the front yard into a wild flower meadow garden. In 2022 my husband decided to stop cutting the grass along a hill, and let the natural flowers and plans take over. We also bought a few nice flowering plants for that area (bee balm, lavender, and some others I can't recall). This spring we will be planting more flowers from seed. Our goal is to have a large patch of flowers for pollinators of all kinds, not just honeybees. Other pollinators to consider are birds, moths, butterflies, mimic bees, and wasps. These pollinators all need different types of flower shapes and they prefer certain colours.
BERRY PATCH
We have black raspberries growing right against the house, near the air conditioner. I do not know how they got there, but they can't stay! I have let them grow for years because the fruit is delicious and I've tried to transplant some to no avail. This year, I am preparing a dedicated berry patch. A few weeks ago I laid out a tarp to kill the grass where I want the berries to grow. I am going to be emptying my compost bins soon, since they are full of nice soil, so I will spread the soil in this area. Then I can transplant the berries, mulch, and let them grow.
I originally wanted MUCH more space for the berries, but my husband suggested starting small and manageable, which is always good advice.
FRUIT TREES AND RHUBARB
We currently have 2 apple trees and several cherry. The cherry tree has sent our many runners, which means the roots grow underground horizontally and they a new tree pops up. We will be digging up some of the runners to move elsewhere, since they are getting quite dense. My rhubarb plants are doing very well, and once i finish this post, I'm going out to harvest some! It is currently growing in the garden under my front windows, which is poor soil and partial sun. But surprisingly, the plant seems to love it! I will be letting the rhubarb take over that entire garden, so I have to make sure not to harvest more than one third of the leaves this season. Taking more means the plant will struggle to grow.
Those are all our garden plans for this year. I'd love to hear yours!
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