Patience and Persistence
I finally settled on a spot for my main vegetable garden. It is already late in the season for planting and I realize I set my expectations too high for the first year. I probably tried 15 other locations first, sometimes only with one shovel full of ground and other times after working on a spot for half a day and then realizing it wasn't going to work. In addition this year I have two 'Alley Gardens' that I started with, thinking it was an ideal option for a garden, nestled in the manure alleys of the barn that used to extend across the property. Drainage is slow as the cement bottom is still mostly intact, but it does drain. It's an experiment but I hope these gardens will grow some of the produce that is more soggy ground tolerant, and if it doesn't rain too much it won't be an issue at all. We had 27.8mm of rain one day and there was standing water only where it wasn't filled with soil for about 24 hours.
Digging out the alleys turned out to be an adventure. I guess most of the barn burned down at one point. Buried in the alleys I found lots of charred wood, a few old fence posts, lots of nails, glass and general garbage and a lot of cement chunks. After clearing out the debris I filled the alley with ground from the old compost pile, where I found a horse's tooth. I am learning that patience and persistence are the only route to go as most often I encounter something that delays or changes the plans that I had, but these are the challenges, joys and excitement of homesteading.
What type of other vegetables do you plan on planting later on?
ReplyDeleteHi Zainab! I have already seeded lettuce, spinach, peas, beans, carrots, beets, kale and planted asparagus and onions. I still plan on adding cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes and swiss chard. Some of the vegetables will be for feeding the chickens. The heat is making things grow quickly but it is too hot to work outside for me and I have some black fly bites already. Take good care and thanks for checking in! Michelle
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