Garden 2013
Ray and I are jumping in to gardening this year. We’ve been watching videos and reading up on permaculture methodology and are as ready as we can be to apply what we’ve learned. We are ready to watch some successes and some failures and learn from both. Jack Spirko of TSP has a great series of videos on permaculture. I find them very easy to follow and the theory is explained in an easy to digest format.
We’ve ordered most of our seeds and I started a garden chart (pictured below). The first tab is the list of our seeds, when to start or plant and what environment they like. The second tab is a chart I found on Wikipedia of different “companion plants” for all manner of vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers. This will be really helpful as we are trying to make our garden(s) chemical free so that our harvest is top quality in taste and nutrition.
We’ve also drawn our property to scale on graph paper and sketched in some of our plans. I’m sure I will redraw this a lot, but I enjoyed it and it is fun to plan our Eden.
Here are some of our goals for this year.
- Plant and harvest enough green beans to can/preserve for a year’s use.
- Plant and harvest enough tomatoes to can for a year’s use.
- Get our “fedge” or “food hedge” started.
- Get our herb spiral built.
- Start constructing our green house.
We are really excited about the fedge. We hope to plant blueberries, raspberries, mulberries, nut trees that we can dwarf. Not only will the fedge provide food, it will also provide a barrier to both wind and road noise. Our property is pretty open with not a lot of tree cover and living in Illinois…plenty of wind.
What are your plans for gardening this year?
a pinch of homestead 
Pingback: Immersion Learning | a pinch of homestead