Hi all , Growing a garden is new for us. We spent two years enriching this old garden plot with Rabbit manure and then grew an Alfalfa and Timothy grass patch for the rabbits. Now this year we planted our first vegetable on the east end and field corn around the hay patch. As you can see we just did the first cutting of Alfalfa and its drying out in rows ready to be hand baled. We are growing three kinds of Squash, Cabbage, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Green beans, Snow peas, Cantalope, watermelon, Pumpkins and lots of Tomatoes. W e have some Sweet corn (Heirloom that has not come up yet outside the wire. I am afraid the Geese may have got most of it. The field corn is coming up nicely so the Chickens will have lots of fresh ground corn. This little food plot feeds all of our Chickens and Rabbits over the winter. With three cutting of hay this season I will not have to buy rabbit pellets again until next May. We will see how far the corn goes with the birds this winter. Any comments are welcome. Kingfish
Excellent! I have one question, what is your row separation spacing? It looks to be 42 to 48 inches except in the last picture. Just wondering. Your garden is huge compared to mine.
About 24 inches on the veggies. My rototiller is 16 inches wide and it fits between the rows by a few inches on each side. So far so good. Next season Ill make the spacing about 30 inches so I can really go to town with the tiller in between rows. The spacing on the hills of squash and melons is bigger. maybe 48 inches on those. Even the field corn is wide enough to get the tiller between the rows. Kingfish
So far we have discovered that we still have acidic soil. Broccoli is abundant but small heads. Cucumbers are huge and abundant. Pumpkin and squash doing very well. Green beans died, califlower is doing nothing, Cabbage is struggling. Melons both water and cantalope doing well. Snow peas died. Tomatoes are everywhere. Next season we are starting over . Im going to disc the entire plot under and kill off a certain swamp grass that is taking it over. Then lime by the truckload and more manure. I am going to have to use a roundup type spray to kill this grass. I hate to do it but I really have no other choice. KF
sorry about the result, but it's better to learn the skills now, rather than after the SHTF and you need the food to survive! Good luck with your garden next year. Be sure to get some soil samples before and after. Also, work with your soil in some areas. Blueberry's love the acidic soil (I think it's them anyway)
add your wood ash to your garden, its like lime sweetens the soil but test your acidity after each addition also tilling with a rototiller helps aerate the soil and making it sweeter you just have to do it a lot (the ashes are free)
