Big doings in the garden

Over the past few weekends we've not only put the garden to bed, we've also begun a major expansion. The garden has gone from approx 1500 square feet to it's present size of 3000 square feet!

The expansion includes a new 21' x 10' blueberry patch seen in the pictures above. We will be planting at least 8 blueberry bushes of 2 varieties in this patch. I turned pine needles into the soil to help move the pH to a more soil like blueberries love. This spring I'll be amending further with sulphur and organic material to get the right blend.

We ordered our bushes from Raintree Nursery http://www.raintreenursery.com/ . We've ordered from this company before, however, we're anxious to give them try. Normally, we would order from Henry Fields Nursery, however, they did not have much to offer this time around.

Blueberries have been part of the larger plan for a few years, however, the situation was never quite right for adding them. Now that we have a spot just for them it will be much easier to maintain their individual soil needs that differ so much from the rest of the garden.

The new additional space added to the garden will greatly increase our yield and diversity of crops. We will still maintain large numbers of tomoatoes (this past season we had 118 plants in the garden), however, we can now increase the squash/pumpkin yields, not to mention peppers and melons.

We intend on adding regular potatoes and sweet potatoes, as well as more turnips, beets, and other storage friendly veggies. Broccoli may not be on the list this year, it is such a space hog for a low yielding vegetable.

Chickens are also in the plans this spring. We hope to keep 6-7 laying hens, as well as 12-15 meat birds at all times. The addition of chickens would be a nice preparation if we decide to add additional livestock in the future. We are considering dairy goats or perhaps sheep for wool.

It might be helpful to discuss the lot size I am dealing with on our microfarm. We live in a semi-rural area of North Eastern Ohio approx 50 miles south of Cleveland. Our lot is approx 9500 square feet, which includes the house and driveway.

The lot may seem small when first considered, however, we are trying to make use of every inch of usable space. That means, in short, not much lawn! Lawn is the single greatest waste of space in our modern world. If more people spent as much time on the weekend growing food on their lots instead of mowing lawns, there would be no hunger problem.

Eventually, we intend to fence the front yard with a nice picket, allowing us to turn the front yard into orchard space for apples.

That's enough vision statement for this blog. At the current rate my next post probably will be mid-summer 2010 (I'm kidding). Actually, I truely am trying to publish these at a faster rate, life just keeps getting in the way.

Todd

P.S. We harvested turnips yesterday (December 5)!! It's great to be able to say you picked fresh veggies from yur garden in December in Ohio. Our lettuce bed is still in production as well.