Garden & Orchard Plans

Our internet is working again and so I decided to share with you our plans for our garden and orchard. The scanner wasn't too happy about all of the grid lines, but hopefully it will be clear enough for you to see. Our neighbor graciously helped us by using his bobcat to scrape up the sod in the garden area. It saved us many back-breaking hours. Unfortunately, it also managed to compact the our heavy clay soil so now Jonathan is using our new broadfork to break the clay back up. I would help out except I don't seem to weigh enough. I can jump up and down and wriggle it back and forth and it still only goes down a couple of inches. As soon as it is broken up enough to keep a rototiller from walking across the top, we'll rent one to finish breaking it up and to mix in the manure that our neighbor's horses have so graciously provided us along with some peat moss to help with soil structure. Hopefully, in the future we won't need a rototiller, but we have to get the clay a little more workable first. I'm already missing the easy to work sandy soil in Connecticut. But at least we don't have to deal with the acidity out here.


Here is the spring garden plan. The front right corner has the kids' plots. They were really excited to plan their own sections. We went through all of their options for plants and I had to do some explaining about what size each plant becomes and stuff, but they loved it. There were some common themes... strawberries, peanuts, melons, and cherry tomatoes, but they also each had something unique. Isabelle really wanted cabbage because she loves baked cabbage. Miriam chose broccoli because she loves eating the "mini trees" and David was adamant about having onions (both Isabelle and Miriam said "yuck" to that).

I plan on underplanting the veggies with "green manure" in the form of clovers, vetch, and oats. This will be a first for me so I hope it works. I'm also going to try for a few fall crops like peas and stuff that don't take too long to grow so this is what the garden should look like in the fall.

We are still getting the orchard area marked off, but we are picking up our first batch of trees tomorrow. The Elder's Quorum is helping out next saturday for their "Brotherly Service" project and the Young Men are coming out the following Wednesday. We certainly have plenty of holes to be dug.