Weekend Gardening

So today I got the Beautiful Wife to help me week the garden a bit.  But first, some background on the garden.  The ground here is mostly sand and sandy loam with a high pH and sand.  Did I mention sand?  I picked an area just outside the south facing windows between the house and the propane tank.  I put in 2 cords of firewood to the west as a sort of wind block to keep the insane winds here in some sort of check  I then poured droppings from the goat barn and hay into the area, keeping it wet and tilling it into the ground for weeks.  The result is a smelly, wet, fertile mess.  Now I made rows and planted several crops at the top of the rows.  Beautiful wife helped by putting seeds in the ditches.  She's got a point on that, sadly.  Her seeds grew like weeds.  And now in June we had what could charitably be described as a grassy area. Which is a Christmas miracle, considering there are no grasses on the property, just sand and chico brush.

So here is the garden around the potatoes after we weeded it.  We are really proud of the potatoes and will have a raised bed just for them next year.

The grasses and weeds to the bottom of the picture is what the entire garden looked like.  The top row is garlic and onions (we think) and the center is potatoes.  We may have pulled plants that were veggies, but looked like weeds.  We will have to work on this in the future.  

Corn.  I was sad to see only a couple of stalks growing until Beautiful Wife pointed out that the garden was littered with them.  I think some of the goat feed was mixed in their hay and got composted into the garden. Or elves snuck into the garden and planted it.  Either way, it was too much corn all over the place, so we had to thin it out.  But not to worry, we took all the grasses and plants and put them under the east facing window in the hope that it will take to the ground and spread grass underneath the window.

Then we had the strawberries.  I noticed that the one plant that did well in the season was strawberries.  I think it has something to do with the sandy soil here.  Either way, I was pleased to see how well it did.  I decided to start making raised beds to help with the garden for next year.  I put in a raised bed, based off of Patrice Lewis' plans from her blog (Rural Revolution).  I think it turned out well.  The milk jugs are keeping the wind out of corn stalks and sunflowers and the wood fencing is blocking a little of the wind from the plants.

I am hoping to add about a dozen more of these raised beds, along with a 5 foot high fence, chicken coop, greenhouse and apiary to this in the next year to start producing some serious food.