Diving In To the Cool(?) Season Garden

We have been so fortunate to be able to take in a lot of the beautiful, unusually mild winter weather out in the garden. During the holidays, we were able to sit down and "finalize" our design for the backyard. The truth is that we've already made some adjustments on site as we implement the plan, but it's exciting to have an overarching idea in mind. One of these days I'll sit down and draw up an illustrative of the design but for now, we'll show pictures of the design coming to life!

Because we are dealing with a large space that needs lots of soil amendments (compost), we are taking it a bit at a time. We focused our attention on the creation of one bed. It has become a test plot of sorts, as we discover road bumps and test solutions.

Our basic methodology for construction was to dig out the good topsoil (2-4 inches) out of the two foot wide paths. Then the mulch we had stockpiled was laid down for the path. After using a maddock to loosen the garden bed area, the dug out path soil was transferred onto the bed to create a raised bed. Benefits include a greater depth of loosened soil with greater air space for holding water and allowing roots to more easily grow. The paths ringing this bed go to the chicken coop and the compost area, two important destinations to have easy access to. After lightly mixing in 3" of compost from our favorite local organic plant nursery, we laid out the all important irrigation hoses. Then it was time for planting! Despite the warm (but beautiful) weather, we are hoping to take advantage of the tail-end of the cool weather planting season to plant some great veggies. We direct seeded root crops such as radishes, carrots, and beets as well as lettuce. We also transplanted lots of onion, cabbage, broccoli, and swiss chard that we had started in seed trays in December.

Bed Number 1 ready to be planted! A narrow path winds into the interior of the bed to ensure most of the soil is within easy planting and maintenance reach.

 Compost added to the tiered beds

 Adjusting the leaf mulch around the central persimmon tree. It is intentionally hard to reach because we don't want to disturb the soil around it too much as we replant our veggie crops. But as the canopy grows, we hope to be able to reach the yummy fruit!

Grow, seeds! Grow!

First round of seeding done. We'll do a second batch of seeds in a week to space out harvest times.

All our planting for this year will be focused in the first bed as well as the existing stone terrace beds. The other beds in the yard that had been started as we dug paths were not amended with compost. Instead, we are seeding hairy vetch as a green manure. This Fabaceae family plant will improve the soil by shading it and fixing nitrogen until we are ready to take the bed to the planting stage.

Planting the green manure seeds.