Out here in the fields...

I don't need to tell you that we had our work cut out for us today. On our list:

Clear out last year's leftovers
Till
Fertilize
Form our rows

And, no fools we, our experience from last year taught us that if you don't mulch on the same day as you do all of the above, your rows will be washed away and weeds will takeover by the time you actually plant. So, we added the following to our list:

Mulch within an inch of our lives

Another lesson from last year: don't be afraid to actually purchase mulch. I think we spent more time looking for free mulch last year than we did actually mulching. So, this year, we brought bags of leaves with us to the farm (free) and bought 6 straw-bales ($40 total).

















Next, we cleared the plot of all the large plants and pieces of roots. We thought we'd be able to till the smaller bits of plants into the ground but that didn't really work. So, we did something we thought we'd never do. We burned it:


It is amazing what we are reduced to because we don't have the time or resources to do things the way we'd prefer. The way we'll do things when we have our own farm: no tilling, permanent beds, permaculture. But all of that is for another day. In the meantime, we tilled, formed our beds and then mulched.

Behold, this is the neatest you will ever see our plot:



And then we fertilized. I have no idea what all is in our fertilizer mix this year but I do know it is all vegan. Among other things, there is corn and alfalfa. Adam will have to tell you the rest.

To do list:
PLANT!

UPDATE: I lied. I do know what is in our fertilizer mix - the ingredients were right here on our blog! It has just been so long since I gave any thought to it that I forgot.

Welcome to our blog!

Lots of things are happening in our garden plot right now so we'll have to fill you in on our background at another time.

The first tilling of our plot occurred a few days ago. One of our community farm-neighbors let us use his tiller and we were so happy for it. Up until then, we had been hoeing and shoveling by hand.

We had a basic design for our plot. We made about 5 rows in front and 8 rows in back. In the middle of the plot we designed a seating area surrounded by circular beds. All of our beds are raised to keep the moisture area high around the plant roots without actually drowning the plants.


After spending a day out at the farm, all of our hard work was washed away by one of several storms that moved through the Little Rock area. That's how it goes, I suppose.

After fixing the beds, our next project was to put up a fence. We didn't have a lot of money to put towards a fence but I wasn't about to use the ugly plastic construction fence some other community plot-ers were using. (We may be cheap but we're not tacky!)

Luckily we found a plastic material that resembles chicken-wire that was actually cheaper than the ugly construction fence! It is about 3' high so we hung string above it and tied ribbon to it to scare off any would-be garden raiders.


After the fence was complete we were ready to plant!