Gardening Season Kicks Off

*The "Back 40" Beds*

Now that I have (with help)mostly managed to get about 50 fruit trees pruned (they were neglected for about 3 years after a drunken chainsaw pruning incident !:-0) it's nearly time to start planting veggies.
Of all the planning going on last month, the most interesting and important (to me) was Garden Planning.
We had good record keeping from 2005-2009 to consult, which helped a lot.

Each year we keep a Garden Journal to record what we grew, how much inputs cost {soil, hose parts, organic fertilizer}, how much labor per day, what was done when, how much we harvested.....etc. We also make a Garden Map to keep track of where everything was planted.

2010 was a fucked up garden year at the Farm. In Oct. 2009, the previous Garden manager of 10 years(who I will henceforth refer to as "Soil Sister") was in a terrible car accident and barely survived. She was severely brain damaged, the doctors almost amputated her arm, and she was in hospice because they didn't expect her to survive her coma.
Either true love or Faeries brought her back from the brink, but that incident left The Garden without an experienced manager. The People did what they could, but between inexperience, power struggles, and the fact it didn't quit raining until the middle of June, The Garden was in sorry shape when I arrived shortly before summer at the beginning of June.
My learning curve was pretty steep.
I had some collaboration but little direction from Dready, the interim Garden manager.
She left just before harvest time, and suddenly I was effectively in charge of the garden.

Now, I have lots of experience with container grown ornamental plants, but less with field grown organic veggies. It was a scramble, but we still had a relatively successful year in spite of the fact that our Garden interns mostly bailed.
Well, they didn't leave the farm, but (wet)Dream and Jealous were having relationship problems, so she didn't want to be in The Garden with him
(which left me in the Garden with him....heh...)
And "Alkie" had a baby, which really interferes with laboring in the Garden.

So my labor force for working an acre and a half of garden consisted of Dream, myself, Dready for part of the season, and random visitors who may or may not have touched a shovel before.

We're in a lot better shape this year. Soil Sister has healed a lot (she had to re-learn how to talk) and she remembers stuff about the garden when she is doing garden stuff. She is a great resource, and we have a pretty good relationship. We both deeply love The Garden, and I think we'll make a good team.

Dream is staying at the Farm, and excited about the upcoming season.

Jealous and I decided it was stupid to fight over a man when we both had so many other important things to worry about, so we have a pretty good relationship now, and she's a strong sister who's been very supportive.

I s'pose I should find a nicer name for her.
Let's call her "Flowers" since she's in charge of the flower beds now.

We've also had some new additions. "Treesitter" is a long term visitor (ex-stonemason) who busts ass helping out at the farm, and wants to work in the garden. He has lots of experience growing garlic, and likes hard physical labor.

Sheesh. Enough with the personal background you say! Where is the nitty-gritty?
Here is the garden plan for 2011;


We have a blank map of the garden that we make copies of for planning. This is really helpful with crop rotation. We can study the maps from previous years to avoid planting tomatoes in the same place, or to grow peas after a heavy feeder like corn, or to figure out where to squeeze in an extra cover crop of fava beans, crimson clover, or buckwheat.
The garden is big enough that we can have a five year rotation for most crops, which is pretty good.

*looking west from Apple Ring toward "Shorty" and "Fatty" Beds*

The next step is to figure how many row-feet of each crop:
(8 beds of broccoli X 70' X 2 rows per bed = 1120 row-feet)
how many plants we need
(broccoli are spaced at 18", so 1120 divided by 1.5 = 746 plants)
how many seeds to start
(assuming 95% germination and 5% loss we want to plant 10% more than we need=820)
how many seeds to order
(if there are 300 seeds per gram and a "packet" is 4 grams or 1200 seeds)
that should do it.

Some additional figuring for the rest of the crops and we can put a spring seed order together; onions, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, peas, spinach, lettuce, carrots, and beets. The order arrived Thursday of last week.

Starting next week we will be washing pots and planting seeds in cell trays. We are using "Black Gold" organic seed starting soil mix. I'd like to mix our own but...all in good time. Our greenhouse has a wood stove, and we will take turns sleeping out there to keep it above 50 degrees.

*Garlic growing in the Rainbow Bed with the greenhouse in the background*

Yay! Plants make me happy. Especially tasty plants.