2025
It’s been hard work and good lessons this season. Frequently, I’ve thought to myself, “You know, I should write that down.” Sometimes I do. Often times, I don’t. So, let’s give it a try here.
Starting with preparations for next year. We planted garlic, both hardneck and softneck. I made a “map” of what garlic is where - we’re trying several varities. I tried to be neat about it - our garden this year was bountiful, but messy, and that has downstream consequences. It hasn’t rained in forever here, so I watered a bit and hope the mulch will help keep the soil moist enough.
Speaking of water, I have half a mind to build a very inexpensive (i.e. drilling holes in hoses) irrigation system. The wood chip mulch’s ability to keep soil moist is incredible, but the veggies definitely needed water early in the growing season to get started. At that time, rather than just spray everywhere, I tried to really target the roots with a steam of water. Which, of course, took forever… So an irrigation system would be amazing, even if we only use it to get everything situated.
We just planted asparagus root. No real idea what we’re doing here, except that we were told to plant it “immediately.” Which we almost did. I added some organic trace mineral powder / rock dust because I read something online about doing that. So I figured it sounded like a good idea.
We bought another 13 yards of mushroom soil to spread over approximately 2000 sq ft of growing space. How do we spread it? By hand, one wheelbarrow-full at a time. On top of that goes wood chip mulch, and we’re almost out. We’re hoping to score some more shortly. Buying mushroom soil is expensive, and the labor required is substantial. Next year I hope to try cover cropping - in theory, this should help add organic matter back to the soil and serve as mulch. And almost eliminate the labor.
We’re drying some of our own seeds for next year, but we weren’t very diligent about it. So we have some of those, and we’ll be using non-GMO Burpee brand seeds otherwise. I’m hoping we can align better what we grow with what we eat. We did pretty well this year, actually, but the quantities were way off (we were drowning in tomatoes and hot peppers). With that, I’m desperate to add onions to the mix. Just saying.
Speaking of quantities, let’s talk about the farmstand, which never materialized. That is my fault. Perhaps an instance of “paralysis by analysis.” I’m hoping to get something pretty-dang-simple built and ready for next year. Basically - a table. Maybe an umbrella, too. We also need to figure out where to put it, where a couple of cars could park, better signage (I bought some beauties, but frankly, all the text I included ended up too small).
That’s about it for now. Keep in touch with us!