Friday, May 18, 2012

Land Share!

So I have been horrible remiss in posting. But summer break is upon us and my only classes will be online, so I should have more time to post. The last few days we've been very busy at a friend of ours home. We helped him with some landscaping then his neighbor offered this little parcel of land to us to grow veg on. It's just a tiny alley beside the garage but it's beautiful to me! Any space outdoors is better than space indoors. I took progression pictures to show how we changed it:

The beginning -
 This is my seed drawer. It's horribly unorganized right now... semi-alphabetical. I love seeds!


This is the alleyway beside the garage... or at least this is how it looked three days ago. Just a poor scrap of land sitting very unused and begging for attention. *laugh*

Then we pulled up the large weeds by the roots, yanked a few patches of stickerburr type plants and mowed it all down. The hedge is still there, but you can't see it in this picture... we didn't remove it or chop it down, it provides a nice barrier from the road and dogs and such.











Then we tilled, turned and sifted out roots. We thought about renting a roto-tiller, but decided to do it by hand with a pitchfork instead. It let us see what we were working with dirt wise and we could control the weeds better. The soil is very clay heavy, but we added some "Sheep and Peat" (peat moss and sheep manure) and some Cottonburr blend to help it out.












<--- This is the Sheep and Peat mixed with the Cottonburr and some topsoil/compost dirt. It doesn't show well in this photo but it has the most encouraging dark black color... Which you can see better in the photo with Bastian. --->


 All set up. We put in so many things. There on the left are tomatoes, which I had started indoors and on the right are green beans and peas, also started indoors. On the back riser there are cukes, squash and zucchini which should sprout in a week or so and below the riser are carrots.
 
 Coming down a bit you can see a large blank area on the left which is corn, well... will be when it sprouts, and the little plant there is a bell pepper. We also planted a Bell Pepper "Color Mix" set in there, but again - seeds. On the right we have some more beans (a yellow version) and just in the left corner there are some watermelons! In between the flat packed squares (where we plan to put paving stones or something if we can find them on Craigslist) are rows of radish, beet and lettuces, easily stepped over plants. We tried to make the most of the tiny space and I'm pretty sure we did.


 It's not going to be easy... we'll have to hand pollinate the corn, which is time consuming, and we'll have to really keep up with compost/manure spreads and weeding because of the way the ground was. Next year we won't be here.. since we're moving to another state... but our friend Al will have a good base for it. Especially if he mulches it over the winter.

I hope to be able to remember the camera when we get in the sprouts and as it gets greener and more exciting in there I'll be sure to update.


1 comment:

  1. Looks like you made great use of this space. It will look so much better than just grass and weeds. Can't wait to see the progress. Blessings from Wisconsin.

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