The Experimental Art of Beeing: The Business

Ok all, I've been yammering on for a while now about all my emotional revelations and you are probably all ready for me to move on. Me too! I've been itching to talk gardening and house projects for some time now. I keep feeling like I don't have that much to report back on, but I reminded myself today that I have actually learned a ton in the last couple of months about gardening and farm-like topics. So I'm going to presume that some of you know as little as I did (and still do) and might actually find some of these things interesting or helpful.

Number one....Make a plan. Every book you will ever pick up about farming or gardening or homesteading will start with the importance of an outline, or a business plan. It's the first chapter in literally every book we own on the subjects (which is a lot). So naturally, we made no plan. We talked about plans, we discussed the importance of plans, we even half formulated many different ones, but we definitely did not solidify one concrete plan. In hindsight (and foresight), this was a poor choice.

This is our lion statue. Yeah we have a lion statue, he thinks we should have planned better too.

Prepping a Garden Plot

We had endless options on our land, for where we should establish a garden....we could have done one very large garden, multiple small ones in different locations, raised beds for our salad greens and herbs and row crops for our veggies, or we could have a small personal garden and then establish our "farm garden" elsewhere that would be for larger scale production and eventual income generation. Instead, a friend volunteered to come rototill our garden plot before we had really decided how we wanted things laid out, so I made a snap decision which always goes really well. We tilled three different areas, one small 5x16' bed that had been tilled in years past but hadn't been used for probably a couple years, a medium 30x30'ish bed that also seemed to have a good history, and a large 40x75' bed that had never been tilled before and was all sod.

Things I've learned:

Tilling a plot that is currently grass is really hard. It will likely need to be tilled a few times, have any chunks of sod removed by hand, and its probably best to plant a cover crop at first to help develop healthy soil. Buckwheat grows well up here and supposedly has a seed to till time of about 4-6 weeks so its a good one to use if you want to use the plot the second half of the summer. Its also good for bees. Hubs tells me white clover is what he used in Colorado as a strong reliable cover crop because buckwheat didn't grow as well there.
If you are going to take the time to send soil samples (which you should), you should take them correctly, and then actually do something with the results. Figure out before you plant, what type of soil amendment is needed, stock up on an adequate amount of compost and work it into the soil.
Expect a massive amount of weeds with a freshly tilled plot. A lot of the ruffage that gets tilled into the soil is not dead and can reroot, or seed new plants. Another reason to till a couple of times before planting.
I keep saying tilling because that's what we did, but apparently tilling is actually not the best way to establish a garden plot. It's the fastest for sure, but for longevity and health, it seems that people encourage solarizing your desired plot. This is a process of covering your plot with clear plastic directly on the ground to create a mini greenhouse effect on the grass underneath it. Eventually the grass will die out and compost into the earth. Apparently tilling can bring up bacteria and disease that is deeper in the soil and can effect your plants.

Water

Next is the issue of watering. Again, no plan. We have multiple outdoor water spigots so we figured we would either hook up a surface hose to a rainbow sprinkler or a hose to PVC tubing running the width of each bed and extend drip tubing from there. But then the organic fruit tree company up here had a massive sale, so naturally I went and bought 10 trees, which I had to immediately put in the ground....with no preset watering system in place. Suuure we can hand water for an indefinite period of time before we figure it out. So we got all of our trees in the ground and gave them their initial water. After a few days of handwatering we had the time to turn on the outdoor water spigots, so we did, and found that the spigot closest to the trees had severed far underground and was now just a rusty old pipe sticking up out of the earth. The water, of course, still flows but now just seeps into the earth in the vague area of the spigot and even after digging down 8 feet, all we see is wet earth. Awesome.

So, here we are nearing July and we are still hand watering.

Things I've learned:

Really, truly, seriously, just have your water set up before you put things in the ground. Like, really.
Rainbow sprinklers (the oscillating ones that shoot up into the air), are not seen as The Devil here in Maine like they are in Colorado. Most people are on a well system and water actually exists here (and living here is not like sitting inside of an oven), so water waste is less of an issue.
That being said, it is more conscientious to use a drip irrigation system, it generally takes less water to achieve the same end and plants like it better.
Many plants, particularly leafy plants do not like water coming from above, as it predisposes them to molds and certain bacterial and viral transmission. I am a bit of a skeptic on this because up until the quite modern introduction of drip irrigation, all plants were watered from above (the sky). But hubs is adamant, and he's a smarty pants, so I'm sure its true.

Companion Planting

Then there is the whole ordeal about where do I plant things? How do I plan out my garden space? (Again with the planning- this is really going to be an adjustment for an antiplanner such as myself). It is best to use the practice of companion planting, i.e. putting plants near each other that help keep bugs off the other plants, or if they make a byproduct that is helpful for the other plant's growth, or planting things far away from each other if they both degrade the same element in the soil. So our "plan" for this was to put our blackberries, strawberries, bush beans and other legumes, and chives together in our medium sized plot because they all compliment each other nicely. Then we would do row crops for our main veggie garden in our large plot (tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, etc). But again, we accidentally bought 10 more berry bushes before veggie planting time and put them in our large bed because they need damp, acidic soil and that location fit the bill. So we planted them in our very large bed and let the rest grow back into sod (Not on purpose....see section one on the importance of prepping your soil. We will be solarizing that plot around the berries starting next week).

Sweet blueberries right? Check out the weeds behind it...
So now we had a very small bed (already dedicated to greens and flowers) and a medium sized bed already filled with berries that we were going to need to plant everything in, regardless of companionship. Now we have a very busy garden bed that is filled with equal parts noncomplimentary vegetables/berries, and weeds.

Things I've learned:

Plan your cover crop (either in the first half of summer or at the end of the summer) to compliment whatever crop was growing there. Many plants deplete certain compounds in the soil, so planting cover crops that "fix" or replenish those compounds will set you up for success on your next planting.
Its too soon to tell whether or not our noncompanion way of planting will have effects on our plants or not.....and probably impossible to attribute any successes or failures to companion planting alone, but I will keep you posted as things begin to grow...or die.
Mother Earth News is a great resource for gardening, here is a link to their companion planting guide.