It's Fall and things are finally winding down in the garden. Everything has been dug up and dealt with. Now it's time to start putting the garden to bed for winter. Here's what we've done so far this season with our garden harvests. Root crops are being stored in our cold room. The canning is almost finished for the season and we're happy to see jars full of home canned goodness on our … [Read more...]
Growing Clover Instead of Grass
Growing Clover instead of grass benefits the bees! Plus, it's a low maintenance lawn. Do you need to reseed the bare spots in your lawn? Have you got an area that's been cleared, leveled and now needs to be planted in grass? Why not think about growing clover instead of grass? Clover always looks nice and lush and you don't need to mow it as often. Heck, if you plant white clover, you … [Read more...]
Using Buckwheat to Improve Your Garden
Buckwheat is a very fast growing grain. It has many different uses - you can harvest the grain, thresh it and then mill it. Turn it into some delicious buckwheat pancakes. Or feed it off to your livestock; poultry loves buckwheat. You can use it as a green manure in your garden beds, because it is great for aerating your soil. Buckwheat is a wonderful soil builder! And we need to build … [Read more...]
Getting the Yard Ready for Winter – Part 2 The Garden
During the Spring and Summer months, we were busy with planting seeds, transplanting seedlings, weeding, irrigating, weeding again, thinning, more weeding and finally harvesting vegetables and fruits. Our Vegetable and Berry Gardens have given us a fantastic harvest, even though the weather this year was mostly cool and quite rainy. Sure we had two or three weeks of Summer, but gorgeous … [Read more...]
Garden Preparation and Tilling
Most of our main Garden is tilled! Over the last several days, Graham has manhandled our awful (but free!) rototiller thru all four sections of the Main Garden. Here's the main vegetable garden. Can you tell that it is separated into four different garden areas? Two upper, two lower. We use a four year garden rotation. Note: These photos are from a few years ago. We now … [Read more...]