Getting your garden ready

So with much work and plenty of amendments I am getting the gardens ready for spring. This fall has been amazing as I jumped into the fall garden scene. I had no idea you could produce so much produce. I think more comes from a fall garden than from a spring/summer garden. It was ridiculous!!!!

The back garden has been hit hard with elemental sulfur, ammonium sulfate, wood ash and gypsum. pH was way high (7.7) so i hope I am adjusting it correctly. I added small amounts of hardwood sawdust and covered with wood chip mulch. I plan to micro fertilize with more ammonium when I go to plant. A light tilling will be done in February. I know, I know but the soil was WAY tight also. I made the mistake of thinking sand would loosen the soil. It does just the opposite. Learn from my mistake.

The newer side garden was really, REALLY tight as it had been farmed with tractors many moons ago and had a hard pan about 4 inches down that was such a joy to break with a broad fork. I would just put on some outlaw country and get to work. It took FOREVER. I amended with sawdust, ammonium nitrate, wood ash and maple leaves. I tilled it in to 4-6 inches and planted in winter rye for some extra natural green mulch and nitrogen.

The asparagus patch needed 60 lbs of lime and 10 lbs of ammonium nitrate, I covered each of the rows with a covering of maple leaves and cultivated the center hills down and pulled the dirt over the leaves. Hopefully making and nice bed of compost the dirt will begin to sift through and make looser.

The big front garden got 100 lbs of sulfur, wood ash, and ammonium nitrate as the rows came off. pH was 7.3 and needed some help. It is 4000 sq feet and the amount was determined by the CEC from my soil sample. All the plants and weeds were removed to get the phosphorous out as my P was off the chart at 3X the recommended levels. As I removed the P I did find my garden truly exploded. Cabbages and cauliflower big as soccer balls. Some larger.

It has been a lot of work but it keeps me active. All together I have 6800 sq feet of garden and it is steady as she goes. Something to do every day. If you need patience, I highly recommend gardening. It is as rewarding to see a new head of broccoli as it is to see a nice buck on a trail cam.

I will post pics as soon as I figure out how to upload from my iPhone.

Tell us about your garden and what you have been up to this fall/winter and what you plan to do this spring.

So far just spread the rabbit poo on it. I need to clean out the chicken house and get it spread also. Didnt get my normal cover crops in the tractor broke down. But we are over wintering carrots and have our garlic in. I have no idea what amount we plant total. It changes year to year. One year we may have an acer or more pumpkin and mellon patch along with the main garden by the house. I built a 30'x75' high tunnel but have not got the plastic on yeat due to some health problems( looks like MS or long covid at this point) the kicker is i woke up with cough, fever, head ack and sore neck today on top of that. Round 2 maybe?

My wife plants a lot of flowers also for cut flowers. I want to put out a lot of sunflowers among other things for my bees. Normally try to plant 50 lb of buck wheet stagered for the darth. Put out 3 peach and 4 pear trees a year or so ago.

We grow a lot of weeds also. This year there will be more landscape fabric going down to try to help with that.

One thing I did last year for weeds was to cover the whole garden in 6 mil black plastic.

To kills the weeds what I learned was to lightly cultivate the entire garden in late winter when the cold days begin to become few.

Then cover the entire garden space to warm up the soil enough to germinate the weed seeds then with the lack of sunlight the plants die. If you can do this about every three weeks it is amazing how few weeds you will have. It will greatly decrease your weed seed bank and lessen your back pain.

Don't use clear plastic. It will kill everything and you don't want that. You need the microbes.

After I harvested the last of the beans and spuds, I disced the green leftover bits in and planted buckwheat. That dies with the first good frost and I tilled that in and now I just put the ash from the stove out there . In another area I have Austrian winter peas, that will get tilled in before planting corn there for the next season. In the bean and spuds patch I'll change the crop rows and then start all over. The missus does the " Manual " gardening and grows the more up market crops like maters, squashes, okra and a bunch of other things.

I use cover crops and green manures in my raised beds.

We moved into a new house in June and got started on the garden pretty much immediately. Dumped a few yards of compost in the 3000 sq ft garden as well as a couple hundred pounds of lime. Planted some okra, sweet potatoes, and field peas. Did a fall garden that consisted of broccoli, lettuce, cabbage, kale, collards, beets, onions, garlic, carrots, calendula, and English peas. We have harvested most of the broccoli at this point, cabbage is ready, been eating fresh lettuce for awhile now, and most everything else is well on its way to making good groceries. Getting excited about the spring garden now.

Mother nature covered my garden today. 6 in. of snow. Not doing anything for a while.

12" here Jim a few days ago

We're In the deep freeze...only soft dirt dreaming here.
...seed catalogs are fun even if I don't usually order from them anymore

My wife had left some carrots and parsnips in the garden this fall. Went out and dug them . Before the ground freezes again and the snow returns.. old243

I have to wait a few days to start, it's probably froze two feet deep

I finally had to move mine to my neighbors abandoned barn lot. I'm limited to where I can have it my place and it got sprayed again this year by
the local FS co-op. Second time in 5 years. The new place I killed the grass with roundup and plowed late last summer. It's 150 feet from the closest
farm field and better not get chemical drift on it or I'm going to raise holy heck.

Tis -10 here , no garden ideas at present....LOL

Alkaline Vegetables
Members of the Brassica, or cabbage, genus prefer fairly alkaline soils of pH 7 or greater. These include cabbages and cauliflower. Cucumbers also prefer this relatively high pH soil. Asparagus, beets, onions, spinach, okra and mustard all prefer slightly acid soil but will grow in more alkaline conditions. Add wood ashes to soil that doesn't meet these plants' alkalinity requirements.

Potassium
Many vegetables that prefer alkaline conditions also require significant amounts of potassium, which wood ash provides in slightly lower concentrations than agricultural limestone. The nutrients in wood ash also dissolve better than those in limestone, making them more readily available to the plant. Use wood ash to provide potassium for asparagus, broccoli, celery, leeks, onions, potatoes, tomatoes,

Minus 6 here. Mine is covered with straw and mulch (and now snow) which i will till in with the existing garden soil...much later this spring.

Got some snow now. I always go out in the winter and spread lime

Weather was warm the past few days. Was able to till my garden.