Oh my goodness! Ed and crew are FINALLY done with the seven raised beds (with internal radiant heating system). You can see them in the photo above.
Now we turn to the chicken house. I will share that process as it comes along.
I am also now going to start seeding the three brand new beds.
I have brainstormed on the placement of the first aquaculture tank and I will share some of that planning as soon as I have it mocked up in a document.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I am mapping out where and how each seed is planted in the beds. This may seem to be overwrought but I do not think so. The reason I am doing this is so that I can know what each seedling is as it grows so that I can watch it’s morphology change, be alert to the different types of insect predators, see which seeds do not like this soil, see which are thriving, which like being next to the other, etc. I think it is worth the time to know what I have planted, where and when so that this sort of analysis is easier.
Planted the second bed yesterday. Here are a few photos of how I set up the bed and the map I make up for myself to set out the plants. These may be seeded a bit tight but we will see. I will be needing to cull some by design.
I hate forgetting what I planted so this year I am mapping it out. Will transfer this to an electronic copy so that, when the paper is lost as it is bound to be, I have a permanent record. I marked off rough 1 foot sections to help me with the planting. I used a 2×4 to make the marks after using a ruler to mark off feet.
We live on 16 acres and have, until now, been very light on the land. We built our house 11 years ago and have not done anything else with the land. We have always looked out the back windows and wondered when we might begin to make a garden and a kid-safe play area.
I have tried gardening the soil and the forest floor is completely unarable. If you try to even dig a small hole, the roots make the ground like iron. We also have extensive ledge that makes it hard to do much of anything but build raised beds.
Activate the Wp-cumulus plugin to see the flash tag clouds!
We are a family of 5, including Nika, Ed, Q (14), KD (7), and Baby Oh (4). We garden 1024 square feet of raised beds plus assorted permacultural plantings. We also have 13 LaMancha dairy goats, 40 chickens, and one guard llama.
