Casebolt Clan's Journey to Mountain Living: Garden Plan 2015!

Garden Plan 2015

It is that time of year again….time to implement and plan the goals for the garden for 2015. When we first came up with the idea to attempt an Urban Homestead, we created a 3 year plan. Last year didn’t go quite as we had planned, but that is OK. We knew this would be a process, and last year we learned that we need to be flexible with the long term plan. We knew that it would take us awhile to get a handle on what works, what doesn’t, and how much we need to grow to sustain us for a year. Last year we had to supplement more than we had hoped. We spent much of the winter coming up with a game plan for this year. By accident we got a seed catalogue from a company we have never heard of. So we sat down and read it and discovered that it gave planting instructions and tips and tricks for every kind of seed they offered, better instruction than most websites I had found. With what we have learned over the winter we have had a lot of “ah ha moments”. We now had an understanding on why we can’t grow some things (carrots, onions) successfully. It taught us why we weren’t getting as many peppers as we should. Peppers and tomatoes need started sooner, broccoli, cabbage, and lettuce are cold weather crops and best grown in the spring. Marigolds planted among the garden will help keep pests away and can also help corn grow! The two types of corn I want to grow this season can’t be planted next to each other or else they could cross pollinate. Armed with this new knowledge, I realized that we needed a more detailed game plan than ever. A few weeks ago I found a free garden planner and began creating my large fenced garden. I was very excited when I realized that it also game up with a vegetable list that detailed when it needed to be planted and started from seed. It helped me figure out how many plants we needed of each type to accomplish our goal of veggies for a year. Doing this, I realized that we have been way under utilizing our big garden space! I got so immersed at finding this useful tool that I started putting all of my garden ideas that are in my head into an actual calculated drawn out plan! In the end I ended up with 6 different garden plans, the big garden, the little garden, the berry garden, the greenhouse, herb gardens, and an overflow garden. With the plans formally in place helped the 2015 garden plan fall into place, and naturally as we have found, it is totally different than what we mapped out when we started this. So here are the plans for 2015:

·The cottonwood tree has to come down. It is dying. I loved that tree so it made me sad last summer when I realized that it wouldn’t last much longer. So we planted a red maple tree a few feet away to take its place. But this year before it gets worse and blows over it has to come down. So……….we have decided to take that particular space and create 3 raised garden beds. These will be our berry garden, herb garden, and a whatever garden (this year will be overflow of veggies).

· Create a trellis system for the grapevines. We have 3 grapevines (concord, green and red) are all planted around the deck. So we have decided to create a trellis system for them to grow on and use that to make a “decorative” living cover for that portion of the deck.

·Build a climbing fence for the green beans.

· Build a trellis system for the cucumbers. We read that cucumbers will actually produce more if they grow on a trellis system. So we are going to attempt that this year.

·With the plans in place, we figure this will be a good time to plant grass seed as well. So we will be mapping out the rest of the plan and grow seed where it calls for it.

·And finally last but not least, we may end up building a new shed before the herb shed. The one we have now is falling apart.

With that said and learning what we have learned, we have already started some veggies. The cold weather crops, and some others that we just wanted to give a head start to. We have started; tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, arugula, green bell peppers, jalapenos, ghost peppers, asparagus, green chilies, onions, and some herbs. And the tomato plants have went out of control. We were trying to get rid of old seed that was a few years old. It wasn’t packaged away for preserving so I was very doubtful it would even come up. All I wanted was 10 plants (5 different varieties of cherry tomatoes, and 5 big tomatoes), so I put 3-4 seeds in each pod. Well, we have way more than we bargained for. In the 10 pods we somehow managed to get 78 plants, not quite sure how, but that’s the tally. 2 tomato plants also somehow ended up in the ghost pepper pod. We have no idea how that happened either. So…….we have those two tomatoes setting aside because, well we just aren’t quite sure how they will turn out. They could be interesting flavored tomatoes. We also somehow have access mild green chilies, we planted 30 seeds and have 36 plants, which is Ok, because this is the one thing we can find very little info on, so we have no idea how many plants it takes to get the bushel that we need. We may still not have enough and we may end up with more than we need. Anyway…….it will be an interesting garden year. Because we have so many tomatoes we finally broke down and invested in a pressure canner, since everything I read says to avoid any chances of botulism tomatoes and some other veggies should be canned using a pressure canner. I am kind of excited about this and the plans we have this year. Due to sports and work schedules we will not be doing as much camping this year, so we feel this might allow us to pay closer attention to our garden this year. Below, I have posted pictures of the garden plans! Happy Spring!