We are rethinking our garden, and making some changes to our plans. We are finding that we will need a lot more material to amend our soil, and have decided to purchase some topsoil to add to our sheet mulching process. It is not cheap. We’ve also been thinking that perhaps we are “biting off more than we can chew” our first year by planning to plant so much.
The artichokes are definitely out, cute as the little seedlings are. They take up a huge amount of space and resources for such a small crop, and may not even flower in our climate. It was going to be an experiment just for fun, but now appears too costly.
We will still plant in our terraced beds on the east side of our garden, we will still plant the perennial corner of asparagas (and companions) at the lower west side. At this point, the strawberry and melon sections are iffy, and the “three sisters” (corn, beans & squash) will be limited to a small area. It will still be a lot of effort and harvest!
There will be a large, unplanted section that we may begin to prepare for next year by planting some cover crops, then working them into the soil and sheet mulching in the fall.
The vegetables we eat this year will be expensive, but the amended soil will be used for years to come, with less expensive methods of keeping it up in the future as we recycle yard, kitchen, and horse waste efficiently from now on.