A Garden in Pictures, 10/30/10

Finally, we made some progress on the fence and I got some pictures taken! Also, I found an answer to one of my tomato problems! We had a fantastic time at the farmer's market today. I'm sad that it was the last one, but most of the farmers were in a good mood because they're looking forward to sleeping in next Saturday:) Which is to say we had lots of good conversation.

First, the garden. Right now we just have the posts for the fence in...my spouse took off work yesterday to dig the holes and install the posts. He rented a post-hole digger for $12 and we bought some concrete for $16. I wasn't sure about the concrete but he said it was necessary, particularly in the Illinois winters - the ground freezing and thawing tends to push things out of the ground, like our chain link fence. He said it we need to take down the fence, the concrete will come out with the fence posts without too much trouble. I can't remember how much the wood cost right now but I'll see if I can find out. The first photo is the view from the second-story window, the picture on the right is on the ground, looking northeast.



The farmer's market always has a master gardener booth, and I brought this tomato to show them. This is what happened to all of my tomatoes...they looked great when they were green, and as soon as they started to ripen they split and got this cottony/spider-weby looking stuff in the cracks. The master gardeners weren't sure, but they gave me lots of resources. I'm excited to check them out, I'm sure I will make good use of their knowledge next year! I asked my farmer and he said that several of his tomatoes had that happen - it has to do the weather this year, where we had several downpours followed by extreme heat. The tomatoes had too much water and then when exposed to the sun, they grew too quickly. Their outside tomatoes had the same thing happen, but the tomatoes that they had in the hoophouse, where they can control the conditions more easily and the plants are protected a little better, did not have this. I talked to another farmer who lives a little bit further away, who did not have the same problems with his tomatoes this year, and he agreed with our farmer's diagnosis - I think he'd seen it before in previous seasons, but his location was drier so he escaped with many delicious amazing tomatoes this year.

In other news, here is what happens to tomato plants after the first frost.

I was amazed at how different the plant looked! It is totally wilted and shriveled up, and it looked great the night before the frost. I'm going to cut open one of the tomatoes to see how the fruit was affected by the frost. We have several green tomatoes that we were planning to batter and fry, but if the insides of the fruit look anything like the plant I don't think we'll want to use them.

last farmer's market tomorrow

I learned in the middle of this week that tomorrow is the last farmer's market of the season. They won't start up again until early June. I'm sort of feeling a sense of panic! We missed the market last week because when we got there about a half hour before close, everyone had left early. The weather was pretty bad and there weren't enough customers.

The only farmers who do a winter CSA do meat only - no veggies. But things like onions, carrots, and potatoes store well over the winter. They don't even have to be processed. I don't actually know how to store them though - that will be part of the learning next year. Anyway, I wonder why no farmers here offer this service? Maybe they think people only do CSA's for fresh produce and that people won't be willing to pay for local storage crops. A few farms in Eugene offered this, but only to CSA customers - so you wouldn't even hear about it if you didn't know the right people.

I guess this is when I should say to myself that the costs of going through winter without veggies outweigh the good. When the only option is not good for my health, maybe it's time to just buy produce flown in from South America. Or at least buy more frozen vegetables this year. But studies show that the longer you wait to eat vegetables after they're picked, the more nutrients they lose. And they really don't taste as good. So maybe I'm not missing that much. I will miss the farmer's market potatoes. They are truly in another world from conventional potatoes!

being a vegetarian

I've been a vegetarian for well over 15 years. When I began it was all about animal rights - I learned about how animals were treated in conventional agriculture and I wanted nothing to do with it.

This was in a suburban midwest town in the early 1990s. If free range chicken or beef was available, I didn't know about it. So I gave meat up. Luckily my parents have always given me the space to be myself, so they said that as long as I researched my nutritional needs and made sure I was eating healthy, they didn't pester me about it. I did not know any other vegetarians. I'm somewhat grateful to have had that experience, as it taught early on that I have the strength to stand up for what I believe in, and what is important to me, even if I am the only one doing so. Fitting in doesn't make sense to me.

Then I moved to Eugene, OR and probably half the people I spent time with were vegetarians. It was awesome! If friends or coworkers had a potluck, I could eat most of the food people had brought. And in grocery stores, free-range chicken and beef were available (though expensive). Still, I could not imagine putting a piece of flesh into my mouth and chewing it. I was happy with my processed soy fake meat products.

Towards the end of my time in Eugene I was learning more about local food. Long story short, processed soy isn't great for you and the vast majority certainly isn't local. Now, there are other vegetarian options: tempeh is a fermented soy bean cake that is high in protein and in my opinion, delicious. It is sold here at health food stores and could be made in my kitchen from raw soy beans (one of my criteria for eating locally). But right now I'm facing the question of whether or not I would want to eat tempeh, beans, and peanut butter as my protein sources for the rest of my life. I have always enjoyed eating my veggie burgers and not-hamburger crumbles in my spaghetti sauce. I am convinced that treated humanely, animals are a vital part of a sustainable, biodynamic food system. For one thing, cow and chicken manure enrich the soil. Additionally, chickens are great to have in a garden because they keep bugs under control. Humanely raised chickens and cows produce milk and eggs that I have always been pretty happy to eat. I would encourage anyone who eats meat to switch to organic free range before I would try to get them to give up meat altogether. Yet, I still can't imagine eating meat anytime in the near future.

manure cont.

Okay, I picked up Patricia Lanza's 'Lasanga Gardening' book and it answered some questions for me. First, you can put 'raw' compost materials in your lasagna garden - vegetable scraps, etc, basically anything you'd put into a compost bin. If you are putting ready compost on, you can actually plant immediately - so if you already had an area where you had gardened before or you didn't have to worry about killing the soil, AND you had goliath-sized compost bins that would be full of ready compost in the spring, you could just wait until spring to do this. Second, you do want to put down black plastic if you are 'cooking' it over the winter. Cooking it heats it up so that compost happens quicker - in her experience, in six weeks. We will put the plastic down just to be sure - checking it once a week and removing it when it is ready. I don't know what happens to overcooked lasagna gardens!

There are still two things I am confused about: first, she says that you should let it 'cook' for six weeks. But I am wanting to prepare it now to plant in six months. I'm not sure if it's okay to go ahead and do it now, or if I should wait until mid-February to layer the materials. Second, she says (and everything else I've seen) to layer until materials reach 18-24 inches. This seems especially important for sheet composting, because that will ensure that the pile gets heated to the point that compost happens and kills bacteria and disease. Now that I think about it, that's not confusing, it's just not what I was hoping to hear. Purchasing manure is crazy expensive for the size garden we're planning. I was hoping we could do a short stacked lasagna garden.

She recommends layers of about 4", but also says that she uses four times as much leaves/brown material as green material. This is consistent with what I have heard about ideal practices for composting, but then you would only have one layer of green material, such as manure. Would it go on the top, the bottom, or somewhere in the middle? To make it easier on us, I'm wondering about doing the layers much smaller - because 50 cubic feet, enough to cover the entire garden to a depth of 1", is all we can get in the truck.

So I think we're going to do a little experiment - we'll do some of the beds with 4" layers, and others with smallers layers. I was feeling anxious because I thought this had to be done in the fall, but it turns out we can take it easy as long as we use the black plastic. Plus, we could prepare the beds dedicated to early crops now, and prepare the beds that are planned for vegetables that don't get planted until later in a month or so. That will give us time to collect manure for free in a few weeks when we have more energy. Easier on the pocketbook too! This is supposed to be cheaper than buying vegetables at the store all winter long - I was expecting some upfront costs this first year, but not what I was estimating earlier this week. Ahhh! I feel so relieved to finally have this figured out!

searching for good manure

We went to order 350 cubic feet of cow manure on Saturday. I wondered to the saleswoman whether the manure came from pasture-raised cows or feedlot cows, and she figured (as I did) that it was from feedlot cattle. Properly aged and composted manure should not harbor any of the bacteria that are common in feedlot cattle - but I wasn't sure if the antibiotics feedlot cattle are pumped full of would remain in their composted manure. So we decided to wait to place our order until we did some more research.

Sure enough, I found an article showing that antibiotics have been found in vegetables, after using feedlot manure as fertilizer. They report that antibiotics have also been found in organic vegetables. So I began searching the internet for an alternative. Currently I can't find any commercially available manure from pasture-raised cows that is distributed where I live, but we have a friend with a horse stable who told us we could have whatever manure we are able to shovel off the barn floor for free. A good option, but frankly we are under some time constraints right now so I kept looking. Our farmer offered to sell us some of their cow manure, and is even willing to use a bucket loader to help us. He has left it up to us to suggest a fair price. Assuming he accepts what we offer, this option will probably win - except we do not have a vehicle to transport it home in. Our neighbors let us borrow their truck, but we would probably have to take four loads to get the bare minimum that we need - and we don't want to abuse their goodwill.

I've looked into renting a horse trailer or something, but as far as I can tell that's not a feasible option. Perhaps we will offer to do something very, very nice for our neighbors. At this point though, it still looks like we might have to buy the feedlot manure:( We need more organic cows!

chinese cabbage

Picked up a chinese cabbage at the market last week, also known as napa cabbage. Though I'm sure I've eaten some at some point in my life, I don't believe we've cooked with them before. This one was huge so we needed two meals to use it all. First we made a lentil coconut curry. The chinese cabbage absolutely MADE this dish. The stem part ended up with the flavor and texture of celery, adding a nice crunch. The leafy part was sort of like spinach. Delicious!

Tonight we are making crunchy cabbage salad - a favorite dish of my spouse's family, but I believe they use regular cabbage. Napa/chinese cabbage is really more similar in flavor and appearance to bok choy, in my opinion. Anyway, the basic recipe is to make a dressing on the stovetop with vinegar, oil, soy sauce and sugar. Toss dressing with chopped cabbage, crunchy noodles, and sesame seeds. I'll also be including almonds, and I have some canned oranges on hand that I might throw in. People often include green onions, but those aren't in season now so I just leave them out.

EDIT: The crunchy cabbage salad was decent, but in the future I would make the dressing and mix it with the chopped chinese cabbage the night before - then add almonds and crunchy noodles right before eating. It was pretty sweet so we didn't include oranges, though I still believe they would be a tasty addition. I would probably reduce the amount of sugar if I made it again. Finally, we ate this as a main dish and it really would be much, much better as a side.

A Garden in Pictures, 10/23/10

Today we are building a fence for the garden. We still need to get the area prepared, however we do it...after more research on lasagna gardening, I feel confused about whether or not I am supposed to put actual compost on top of the cardboard, or just organic materials that will turn into compost over the winter. I thought it was the latter, but from what I understand about compost, it wouldn't get hot enough over the winter to turn into healthy compost.

Then there is the problem of finding cow manure. I would like to buy it from a farmer nearby that lets his/her cattle graze on grass rather than feeding them corn. Cows' stomachs are not meant to eat corn, so the manure from cows with corn-based diets will not be very good.

Besides that, there are other methods of preparing soil in the fall that make it easier in the spring. So many options! This is what can be frustrating and overwhelming about gardening, for someone like me who has no clue what they are doing. Most gardening resources are really intended for people who already have a fairly decent working knowledge of how to grow stuff. But I know that probably, all methods will work just fine, so I need to just pick the one that makes the most sense to me. My goal is to have the grass die over the winter rather than having to remove the sod in the spring. I don't mind tilling the soil in the spring, and it seems odd to me that I wouldn't have to do that if I did lasagna gardening. To let you in on a secret, I was planning on tilling in the spring anyway, even if I did lasagna gardening. The scandal! So, I'm leaning towards trying something else. I just have to keep researching the options in the meantime...and quick!

our fallback options for cooking seasonally

My entire life, any vegetable or fruit I wanted was pretty much available year-round. So when I first started seasonal eating, the limitation seemed staggering. The first year with a CSA was overwhelming and I had to throw away more produce that I'd like to admit. But I think our problem was that we were trying to find new recipes the featured each vegetable we were bringing home. Towards the end of that first year, we figured out certain standby meals that we could basically throw in whatever vegetables we had on hand. Here's a list of those meals.

1. Stir-fries

We have a fabulous wok that was given to us as a wedding present. We cut up whatever vegetables we want to use, stir-fry them with a little bit of oil, then add cream of mushroom soup (we like Amy's because it is very tasty) and whatever spices we're in the mood for. We serve it over rice or noodles and sometimes add crunchy noodles on top (not local, but we use very little so it is low on my priority list for figuring out a more local option).

2. Curries

We actually don't make curries very often, but they also can handle a lot of miscellaneous vegetables so I always mean to include them on the weekly list. A savory curry is made similarly to stir-fry, but instead of cream of mushroom soup you might add tomato paste. A sweeter curry uses coconut milk (again, not local, but we're doing what we can). Typically served with rice or flatbread.

3. Egg dishes

I'm very particular about how my eggs are cooked, so we usually either scramble eggs with several chopped vegetables or bake them in the oven at 200 degrees to make a sort of omelet (the mixture should be no thicker than one inch, so whatever size pan makes that possible for the amount you are cooking. The thinner the egg mixture, the quicker it will take...for us, four eggs will take an hour with this method). Some people might like stovetop omelettes, or other ways of preparing eggs that I'm unaware of. If you eat grocery store eggs, you will be amazed at the difference when you try farm fresh eggs! The color of the yolk is reddish orange, they smell better, and taste incredible.

4. Macaroni and Cheese

Not the most nutritious thing we eat, but it is tasty. I typically make macaroni and cheese (from a box...this is one of my priorities for finding a good quick recipe for) then add fresh vegetables. Grated carrots and beets, zucchini, tomatoes, and broccoli are some of my favorites.

5. Pizza

Again, not the most nutritious thing we eat, but completely delicious! We make the dough from scratch using flour from a local farmer. If it were as easy as macaroni and cheese from a box, I bet we would not eat anything besides pizza. We'll put pretty much anything on a pizza. A squash pizza is particularly delicious with smoked cheddar cheese. We recently tried radishes on pizza and it was incredible - this is from someone who does not like radishes. Baking them mellowed them out but they still had a bit of spice to them. This week I have some turnips that I'll put on pizza.

eating locally/seasonally

At a party a couple of years ago, I was talking about organic food with a couple of friends who are experts in environmentalism. I asked them whether they thought it was more important to eat organic food or local food, given that that is a choice that sometimes has to be made. Without hesitation and in unison, they said 'eat locally!' The very next day I began living by that principle.

Unfortunately this was in December. At that time I was living in zone 8, so a talented gardener (which I was not) with the appropriate materials (say a cold frame and/or some grow lights) could probably grow fresh produce year-round. But we do not have any commercial farms that sell produce during the winter, so I made the decision to basically go without. I figured if I could make it through that winter, it would be easier to enjoy and appreciate good local food when it was in abundance. Many have told me that this was a stupid decision, and I definitely noticed feeling more lethargic that winter. But for better or worse, I am a woman of principles. So I would do the same thing again, and in fact I have done the same again.

One lucky thing was that there was a small local company that sold a few vegetables in the freezer: broccoli, corn, sweet potatoes. The first time I discovered them, I ate two whole packages of broccoli as soon as I got them home and cooked. Nothing had ever tasted so good as that broccoli did! The following winter I made an effort (and room in the budget) to buy those more frequently. Centuries ago, my ancestors may have gone without greens during the winter, but they didn't have a dissertation to write. One thing I learned during this experiment is that I feel best when I eat vegetables frequently; the second year I thought perhaps if I loaded up on produce during the summer, I could abstain during the winter. I will definitely say that the second winter was better in terms of feeling energetic when consuming fewer (or none at all) vegetables, but I still devoured them at every chance.

This winter once again, I will probably go without fresh produce (except on holidays and special occasions, when I try to eat what everyone else is eating). There is still a local company that sells vegetables in the freezer, but this company is large enough that I would be surprised if the vegetables were actually grown in Illinois soil. So my plan is to contact some local farms and see if they have storage onions, carrots, and potatoes to sell me. I need to do this soon, as it is getting late in the year. I am also considering buying a grow light and raising spinach inside the house.

tomato problems

We moved to our current home in the middle of summer...probably not too late to plant certain things, but late enough that I decided to wait until 2011 to get the garden going. I did however bring one tomato plant from Oregon. This well-traveled tomato plant made it through the 2300 mile car trip and after initially doing poorly, ended up producing quite a few tomatoes. However, we had quite a few problems with it that I wanted to document so that next year I might avoid them.

First, we bought the seedling from a vendor who had several varieties of heirlooms, someone we had not patroned before. I was told this was a green zebra, but these tomatoes are just typical red tomatoes. They look like they could be heirlooms but I'm not certain. Lesson: be careful who you buy from!

Second, there was a pile of dirt in the corner of our yard that I used to pot the tomato plant for the long journey. My spouse told me it was compost, and I know little about compost so I thought 'great' and potted away. However, it didn't look like healthy soil to me. Since then I have learned that even it if was compost at one time, having sat in our yard for 5 years without new organic materials added...well, it was probably not high quality at the least and it was out in the open, making it likely to carry diseases like...

Third, blight. My tomatoes were so healthy last year that I had no idea what this was when I first saw it, but I found a list of common tomato problems and did a quick google image search for each one. And it was blight. I stuck the plant straight from its pot into the ground, so the soil was not amended with good nutrition. Not sure if this would have made a difference, but healthy plants are less likely to get disease. I'm not sure if this affected the quality of the tomatoes. The few that we ate were not very tasty. The others were eaten by...

Fourth, bugs and worms. Again, had no problems with these last year. Currently the leaves are covered in dead soil gnats. Supposedly the adults are not harmful but I need to figure what I should do to make sure that the larvae do not stick around. Luckily the planned spot for the garden is far away from where the lone tomato was planted, but I do not want to take chances. I did not see many other bugs, just a single stink bug, but something was eating the tomatoes from the inside. There were several worm holes. After the earliest tomato was eaten before fully ripening on the vine, I picked others when they began to show the slightest bit of red and then bring inside to finish ripening on the sunny windowsill, protected from insect invaders. But these seemed to get eaten from the inside out. I should have taken a picture, but I did not. Another weird-looking problem that I'm guessing was a bug or worm is that as they were starting to ripen, the formally smooth skin would be replaced by this weird spider web crack. Anyway, as an organic gardener I'm happy that bugs and worms want to eat my vegetables, but I'm only willing to tolerate so much.

The fifth problem was bees. I'm not totally sure this is a problem - it could have just been that the stress I imposed on the tomato plant delayed its productivity - but I want to watch out for it next year. Most of the blossoms would die and fall off rather than resulting in a tomato fruit. I don't remember this being a problem last year - I remember every single blossom being a fruit. But maybe I didn't watch it as carefully. Anyway, like everyone else I've been hearing that bees are getting scarcer, and living in a residential neighborhood with a few kids around there's always the chance that nervous parents are trying to get rid of them. (My thoughts on that are another blog post for another day.) I know a few others who garden so I will ask them if they've had any problems with pollination, but I plan on planting clover or some other plant that attracts bees close to the garden.

butternut squash

We had an heirloom butternut squash from our farmer that we needed to use this week. I was hesitant to buy it because of the difficulty in cutting it up. This time was much easier, so I think having a good knife (and being prepared to be patient) made all the difference. It weighed about five pounds, so it was the centerpiece for two meals. As an heirloom it was sweeter and darker orange than other butternut squash I've seen - it actually reminded me a little of canteloupe when I cracked it open.

The first night we made a savory squash bread pudding, making use of the pasture-raised eggs we can also get from our farm. I personally do not like french toast, so I was not a fan of the bread pudding. My spouse liked it but even he thought it needed more seasonings. The gist of the recipe was: mix eggs, milk, small chunks of cooked butternut squash, and torn-up pieces of bread, then bake until it is cooked. It also had onions and spices like nutmeg and allspice.

The next night we made butternut squash soup. I have had version of this soup made by others, and don't really like the sweetness typical of recipes for this dish. We also did not have carrots or celery at the market this week, making many recipes out of our reach. So I found this recipe which was PERFECT! The potatoes and the cayenne pepper make all the difference in turning this traditionally sweet soup into a savory meal. Loved it so much I've eaten a bowl at nearly every meal since then. I tasted the soup after putting in the level of spices they suggested and ended up tripling most of them - with the exception of cayenne, which I just dumped in whatever we had left (probably a full teaspoon, 4x the amount suggested in the recipe).

Raised Beds??

I received an email asking about garden beds. To answer the question, we are not doing raised garden beds for two reasons: first, due to issues unique to our chosen careers, we can't be certain that we will be here during the summer of 2012. Because we might be in a position of needing to sell the house, we're cautious about making permanent changes to this property. We don't want to spend money on something that will reduce the chances of resale, or the resale value. Of course, killing the grass in order to have a garden is a permanent change, but that is a sacrifice we are unquestionably willing to make. That's just the way we are:) Second, I'm not convinced that raised beds are the way to go. The temperature of the soil in the earth is so much more stable that the temperature of the air, and I am certain that soil in raised beds varies more than soil in earth. That doesn't seem good for the produce. On the other hand, soil in raised beds warms up faster than soil in the earth - possibly extending the growing season, eeking out an extra couple of weeks on either end. But back to the original hand, that soil is more likely to get un-productively hot during the middle of the summer when temperature highs reach record levels. In future seasons, when I've established good growing methods for at least one vegetable, I might experiment with raised beds. But for now, I'm still trying to figure it all out!

A Garden in Pictures, 10/16/10

Here is the space with cardboard mostly used in the areas where I want walking paths. Theoretically I suppose you could leave the grass in the areas where you expect to be standing/squatting while you work in the garden, but I decided to kill it off. In my last garden, the grass and weeds from my walking path grew phenomenally, and because we couldn't get the lawn mower into my little garden area (fenced off to keep the dog out), I had to manually pull it out or risk the unwanted guests a) itching my legs and arms as I weeded or b) spreading into the garden, and competing with my precious little food-producing plants. It seemed like a waste of time so I'm going to avoid that problem this year.

I wanted the paths to be three feet wide originally, a generous amount of space with plenty of room to kneel down without getting attacked by the plants once they get tall in mid-summer. As I realized how large the garden area was getting to be, I cut the walking paths back to 2 feet. I'll let you know how comfortable that is as the growing season passes.

Anyway, I have also placed some cardboard in areas where I will be growing vegetables so that I can compare the newspaper to the cardboard, in terms of its effectiveness in this supposedly easy lasagna method. Right now it seems like a late night infomercial, promising to change my life for the low-low price of three easy installments of 19.95 plus shipping. I can't wait to see how it turns out!

Have any suggestions for my garden? See any red flags? How do you plan your garden?

The Veggies

Following is the current plan for the garden. Times to plant are approximate...I still have much more research to do! FYI, we are in zone 6.

Sowing indoors for transplant (early february):
tomatoes
peppers
broccoli
melons

seeding direct in early spring (early April):
onions
spinach
carrots
strawberries (seedlings)
asparagus (will not be able to harvest this year)
celery (notoriously difficult to grow, but I really love it so I will try anyway!)

seeding direct after date of last frost (early May):
summer squash
potatoes
green beans

late summer seeding for fall crops (early July):
carrots
squash
broccoli
celery
potatoes
spinach
tomatoes

soon I will post pictures of the garden space and my space plan...

Lasanga Garden Prep

Lasagna gardening, for those who might not know, is an easy way of preparing soil for planting.

1. Begin by spreading a layer of either cardboard or newspaper over the area in which you will be gardening. I'm doing some of each - we have a fair amount of cardboard boxes left over from our recent move, but I've read that the cardboard doesn't decompose as thoroughly as newspaper. I'll let you know what I find come spring when I go digging in the dirt! I only used brown cardboard...I figured if it was clearly bleached and/or dyed, or wax-coated, it probably wouldn't decompose the way I wanted. I also removed all plastic tape - I didn't mind if it pulled off the outer layer of the cardboard because I figured it would just decompose that much more quickly!

2. Layer compost on top of the cardboard/newspaper until it reaches about 2 feet high. You'll alternate layers of brown compost with green compost. I'm new to composting so I'm still trying to figure out exactly how compost is categorized: Obviously dead leaves are brown and rotten produce is green, but what about new grass clippings? Coffee grounds? Manure? I will learn these things, I have no doubt, but until then I feel ignorant.

3. Reputedly, the 2 feet high compost pile will shrink over the winter (even quicker, in fact). My goal is to take photos and measurements once a week and report to the blog.

4. When it is time to plant, all you have to do is start digging. You don't have to aerate, hoe, weed, or anything. I'm cautiously hopeful...you know what they say about things that are too good to be true...and this definitely sounds very dream-like!

We have a dog who will get crazy excited when she smells manure covering the lawn, so we are waiting to pile the compost until we've built a simple fence that should keep her out of the garden area. Our yard is big enough that she will still have plenty of room to run around, but she won't get to eat or roll in cow poop so we'll stay happy too.

Photos coming over the weekend. I think that will be a good standard - photos on Saturday.

I love comments so let me know how you prepare your garden for the winter - what technique do you use? What have you heard about lasagna gardening? What vegetables do you been plan on growing? How long have you been gardening?

Beginning the 2011 season

It is clear from the slowly dwindling stock at the farmer's market that the growing season is winding down. This must mean it is time to start preparations for next year's garden.

We are converting a 50' x 40' section of lawn into a vegetable garden, using the lasagna method - layering cardboard, newspaper, and compost so that over the winter the grass will die and decompose, providing excellent nutrition for the soil. Last year my 4' x 10' plot took me two days to prepare in the spring - it didn't help that I was using hand tools and had no clue what I was doing:) I'm hoping this will be easier on my back and less time-consuming.

Our hope is that the garden will provide enough vegetables to feed us throughout the winter. Our summer diet will be providing by a local CSA. I am a novice gardener; in my small plot last year I grew spinach, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, and broccoli. The spinach was the only delicious success; the peppers did not grow, the broccoli was not edible, and I (as an example of how much of a novice I am) did not stake up the tomatoes. After the first couple of delicious beauties, they all rotted on the ground before they were ripe enough to pick.

Because I have primarily relied on the internet for advice on gardening, I thought I should document the journey in hopes that whatever I learn might help someone else. I'll mostly focus on my experience in my garden, but will also share successful recipes and the occasional discussion of food politics in the U.S.