In innate perversity, I want to start my garden today so badly I can TASTE it – in the middle of the snow we had yesterday. If the weather were beautiful, I probably wouldn’t be feeling so antsy to start it. :0)
I looked at the weather forecast for the next 10 days here in Arkansas, though, and there are NO freezes and beautiful weather ahead, so my plans to get my early spring garden going have me chomping at the bit.
I think my husband would seriously think about having me committed if I wanted to go shopping for plants today in the middle of the snow, so I’ll wait for it to melt. Maybe we can shop Monday…
I want to look for spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, and as many kinds of lettuce as I can find to start. I’ll also start some radishes and sweet onions. Anything more would be gravy.
As soon as the snow melts, all I have to do this year is pull the tarps off, hook up the irrigation system, and plant.
The idea is to alternate plantings so you get the benefits of crop rotation, disease prevention, and weed control. For example, I could plant one broccoli plant in the middle of a square, skip the adjoining squares, and then plant another. You can plant 4 spinach plants in a square, but I choose to only plant one, giving it plenty of room. The picture also doesn’t show the hose that runs down the middle of three boxes, with a sprinkler in the middle of each box, for irrigation. We connect the hoses to a timer.
There is a fence around the six planter boxes to protect the garden from deer. We have chicken wire around the bottom to discourage rabbits, etc.
We’ve also converted a couple of brick planters on the other side of the yard to square foot planters for growing tomatoes.
I’ll post pics when I get the garden started. Ooh! I can’t wait!!!!
creativeartworksblog 