Saturday, January 3, 2009

Let the Planning Begin!

What a great morning! Just when I was starting to wonder if the seed catalogs were ever going to grace our mailbox, Sara surprised me with what was in yesterday's mail (over to the left). I love this catalog. It always gets the juices flowing and thinking in earnest about spring.

In short, this year's plan in to double the number of raised beds we have from five to ten, rotate beds for all of last year's crops, and introduce a bunch of new things. I'm sketching it all out now and will post pictures when complete.

Last year was such a learning experience. So this time around, we're eager to make good on our mistakes and take it from there. At a high-level:
  • More compost in the soil to improve density and water retention
  • Try to leverage trellises more to increase available growing space and yield.
  • More spinach (and planted earlier)
  • Better crop timing and succession
  • Trying to use one crop to improve another (e.g., growing lettuce and greens under the cucumber trellis during the warmer summer months)
Anyway, I'm off to start thumbing through the catalog. Here's to this year's garden!

1 comment:

Tillerman said...

Seeds of Change is an interesting company. In a previous life I was peripherally involved with it.

Loved your objectives. I'm also in the process of doubling our number of raised beds (3 to 6 in our case), and we also learned the hard way last year that we need to sow spinach earlier.