Posted By FarmerJ on March 19, 2009

The robins have returned, the grass is turning green, the early-blooming trees are beginning to bud and things are quickly beginning to hustle around the farmstead.

I’m going to share a portion of something my Darling Husbie recently wrote ~ it will provide a tidbit of history and paint a little picture of what we’ve got going on.

“Last year, we got a late start on a 20×40 foot garden that the previous owners had fenced off.  The resulting vegetable bounty turned the light bulb on over my frugal wife’s head.  She had been somewhat noncommittal about the whole thing until she saw her kitchen counter covered with zucchini, squash, potatoes, cucumbers and watermelons.  I smelled wood burning from the other room, came in and saw her tapping her foot with that ”I have an idea” look.

That idea consisted of turning our entire front lawn into a garden.  Sort of crazy, but then again, not as crazy as watering it and mowing it.  That area could be producing more squash!  So I got to see the synergy created when my wife has both an idea and a husband with a tractor.   I came home the other night and she had the whole thing laid out, on engineer paper, with each type of plant placed just so, considering that some plants don’t like each other, some need more space, some get rid of bugs, and some are just tall.   By the time it was all over, she had laid out an 85×150 foot garden consisting of no less than ten 30×40 foot “neighborhoods.”  That’s 12,900 square feet of garden, by the way.  Not only that, the plan called for another 7,000 square feet of sweet corn on the north side of it all.

This is where I come in.  I know last month I wrote about the walk-behind tractor I got to help out with the garden.  That was before the garden got it’s own zip code.  That little tractor is five horsepower!  What this garden needs is live hydraulics, live PTO and about 45 horsepower.  So I hooked up the subsoiler to the Ford 860 and started tearing up the lawn.  Never thinking about the phone line…

I can’t even tell you all the stuff that’s going in there.  Let’s put it this way, in one of the plots will be no less than three different varieties of popcorn.  Red, white, and blue.  In the proper order.  That’s the way she does things.”

So, yes.  For the past few weeks, I’ve been busy pouring over The Vegetable Garden Bible and the County Extension website through the University of Nebraska.  I’ve already learned more than I ever thought I would know about plant companionship, and I think I’ve figured out why one variety of watermelon in last year’s garden tasted bitter.

I thoroughly enjoyed perusing all the colorful seed catalogs.  Husbie kept telling me to get whatever I wanted, since we have nearly 13,000 square feet of space to fill up.  The hard part was narrowing it down to less than 60 varieties.  Heehee!  Husbie is really interested in heirloom seeds, so we’ve got about a dozen varieties to experiment with.  I’ve put the list of seeds we’ll be planting this year in the column to the right.  As we begin harvesting, I’ll be updating the list with that particular information.

Now that my work on the engineer paper is complete, Husbie has an excuse to get a little seat time on his tractor.  Husbie’s a happy man when he gets seat time.  This photo shows some of the main gridlines of the ten 30×40 foot plots, along with the extent of the subsoil work Husbie had completed…before I commented about how smart he was to know exactly where the phone (and internet) line was.  [The phone company was here to blue stake the line two days later ~ and it was never in any danger of 'the claw.']

Here’s Darling Husbie getting some quality seat time this evening.  Not only did he complete running the subsoiler over the remaining portion of the large plot, he ran it over the 7,000 square foot sweet corn plot…three times.  Did I mention he’s a happy man when he gets seat time?

If you’re wondering what a subsoiler is and what it does, it’s basically a massive claw that rips the ground open, making it easier for the plow to do it’s job.  We’re expecting to get some rain this weekend, so Husbie’s trying to get the plot plowed in hopes the exposure will help to warm the soil a little more quickly.  There’s a reason for that.

This is what my small 20×40 square foot plot looked like a couple of weeks ago.  The snow has since melted, but the ground is still very cold and hard.  Granted, it was still snowing in May last year ~ and we’re sure to get more snow yet this spring ~ but we’re trying to take advantage of as many warm days as possible for preparation.

We’ll keep you posted on the progress, and we’ll be sure to let you know what the United States Postal Service designates as the plot’s zip code.  I’ve still got the herb garden to plan and all the flower beds to figure out, too.  I’ve got seed packets in every nook and cranny.  Husbie’s got a couple of giant bags of special grass seed he’s got to plant, too ~ some sort of special mix for the deer…that’s going in the pasture area in the back forty.  Perhaps between that and the alfalfa field, the deer will be so content they won’t have any need to mess with the garden.  We can hope, right?!

Categories: Gardening
Tags: