The time is here to start planning for our fall gardens. When our campus garden was flooded out, the soil composition was disrupted and our summer garden became sedentary and produced less than 10% of the expected yield. We finally decided to hit the reset button and mow it down. We used a broadcaster to spread around 250 lbs of “Harmony Agri-Organic Fertilizer” (5-4-3) over the 4000 sq. ft area and tilled it into the soil to condition it for our fall plants as advised by Tim Crawford , one of our Grow Appalachia participants who holds a major in Horticulture.
Our Flooded Garden
Our Flooded Garden.
We acquired flats of broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower from Pine View Farm in Manchester. These will go to our participants and our campus garden. We’re also going to make a run at carrots, beets, mustard, turnips, collards and lettuce. We found some bush beans with a quick turn around (50-55 days) that we are going to plant as well. We are going to use cane poles and some plastic we already have on hand to make hoop houses for our raised beds. This should aid us in being successful as we try to extend our growing season.
We also had some seeds wash out of our compost pile during the flood that gave us volunteer butternut squash, what I believe to be a cheese pumpkin and winter squash. We put some of our compost in a raised bed and it exploded in tomatoes. We thinned them out. Hopefully, we’ll get something out of them.
So here’s to hoping for dry weather and good planting.
Hey Chad, what’s another word for optimist? Farmer! Keep up the good work brother.
Planting a fall garden always makes me feel hopeful again 🙂