Garden Plan for 2011

I mentioned in the last post that we are going to "ramp up" to our full homestead plan. We still have a lot of exterior work to do on the house, so we are going to focus half of our energy on that and the other half on the garden.

After Ashley is finished with school, she is going to work on painting the exterior of the house. She will start in mid-April, and will hopefully be finished when she takes her boards, sometime around the end of July. Her parents are both going to visit during the summer and help her paint! We are also going to put a split-rail fence around the sides and back of the property, re-build the small porches, construct the front porch deck, and put new roofs on the bay windows. All of that will take place this summer. In April and May, we will need to construct the garden and do some work on the lawn.

We are planning to construct the full garden, but will only plant a portion of it. In addition, we are only going to plant one of the plots of wheat. The garden plan is shown below.

It's kind of hard to read the labels, so I will walk you through the plan. At the top-left are bush beans, below the beans are bell peppers and jalapenos. To the right of the beans and peppers are cucumbers (in frames), with spinach in the shade of the cucumbers. At the top-right are tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and carrots. In the two plots at the right of the picture are lettuce along the bottom and onions in a row across the middle of the plots. There is parsley in the top plot and basil in the bottom. The plot in the bottom-left if full of assorted herbs, and the other two plots are both potatoes. There is still some space left in the garden for future years. The long plot at the left will one day hold blackberries, and the long plots at the right will hold grapes and raspberries. As I mentioned in the previous post, we will also have a couple of peach trees one day. We think this plan will be plenty for us to deal with this season.

We have already started the early seeds indoors (the last frost date for our area is May 20). Once the seeds begin to sprout (about a week or so), I will post on their progress. Comments are welcome as always!

References

We have been using several references for our garden planning:

• Vegetable Gardening by Fern Marshall Bradley and Jane Courtier. This book is a great reference for just about any vegetable, from lettuce and tomatoes to artichokes, kohlrabi, and scorzonera. It includes information on planning, preparation, planting, care, harvesting, and storing.
• Gardening in New York by Andre & Mark Viette is a great resource for us, since neither one of us is from this area. Not only does it include info on vegetables, but also annuals, lawns, perennials, shrubs, trees, groundcovers, and water plants. The book is a month-by-month reference that walks us through the entire process for each of these types of plants. It will be a useful reference for years to come.
• Carrots Love Tomatoes by Louise Riotte is a reference on companion gardening. It has great information on which plants to plant together and which plants to keep far apart. For tomatoes, for instance, it tells you that they should not be planted near any member of the cabbage family or potatoes, that they will protect asparagus from the asparagus beetle, that garlic will protect them from the red spider mite, and that they should only be watered from beneath.  Another great resource!

Homestead Plan

The past few months we have spent a lot of time planning our homestead. Our primary reference has been The Backyard Homestead by Carleen Madigan (thanks to Ed Caro for suggesting this book). This is a great general reference for homesteading. It includes chapters on planning, vegetable gardens, fruits and nuts, poultry, meat and dairy, grains, and even "food from the wild" (like mushrooms and honey). This book is a great starting point, but you will need more specialized books to really be successful.

One of our primary concerns has been space. Our lot is about half an acre, and our house takes up a large portion of that. Subtract off a driveway, a garage, a patio, and some lawn space and that doesn't leave much room to work with! The Backyard Homestead's subtitle, though, is "Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre!," so hopefully we will be able to make it work (with some clever planning).

It is really important to us to have a large (and usable) lawn. We are within walking distance of the schoolyards, and there is a large open space behind our lot that belongs to the church next door, so we can sacrifice some of our yard space to the garden. We also want a nice comfortable space in the shady part of our backyard for relaxation (with maybe some nice groundcover and a water feature!). This leaves us about a quarter of our lot to work with.

So, what is our plan?  Here is a schematic (created with Google SketchUp):

Let me walk you through the plan.  The street is along the bottom of the picture, and is to the south of the house (the gray object in the center).  You can see the sidewalk along the bottom and the slate walkways to the house.  The reddish area is the future driveway (probably stamped concrete!). The brown areas around the house will be our porches.  All of the trees on the property are in the picture, and you can see the potential landscaping close to the house.

The lawn will be in the southwest corner of the lot. We think it will be large enough for our needs. Just north of the lawn (near the garden) are two peach trees (yes, peaches can grow this far north).  Then comes the garden (about 36 ft by 28 ft). North of the garden (and my favorite idea) are four plots of wheat. If we are successful growing wheat, these four plots should provide enough bread for a year!

The northwest corner of the lot presents some problems. Due to our large (and beautiful) maple tree, it is rather shady in this location. Hopefully, though, there will be enough sun for chickens, and maybe one day even pigs! We could also have honey bees in this area, and we can tap the maples for syrup.

That pretty much covers the main features of the homestead. Other things in our plan include a two-car garage with an attached workshop area, a "serenity area" for relaxation, a stone patio for entertaining, and a firewood storage area. Last year, we purchased a high-efficiency wood stove that we use to heat the house. The stove's rating is 80,000 BTU/hr, which is enough to heat the entire house in the winter. With the stove, we use between six and eight cords per year, which will be stored in this covered and ventilated area.

This is our ultimate plan. In order for our homestead to provide most of our food, we will need to do a lot of preserving work (canning, pickling, drying, etc.). Because of this, we are going to work our way up to the full homestead. Over the next week or so I plan to post on our plan for this year and our progress so far. Stay tuned, and remember, comments are always welcome.

Our First Post

Welcome to our blog!

We want to make our homestead as self-sufficient as possible.  This includes a large garden, grains, chickens, and maybe even livestock!  We will post regularly as we expand our homestead, and maybe even include info on our home renovation efforts and our everyday lives.  Check often for updates!