Raised Bed Gardening

This year we are making some raised beds for our garden. Jordon is building them with what he would consider the second best design. He would like to build them to set up off the ground on posts. But I talked him into setting them on the ground so that we don't have to haul in so much dirt.

The soil where we need to plant has too much clay in it. So we are mixing other dirt, manure, and compost together to fill the raised beds.

He has decided to make the beds chicken proof.  (Sounds good to me. Then we won't have to have the chickens penned up as much this summer.)
It is basicly a small hoop house with chicken wire instead of greenhouse plastic. Although he is going to use greenhouse plastic when it's cooler.
Instead of buying pvc pipe, Jordon bought a heavy duty, flexible, plastic tubing called Pex Coil to use for placing chicken wire over.
He built the main raised bed frame. Then he built a smaller frame, attaching the coil and chicken wire to it. He will fasten the smaller frame onto the main bed with hinges in order to be able to open it.

I think it is a rather ingenious idea.
He is doing a fantastic job.

Now I have to decide what to plant, and how much.

Gardening

It's gardening time. So far we planted a bunch of onions and a lot of potatoes.
These pictures are from when we planted the onions.
I don't think we will run out of onions for a while.
This is from the Potato planting. (Sorry they are poor quality because they were taken with moms phone.)
Here we are cutting the seed potatoes.

Time to plant all those potatoes. And we planted a lot.

So we finally got around to plowing the garden last week. It should have been done earlier, but we had problems with the tractor and it took a while to fix it.

Here Jordon is plowing and you can also see that Boaz is tilling the raised beds.

Jordon and I are on the tractor plowing.

Jordon plowing. In this picture he was almost finished.

Levi and I on the tractor discing.

This is Levi discing the back garden.

We also planted English Peas the next day.

Starting Seeds Indoors

Well, this will be the first time in the 13 years that we have been planting big gardens, to garden without Elise.

Elise has been the major gardener at our home. She was the one to plan it, order the seeds, start the seeds, and the "foreman" of the whole process. All her younger siblings were hers to command on the job. My job was to help process the food that came out of the garden and keep the house in order while all the children worked on the garden.

This year, I am the one to plan, order, and start seeds. (and I'm always the foreman)

When we lived in Lobelville, we had a green house with a wood burning stove in it. We could start the seeds and leave them in the green house to germinate and grow.

But, since we built a green house where we live now, we have not put in a stove yet. Elise always started the seeds in the house. She would just put them on a table in front of a window.

And that is what I did this time. The trouble is, that there isn't enought light to keep them from getting spindly after a while.

so, I moved the dining room table towards the living room more and set another table and a shelf in front of the french doors and a window in the dining room where there is more light.

The seeds should have been started in February but I didn't get them started until the first week of March. But all that does anyway is to give us a good head start.

It is warm enough during the day to put the plants out in the green house during the day. That way they will get more light. Then I bring them in at night.

And I must say: so far, so good.