Setting up for Spring - the lot of the farmer.

The more I learn about gardening and all that is involved, the more I understand that the farmer has a passion for his work, or he'd (or she'd) never do it. I have been planning my spring garden since July, spring had hardly passed and I needed to be thinking about next year.

The fall garden consists of both food you can grow in the fall and the planting that will over winter. We have a few lettuces and peas in the garden for now, but mostly, I'm working on the big garden, in preparation for spring.

As with everything, I'm all "all or nothing" kind of girl, so I'm all in on the spring garden. I've determined all the plants we want to have in the spring, that I can plant now for a "head start". As such, I am planting asparagus, garlic, onions, seed potatoes, strawberries and rhubarb. All items that will overwinter nicely and offer us a bounty next year.

To begin, we have set up two raised beds in our garden space. I'll give you a quick breakdown of the current fall plan.

1. In the southmost bed, we will plant rhubarb at the end (on the southmost side), then asparagus down each side and strawberries in the middle. At the far end, we'll plant marigolds in pots, in the spring, either on the ledge of the bed or on the ground just outside it.
2. For the second raised bed - nothing but onions. I have quite a few seed onions, ready to drop in the ground, and we'll leave space for the onion seeds in the spring. The whole 12 x 4 bed will be onions.
3. Grow bags - we have 4 grow bags - I will see how many of our garlic I can get in those bags. Once I've got that figured out, we'll plant out the remaining garlic throughout the garden where I can find space and they won't be a detriment to their neighbors.
4. Seed potatoes - Jason is either going to build me a couple of small ( 4 x 4) beds for me to add the potatoes to, or we'll use large grow bags or buckets. I haven't decided yet. I'm going to purchase organic potatoes to plant, because you can't buy seed potatoes in the fall. Which is weird, because you can plant them in the fall....but I digress.
5. All of our current herbs will be moved to the new herb garden area sometime this winter. Most are perennials (which means they will come back each year).

So, there you have it. The current fall garden plan. I'll share more as we get things in the ground. For now - here's what the two beds look like.

Each bed began with a layer of cardboard, to help reduce the weeds. They then have a layer of soil, a layer of compost / manure, and topped with an additional layer of soil. These beds are filled to the top now, although they weren't in these pictures.