Homesteaders with Horses
(Page 3 of 4)
February/March 2007
By Jessica Klick
Someday, I may decide to grow small plots of grains, the land for which could be plowed using our horses. Next year, I plan to put in a root cellar to keep our produce through the winter, but I haven’t been ready to commit to a site or design yet. I’d rather be sure I have things right before I start on the project, because when I do build the root cellar I want it to last indefinitely.
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Planting Techniques
It’s going to take me years to fully develop my ideal garden. For now, I’ve planted a 60-by-80-foot plot with vegetables, cutting flowers, edible flowers, strawberries, and a bee, butterfly and hummingbird garden. I designed the garden on paper before planting, and divided the vegetable part of the garden into four sections, roughly by family, to make crop rotation simple. Then I divided each quadrant into 4-by-4-foot beds with permanent paths between them, an idea I got from Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening. I love the small bed system, because each bed is so easily maintained and the work is divided into manageable chunks.
I work each raised 4-by-4-foot bed intensively, and I grow as many crops as I can vertically. For example, I twine tomato vines up a rope hung from a trellis. I also prefer vining cucumbers, summer squash and zucchini to bush varieties. Cantaloupe has grown well for me on a trellis, and last summer, we also had amazing results with a variety of zucchini called ‘Zucchino Rampicante.’
Some crops need a lot of special attention to produce well in our short growing season. To get red tomatoes before fall, I start with large transplants and use red plastic mulch, which encourages earlier fruit production and increases yields because of the way it reflects light onto the plant.
I planted eggplant for two years without getting a single fruit from any of my plants. I have to start the eggplant early to give it a chance to set fruit in the short period of warm weather we have. I’ve also had trouble with the Colorado potato beetle. With our short growing season, there can be no setbacks. I’ve got to start with big and healthy growing plants and make sure they never suffer a heavy infestation of anything. Last year, I finally managed to get big, healthy plants in the ground in June, fought off the Colorado potato beetles, and got a bumper crop of eggplants for the first time.
