As you know, our soil here is horrible: sandy loam is what it's officially called. Sand on top of sand, with cactus and weeds and the occasional blade of crabgrass. Nothing we planted directly into the ground this year (even with soil amending and lots of potting soil) survived.
This next Spring will be different. We've bought wood to make 4'x8' raised garden beds. We also have pots and plastic kiddie pools and tires. Everywhere we want to plant a tree or bush, we're digging a $100 hole for a $5 tree, and using lots of alpaca and chicken and goat poo to amend the soil deep down. We're moving the chickens and goats around, letting them free range as much as possible.
In the next few weeks, we'll start building the raised garden beds. Inside of the dog run (backyard), we'll make several sections of raised beds, which will hold the 3-Sisters garden (corn, beans, squash) and what I'm calling the 3-Cousins (mammoth sunflowers, vining cucumbers, and melons). As soon as the first raised bed is in place, I'm layering cardboard (from old moving boxes), then a layer of goat-pen stuff (hay with goat poo), then polymer for water retention, then newspapers, more goat-poo, potting soil, newspapers, and more goat poo (or chicken poo).
That's called lasagna gardening.
Then we'll build the next raised bed, put it in place, and fill it like above. We're hoping by mid-January, we'll have all of the garden beds in place and percolating!
Because by February, we're going to need to concentrate on building the kidding pens for our goats in the workshop. Hopefully we'll have goat babies by March!
What are YOU doing to get ready for next year's garden?
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