Gardening on the Home Front

No Die Weide work today because our backyard raised bed gardens called for our attention. However, to tie this activity back to a mention of Die Weide, I'll discuss my hopes for a two location garden strategy. A couple of pictures accompanies many levels of discussion.

Puppy De-Fenced Garden

Over the last four years I've constructed four raised garden beds and a grape arbor in our back yard. I constructed the latest addition, a picket fence, in defense of puppy digging. The back bed in this photo once stood verdantly filled with two years worth of strawberry plantings. This year we hoped to harvest our first serious bounty of strawberries. But two months of puppy digging deprived us of any hope of home grown strawberries this year.

Inge scattered a mixture of wildflower seeds we received as a Christmas gift which is now poking green into the foreground of the photo. We planted this same patch in corn last year, which produced nothing, and in potatoes two years ago, which produced a very nice bucket of potatoes which we enjoyed.

Compost Corner

Above is a photo of our compost corner. Two halves of a portable wire dog cage saw second duty as a pair of compost heaps. Later I added stakes and wire to enclose a third heap between the two enclosures. Today, I scooped out the rich compost from the two bins and worked them into the raised beds, along with some bags of manure from home depot.

So how does this relate to Die Weide? It is my hope that this year we will plant the backyard garden with the primo veggies, like tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, and lettuce. On Die Weide, I will dig up a small garden area into which we will plant the bulky and space consuming vegetables like potatoes, black-eyed peas, corn, perhaps some squash (though Inge and I aren't big fans of squash) and the sweet non-vegetables, watermelon and cantaloupe. Inge and I both have our doubts about this remote garden, but for different reasons. She doubts the water harvesting shed will produce enough water for a garden (for which I respond, God will provide), and I worry that a lightly attended garden will be gnawed away by the critters. Hopefully I can scrounge up enough fencing material to keep the critters at bay. One thing I don't worry about is the ability of Die Weide to produce. The soil there is richer than any soil I've worked with in my life. But any soil can be deprived of ability to provide a bounty if not replenished. On Die Weide I will construct the simple shipping crate compost heaps into which we will pile grasses cut from around the orchard, and eventually manure from the livestock we will graze.