I knew the permanent garden was going to take time to create. Here the planting season is really year round but I was focusing on a spring planting which is January for blue & black berries, asparagus , grapes and march 15 for some cooler soil tolerant seeds.We picked a spot in the front of the property that was already cleared . With the help of our neighbor with a bobcat we cleared back another 30 ft or so and cleaned the area of trees that were felled 20 years before.
Another neighbor with a tractor smoothed the land out. I can not say enough about buying into an area with great ,helpful and reasonable neighbors When you live in the country it is so important to have barn raising minded people surrounding you, we are very grateful.
The next step was to determine the paths and planting beds which I marked with stakes and string. I decided to make the paths 2 feet wide and the beds 4 feet wide. I covered the beds with 6" of compost and added Basalt, green sand, soft rock phosphate, molasses, organic fertilizer, lava sand, humate, corn meal, Epsom salt and gypsum, all this because I started with sand. The paths I covered with 4" of cedar sawdust because it is very cheap in our area and it will keep the weeds out, the moisture in and distinguish the path from the beds.
We borrowed a tiller from another neighbor and mixed every thing in. The soil is black gold!
