Adam's Garden: Dig it, Tuscaloosa...

My wife and I are moving into a new house, and we have the green light on digging up the yard. Veggies, flowers...chickens? A goat? We'll make it happen.

When we went to see the house for the first time, all we could see was the yard. It was probably mid-day, so everything looked big and sunny. I saw a 50x20 space on the west side that could be fully planted...can you imagine the possibilities?

But after our last house and garden, I knew that tracking the sun mid-winter is trouble. Got sunlight? Wait until those trees fill out, and yer done for. So we've tried our best to take as many snap-shots, at as many different times of the day, while making predictions for the trees, to give us our best shot. I'm still worried about the difference between the sun at mid-day in February, and then in June, but there's only so much you can do.

After looking over our pictures, I realized there's more shade on the west side than I would have thought. So we reconsidered. We decided on two 23x4 ft east-west beds, starting a little further east, and as far north as possible. This would ensure long, south facing beds, which could be planted according to height and get the most sun possible. We also decided to plant a west-end bed for spring onions, garlic, beets, & etc (8x4, facing n-s) where mid-summer shade would come in handy, and an east-side bed (8x4), where, as it turns out, we seem to get a lot of sun (just to the right of that strange shrubbery).

That gives us roughly 240 sq. ft. of planting space (1/4 of the Whitehouse garden!).

The next step, of course, was to plan the garden. We factored in possible shade, and came up with (what I thought) was a brilliant list of veggies. The 8/4 on the west end is getting the onion business. Once they're out, we'll plant late-summer lettuce. The east side 8/4 is getting the 3-sisters--corn, beans and squash. And the middle. Well...tomatoes of course. And whatever else fits (eggplant, cucumbers, melon, herbs, brassicas...the list goes on.) We're going to plant intensively, instead of rows, so companion crops are vital.

So, once we committed, we dug. Emily measured out the spaces with string attached to nails, and we took turns forking, to aerate the soil. This is usually a bad thing--tilling expels vital gasses, like nitrogen--but because we're breaking new ground tilling is a must. We needed to break the ground to plant. This kind of tilling also breaks up the soil to help with tilth, and it allows it to dry out a bit after a heavy Alabama winter rainy season. Hopefully, if we do it right, we won't have to till again--we'll just fork in organic mater (like compost from the arboretum, or from our new compost pile! (more on that later)).

So...we've forked, and will probably till just before our first planting--maybe around March 15. We've also seeded our first plants (mostly lettuce and brassicas). We're probably a bit early, but it's hard to hold off. Emily and I have made a more comprehensive plan, which means pushing our next seeding back to March 4. It's hard to predict the last Tuscaloosa frost--we're going for St. Patty's day.