Good Dirt!

We have a nice sunny Thanksgiving Day here, so I plowed my vegetable garden and got it ready for spring.

Using a tractor and 2-bottom plow, I turned the garden 18" deep - twice longways and once crossways. I've been tilling in lots of compost and green manure crops here for years, and this soil is good, good stuff. Every fall, I pull the bean, pepper, and tomato plants and put them on the burn pile - but I plow the cornstalks in, they're good for the soil.

I'm going to cut my vegetable production back to just a little more than what we need - not the ridiculous surpluses I usually raise. In the spring I'll plow the garden again with a light dose of 10-10-10 fertilizer and ammonium sulfate (my pH tends to the high side because of all the local limestone). Then I'll till it once to get the soil more even, and I'll be ready to plant.

Cutting back, I'm going to plant 1/3 of the garden in buckwheat (green manure) and raise vegetables in the rest. I'll till the buckwheat under before it makes seeds, and I can do that twice in a season. Then I'll rotate veggies and buckwheat in different parts of the garden season after season.

Next spring, PLEASE remind me not to plant so many cucumbers! Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Great way to spend the day--if you aren't the chief cook and bottle washer!!

Thank you for the pleasant reminder that even though the days are getting shorter, and we still have those dark months of Dec-Feb ahead, spring will come, and once again all the hard work of prepping, etc, will reward us with the 'fruit of our labors'.
Julia

Ozark did you drink a homebrew after all that work?

Doug

"Ozark did you drink a homebrew after all that work?"
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You bet'cha. I had a glass of a Porter that I brewed last February - I like to do my brewing in the winter and use the cold temps in my garage for fermenting. Cold brewing temperature adds a lot of quality to beer.

Come to think of it, it'll be brewing time again soon - about the time we get the first snow.

It's funny, I bought an old upright freezer and temp regulator about 5-6 years ago to lager in and all I've ever made are ales! That freezer in the garage comes in handy though for keeping all the other beers cold! Cheers!

Doug