2016 garden plans

This winter can end any time now. It wasn't particularly cold, we did have a few sprinkles of snow. The rain and the floods, Ugh! We had another tiny flood, just in the low spots. Someone told me that this winter we had over 2 feet of rain. That is a whole lot of rain!
I don't know what it is about this year (well ok, I do) but I am exhausted and ready for the sun to be out before 7 am. I'm starting to think about hibernating next year. Bears are onto something! Any chance I get, I've been doing small bits of work in the garden, but it really needs to dry out before I can really get working.

Our bulbs have been coming up since December, and are ready to bloom! The neighbors already have flowers. The time has come to start planning and working out what we're going to do for our garden this year. I've already started pulling up what ever is left. There is already some slugs that will be to be taken care of. I have a nice pile of compost ready to be spread. I'm guessing I'll need a few yards for top soil and manure.

I put the green house up on the deck this year, that thing is on it's last leg. It's filthy but it's doing it's job. It's 55 degrees outside and 82 degrees in the greenhouse. Thanks person who gave that to us!

In case you forgot, our garden is 60'X40', last year was our first year planting. First things first, we need to pull everything and get the add-ins in. Compost and manure. We will have our rows running north-south, not that I think it'll make much of a difference. I'm hoping for 8 to 10 rows this year, last year we had dozen or so running east-west. Each row will have weed barrier fabric around the plants and a nice thick layer of straw between the rows. Weed control is going to be top priority as last year it was out of control.

Next up is a chicken fence, the chickens discovered late in the season that the garden was full of delicious treats. Not this year, they can have the bugs. Realistically I'll end up going with just chicken wire and upgrading to something nice in a few years.

Up next, watering. Last year was dry, we went months without rain. We're putting in drip irrigation to minimize the water loss and get the most bang for our water-buck. We'll be putting gutters on the barn and getting a few rain barrels for the fall and winter. It seems silly not to collect the rain.

I'm going to try and get the kids to start some seeds with me in the next 2 weeks. It's tough to get them interested, it takes a long time to get things growing and they lose interest.

Coming soon will be selecting our plants and planning our rows.