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| Clearing the community path and separating seedlings |
Nothing feels more like Spring than planting a garden, and at the New Norris House that's exactly what happened this weekend. Mary, Eric, and I spent some time doing general yard maintenance, and we also planted the raised vegetable beds. The beds were designed and built by students last summer, and we used stockpiled dirt from the house foundation excavation to fill the beds. We also added any vegetative waste produced from clearing the invasive plants, and let the soil sit all winter long. Now it is a beautiful, rich soil filled with worms and ready to produce!
We planted rainbow swiss chard, red cabbage, cauliflower, heirloom tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, carrots, fennel, arugula, gourds, and cucumbers. We also planted zinnias for cut flowers and to attract pollinators. In a few months we should have a huge harvest. Keep your fingers crossed and maybe we can add a County Fair Biggest Vegetable Award to our accomplishments!
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| We began by properly spacing all the plants before digging any holes |
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| See the rich, dark soil under the hay? |
As part of our efforts to collect and re-use the rainwater that falls on
our site, our vegetable beds will be irrigated via a 200 gallon cistern
located at the low end of the beds. The irrigation cistern is currently
full of rainwater and ready to be used. We're looking forward to a
summer of sustainable farming - right in the backyard!
Why wouldn't you place the cistern at the top (higher) end of the begs and gravity-feed them via a drip irrigation system?
ReplyDeleteA very good question--
DeleteWe initially planned to do just that, but ended up with the installed solution for a variety of reasons.
A. The outlet drain from the rainwater overflow (where the garden cistern is supplied from) came out at an elevation which did not make this possible. The cistern is set pretty far into the ground, and thus the outlet elevation from the garden cistern would have been even lower (below the ideal height for drop irrigation).
B. Secondly (and less important) Grading issues made it more feasible to put the cistern on the lower end. As you can imagine, quite a large hole had to be dug (mostly by hand) and our assesment was that this would be easier on the further end of the site.