Short season gardening.

My friend Cedar posted about gardening with limited space, Tiny Garden, Big Yields.  I’m envious of her obvious skills. I’ve mastered making dirt, so far.

Here in Maine, I’ve got lots of room but a very short season. I’ve been experimenting with makeshift green houses in an effort to overcome this problem. There are advantages to bugging out to Maine that outweigh the climate, but I’ll save that for another day, except to say, it’s a great place to grow grandchildren.

Anyway, here is a temporary set up to test a house-attached green-house.  It was a porch roof but the snow wouldn’t shed due to the change in pitch and it was tearing up the steel roofing, so I’m taking it down.  I stripped it to the rafters and covered it with plastic. It’s working great so far. Thirty-plus degree differential when the sun’s out.

This is mostly tomatoes and peppers. Cukes in the big pots. It seems to be working. I’ve got sprouts.

It’s warm enough to plant some things outside: peas, beans and greens. This is a round garden. I guess I need some close-ups, so you can see what’s what.  In the middle is the pea dome and to the right is a hoop house for the peppers. I’ll cover it in the fall in an attempt to get them to ripen. I love hot peppers but they need a longer season.  I lost my first successful crop last year. It was huge, but I left them too long and they froze and turned to mush.  :o(  The black spot on the front edge is sweet corn in a pile of composted manure.  I’m not much of a gardener yet but I’ve got composting down pat and the chickens make a ton of shit if you have a strong enough stomach to compost it.  More on that later.

Mia’s flowers are coming up. You can see the remains of the chimney from the old homestead in the background, behind the baby tree house.

This was my first garden, so it has the best soil.  Peas, beans and greens in it so far. The peas are sprouting but nothing’s up yet.  Hoops for the fall.

This one is out in the field, fenced to keep the deer out, but I haven’t put anything in it yet.  It needs a lot of work, poor soil still.

This one is up against the house. The lettuce is up along the back. Parsley and basil in the front

Various squash in buckets. Squash is a pita. It spreads out over the garden or the yard, depending, and gets in the way of everything else.  I haven’t decided where to put them yet.

This is my hugelculture, though it’s hard to see. I’ve got maize and beans along the front and a row of hot peppers directly seeded near the top.  We’ll see how they do.  A hugel is a pile of punky wood with the bed over the top. It’s supposed to be drought resistant, which will be nice if I have to garden without power for the water pump. I haven’t tested that aspect. I water it. It was kind of hard to get a good bed going. the dirt kept trickling down, but it’s settled pretty well this year (3rd year.)  Weeds in the manure at the top.

Well that’s all I got.  Pretty pathetic compared to Cedar’s efforts, but I’m learning. It’s a long road ahead to self-sufficiency. Let’s hope the zombies hold off for a few more years.