Bed installation, first planting May 12, 2009

Hi all;

I’m Karen, another backyard harvest(er?) participant.
I’m new to wordpress (I’m over at LJ) so please forgive my stupid newbie errors. =)

My garden was installed in mid-April near the back of my yard, over a cardboard bed.

From Dirt Garden

From the other angle:

From Dirt Garden

Yesterday, Grayce did the first planting: peas, radishes, carrots, beets, onions, leeks, cabbage and cauliflower. I’m already hungry!

From Dirt Garden

Leeks?

From Dirt Garden

The First Planting May 2, 2009

[[photo by: WontonBrutality]]

We got plants today! Our farmer, Stefan, stopped by this afternoon to install the irrigation system and first round of seedlings and plants. Most of the neighborhood stopped by at some point or another to see what we were up to with all of the hay and watering and layout plans and little seedlings. It’s very exciting and there should be another round of plantings this week as more things get ready for transplanting.

In this batch, Stefan planted:

• Cauliflower
• Carrots
• Radishes
• Beets
• Leaf lettuces
• Spicy lettuce mix
• Leeks
• Peas
• Cabbage
• Spinach

We’re going to be meeting with Stefan later this week to work out where our journal will go, what we should be keeping an eye out for, and how we’d like to handle harvesting. Our farmer has been amazing – he’s really fun and wants to make sure that we know what’s going on. He even answered every single one of my many, many questions. Thanks Stefan!

– Lisa in Kingfield

The full collection of pictures for this project is over on Flickr.

Our Garden is Installed! April 24, 2009

[[Backyard Harvest CSA Install by: WontonBrutality]]

By way of introduction: “Hi. My name is Lisa. My husband and I are homeowners in the Backyard Harvest program. I’ll be taking pictures, writing posts, and otherwise documenting what it’s like to have a garden from these fine folks installed in your backyard. More to come!”

So, here’s our experiment/project for the summer! The husband and I shared a CSA last summer with another couple. When that group wasn’t going to be doing it again this year, we were looking for another option. A few days later, I got an email from the neighborhood association mentioning that PRI Cold Climate was going to start a Backyard Harvest program in our area. It sounded like a great fit – we got to use our land for something more tangibly useful, it could be really pretty, and (hopefully) will be functional replacement for a CSA membership.

So, we’ve opted in as homeowners in the Backyard Harvest program. It’s a pretty cool idea – sign up; pay for farmers to plan, install, and maintain a garden in your backyard; eat the fruits of their labor as the season goes on; and get to have a rad garden in your backyard.

Yesterday, when we came home from work, they had done the first stage of installation. There’s dirt and plants under all of that hay, and hopefully we’ll get to see the little buggers pop their heads up soon.

Before the install we had done a few things:

1. Put out cardboard (enough to cover the full area of the garden). That cardboard is under the topsoil, which is under the hay.
2. We should have turned on the outside water access, but forgot, and the poor farmers were left with no water pressure. So, we turned it on and watered the whole deal down after work.
3. There’s a soil test involved in this deal too. We’re still waiting on the results from that, but they took samples a few days ago.

This weekend, we need to:

1. Install rabbit fencing – the critters in our neighborhood don’t honor the separation of “ours” and “theirs.”
2. Build a compost holder thing. I’ll take pictures as we get that up and running, since buying the containers is surprisingly expensive. We’re making ours out of some old palletes we inherited last Fall. Here’s to the start of things!

– Lisa in Kingfield

The first bed is in! April 14, 2009

Let the celebrations begin…. Our first bed was installed in Kingfield yesterday! BH Urban Farmers Stefan Meyer & Seth Schlotterbeck, Executive Director Paula Westmoreland & I worked to put our first keyhole bed in a front yard where several curious folks stopped to find out what we were doing. We even had a very enthusiastic little volunteer named Malachi from next door.

Forking the lawn to aerate the soil

 

Soil shaped for a keyhole bed

 

Next in: plants!