Today we started preparing ground for next year! We have bluegrass in our pasture mix, which is creepy-crawly and hard to kill, so building new beds is quite the extended process for us. We've had some ground tarped for a few months in the heat to kill grass growth, and now is the time we remove those tarps and use a rotary plow on our walk behind tiller to break up the ground and grass roots. This fall we'll cover the whole space in a layer of compost and tarp it again for the winter. This method proves to actually kill grass with rhizomes that are very hardy and vigorous so that we can have a clean slate with only annual weeds to deal with, but requires us to plan about 9 months in advance for new planting space. The space in the photo will be 20 new 100' x 30" beds for next year.
Fun facts, we started our farm with about 115 100' beds spring of 2019. We laid out tarps that summer for 20 new beds that we built spring of this year along with a couple extra ones for strawberries. Next year we'll add these 20 beds for a total of about 155 beds, almost one and a half times what we started with!
Thanks for coming along with us on this crazy journey, we're so thrilled to have the demand for produce so that we can keep growing more.
We've got a fun fall farm share for you this week including some pretty colors (purple), some cool season greens you may have been missing (spinach), and a special fall treat we grew just enough of and exclusively for members! (Spaghetti Squash!). Not to mention Fennel is back for some added flavor, and lots of great stand bys.
We hope you're enjoying the shift to fall food as much as we are,
Ashley and Caleb
