As most of the readers of my blog know, I've had 2 plots at the local community garden for several years now. Last year, I grew field corn, potatoes, squash and pumpkins in the plots. I'm probably going to grow mostly the same crops there this year, I'll just change which crop goes where in the plots.
Here's a look at the community garden, my plots are in the lower left side of the picture. You can see 2 rows of plots in this picture. To the right is an open space and then another row of plots against the other side of the fenced in area.
Here's a better look at my 2 plots. I'm using the space between the plots also. I mulched as much of my plots as I could last fall by shredding all the corn stalks and putting that on the garden.
I'm also working on getting a couple of the other plots in the garden usable. They haven't been used in a couple of years and are overgrown with grass. I covered one of those plots with black plastic last year to kill the grass. I didn't have enough plastic to do more than 1 plot.
Since the plastic was covering that plot all of last year, the grass under it was dead. I decided to move the plastic to another plot for the spring to kill the grass there. This plot is located at the end of my plots. I cut the grass on it last year to keep it from growing wild and spreading weed seeds.
After taking all the stuff off the plastic that held it in place, I started moving the plastic from the one spot to the new spot. The plastic isn't wide enough to cover the entire plot with one piece, so I'd had to use 2 pieces.
I got the big piece of plastic in place and weighted down. There was just enough of a breeze to mess with the plastic, so it was a bit of an adventure. Because of the way I had to do it, the plastic wasn't quite wide enough to cover the far edge of that plot, but I have something to finish the job with when I go up there next time.
The plot that I uncovered still had some grass growing in it where there was a hole in the plastic last year, so I covered that up with a couple of smaller pieces of plastic.
Having this plot covered last year will make it much easier to run the tiller through it this year. I won't be fighting a bunch of thick grass roots. I don't plan on taking the tiller up to the community garden until probably some time in May, but that will depend on the weather.
I don't think I need to till up my garden plots this year, I'm just going to plant without tilling. The ground is fairly loose and there's not many weeds, so it doesn't seem necessary to till it up. I would like to get more mulch for the parts of the garden that don't have any right now. I might take the chipper shredder up there and shred a straw bale for more mulch, if I can get a straw bale. I still have about 6-7 weeks to get that done, I won't be planting anything until at least the middle of May.
That's all I have for this post, thanks for stopping by to check it out!
