In a recent post, I discussed the benefits of rotating crops. Rather than drawing our plans on paper, I decided to keep a journal on a blog to record where every vegetable, that we are growing this year, will be placed. Many of the veggie beds have been reworked to enhance the growth of the vegetable that will be planted in the garden.
This particular bed presented many problems last year. The area that surrounded this bed was overgrown with vegetation and those nasty plant devouring slugs were hard to keep at bay. By placing a stone path at the rear of this garden, I'm hoping that a natural barrier of stone will keep the slugs from finding their way to the green beans and cucumbers.
The soil in this bed was amended with lots of organic matter which will make the soil more fertile and improve soil structure. This will enhance the ability of the soil to maintain moisture levels. Before adding lots of organic material like compost, hay, and sawdust from milling lumber, this dirt was too compact.
In this stretch of our vegetable garden, lots of organic matter was also worked into the soil, new wire fencing was installed around the bed where the green beans will grow. There are lots of rabbits around here and keeping them from devouring newly planted veggies is always a task.🙏
Due to the cold nighttime temperatures, very little can be planted before Memorial Day which is the 31st of May. We are able to plant a few veggies that can tolerate frigid temperatures, like onions and garlic. In this region, we plant our cloves of garlic in late October and allow them to start to develop their roots before going dormant through the long cold winters.
Since tilling this bed two weeks ago, we have planted our potato seeds. This year we are growing three different kinds of spuds, German Butterball, Red Pontiac, and Kennebec.
This portion of raised veggie beds is the largest of them all. At the end of last year, the bed that we grew potatoes in was loaded with worms. I was shocked by the number of worm castings that littered the entire surface of the potato bed. I removed several wheelbarrows of the castings and added them to all of the boxes you see here.
Last year this bed was laden with hop rhizomes that were transplanted from an adjacent hop bed. After finally coming to grips with the fact that we had way too many hops, the hops were stripped from the bed and the soil was enhanced with organic matter. This year we will rotate all of our squashes into this garden.
Broccoli and cabbage, both of which are in the Brassicas family will be rotated into the raised beds that housed our tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers, all of which are in the Nightshade family of veggies.
Where a tangled web of hop rhizomes once grew, plum tomatoes will be planted. Last year was the first time we made tomato sauce and boy was it great. 
When making a tomato sauce, plum tomatoes are the best because they don't have nearly as many seeds in them.
This bed was chock full of broccoli last year. Since carrots need to be grown in a deep bed, void of anything but loamy soil, this raised bed needed to have the depth of the box increased and the soil screened.
This took a lot of hobbitizing and only time will tell if the effort was worth the action.
By the next time I share my #garden #journel with you, pictures of real veggies will replace these funny drawings. All of us garden enthusiasts know that preparing flower beds or veggie beds takes much more effort than plopping the plants into the dirt, so hopefully, at the end of that activity, I will not look like this.
May your gardens be fruitful and void of pests and disease.
