Figuring Out the Size of the Garden

Right now I am working on a layout for my garden.  The space I have to work with is basically a blank slate with a tree on either side.  The land does have a gentle slope and I plan to incorporate that with the layout of the beds in the garden to make the most efficient use of water in this system.  I won't have access to irrigation for my garden and want to keep my watering to a bare minimum, so I plan on making some sort of drip irrigation system and using heavy mulch to conserve moisture in the soil.  The mulch will also help improve the soil over time as it breaks down and adds organic matter to my dusty, rocky soil.

My last garden had eight 3 x 10 foot beds which gave me a total of 240 square feet of garden space.  I am going to try to make the garden at least that size again this year with plans for expanding it as time and energy allow.  I also try to allow at least two feet for walking paths between the beds to make it easy to move around in the garden for watering and pulling weeds.  The only problem I have found with narrow paths is that they tend to become overgrown by the end of the season, but that just means that my garden is doing well!

The area I am going to work is going to be about 10 x 40 ft which should give me enough room for 8 beds again.  I try to stick to a three foot width for each bed because that is the most comfortable for reaching across for planting, weeding and harvesting.  I tend to plant my beds as densly as possible and avoid row planting because I feel like I can fit more plants in a bed than in a row.  It also helps to discourage weed growth if I can space the plants so that they are just touching when they reach full size.  It does take a little practice to determine how far apart plants should be, but after a few years of gardening you tend to get a general idea.  Most seed packets give guidelines for plant spacing, but those are mostly for planting in rows and plants can still do well even when slightly crowded.  Some types of plants like squash need alot more space than called for on seed packets and I try to plant them at the edges of the garden so they have room to roam.

I have decided to only give one bed to each type of vegetable that I want to grow next year, though ideally, some crops like potatoes and onions should get two to three beds if I am going to grow enough to last me a full year.  I also tend to plant what I call fill in crops in whatever spaces I can find between my main crops.  Things like carrots, lettuce, and radishes will be scattered throughout the garden which maximizes my use of space.  I also have been experimenting with succession planting to extend harvests of some of my crops, though I find it difficult to remember to plant successions after the main planting because I get caught up in garden chores.  Perhaps a calender of planting dates will keep me on track next year.

Garden Thoughts: Planning For Planting

One of my favorite parts of gardening is the planning phase.  This is where it is easy to get carried away with the varieties of plants I want to grow, and where I want to plant them.  While I would love to turn my whole yard into a garden, I do need to stay realistic about the amount of time and work I will be putting into creating the garden.  I also need to stay realistic about the finacial costs involved, after all, I am living in a rental and I know it is not going to be a permanent home for me.  I don't want to spend a bunch of money on planting perennials that I won't  be able to harvest in the long run.  The only exception that I will make to that is planting an herb garden.  Most herbs are inexpensive if you buy them small from a nursery, and I don't need a ton of plants to be able to harvest what I would need for a years worth of cooking.

Fall is also the perfect time to start breaking ground on a garden.  Turning over the garden for the first time and adding amendments in the fall will give the soil time to break down the organic matter into usable nutrients for the plants in the spring.  Fall is also the time of year when garlic is planted.  Being a bulb, garlic will be one of the first plants to appear in the spring time and also one of the earliest harvests from the garden.  I have saved some of the largest bulbs of garlic from last years garden for planting this fall.  I have also bought a few different varieties of seed garlic from the local farmer's market to round out my garlic varieties.  We had our first frost here a couple nights ago, so this week is the prime time to be planting garlic.

As for planning the actual layout of the beds, I first need to decide what I want to grow and how many plants of each type I need.  I generally only grow what I know I will eat and my ultimate goal is to grow enough vegetables to last me a whole year.  There are charts you can find online and in some gardening books that will tell you the approximate yield for vegetable crops per square foot or acre.  While I do find that information somewhat helpful, it isn't always accurate because there are so many variables involved when growing vegetables.  Mostly I have been learning how much I should grow by trial and error.  I also try to plant several different varieties of each vegetable if I can because some will always do better than others, so it decreases the chances of having a complete crop failure.

I think the best way to get a good variety of vegetables is to grow them from seed.  I look through seed catalogs and choose varieties that I think would do well in my climate.  I generally try to follow planting guidlines listed on the package, though I have found that some plants do better when started earlier than listed on the package.  For example, pepper plants tend to grow slowly for me (probably because I keep the heat pretty low in my house) so I start them earlier so they have time to grow sturdy enough to be planted outside when the weather is right.  Other plants I will start later than the guidelines recommend because they grow so quickly - tomatoes for example will become root bound if they stay in thier pots too long.  I also try to plant a few extra starts for every variety because there are always some that won't make it and I want to make sure I fill my garden beds to capacity.  Of course it never hurts to fill in the gaps with starts from the local nursery if all else fails.

What I Like About Homesteading

Everyone has their own ideas about exactly what it means to be a homesteader.  Truth is that the journey to being a homesteader has many steps, and many of us have only just begun our journey.  Many of us dream of owning our own land, but finances or life circumstances pose a significant barrier.  Some of us are happy just to grow a small garden patch to supplement what we can buy at the store.  Some of us are full fledged farmers.  It doesn't matter which step you are on in the journey because the motivation to work towards the goal of self sufficiency remains the same.

I like the idea of homesteading because it gives me a way to live gently on this planet.  I like being able to go to my backyard and gather enough to eat.  I know the food I grow is raised in a natural way and doesn't spend any time in storage or being hauled across miles of countryside.  I know what goes into my canned goods because I am in charge of the ingredients.  I like knowing that my garden is helping to build healthy soil, which in turn make me healthier too.  I like the challenge of trying to help a landscape reach it's fullest potential.  I like how the frugality of the lifestyle helps me save money towards my bigger goals in life.  I like the thousands of others just like me who are doing their best to follow a similar path, and are happy to share their knowledge along the way.

Short Term Goals For My Future

It has only been three short months since I made the move across the country to where I now find myself.  I am happy to be living in the countryside again.  It is quiet here in a way you will never find in the suburbs.  I am doubly happy that I moved to the mountains.  I am the outdoorsy type, and am thrilled to have mountains to play on in my backyard.  Perhaps I will share some of my many adventures here with you.

I was lucky enough to find a rental in the country that would allow me to have a garden and eventually chickens.  As we enter the autumn of the year I have been trying to figure out the best place to have the garden and chickens.  The area I live in is semi-arid and I do not have access to irrigation, so I will have to do my best to plan my garden in a water conservative fashion.  I have observed that the front yard has the best exposure to the sun and seems like it would be the easiest to work with.  The soil however, seems very rocky and dusty, with very little organic matter, so I will do my best to amend what I can before I ever set plants in the ground.  Since I don't have much in the way of funds to work with I will also be doing things as frugally as possible.

This fall I hope to plant garlic somewhere in the yard at the very least.  Towards this end I have purchased a couple bags of mushroom compost, a shovel and a garden rake.  I also have a handful of garlic bulbs that I saved from the garden I had this summer, though I think I will buy some large local garlic to round it out.  I hope to solidify my plans about the size of the garden so I can turn over the beds and mix in more compost to help the soil be ready for spring planting.

I also hope to work on building a small chicken tractor (or two) to house the chickens I want to get in the spring.  I have already seen plenty of foxes in the area, so I will have to make it as secure as possible.  I am still a little undecided about the number of chickens I want to get.  I don't need a ton of egg layers, but I do want to start growing my own poultry for the freezer.  I also need to decide where the chickens will live.  The only summer shade would be under the tree in the front yard, and that is also on a more protected side of the house.  That is likely where they will end up.

Eventually I want to make a small side business of selling hand spun items such as hats, scarves, and clothing.  To that end I need to work on building up an inventory so I can have items to show vendors, and items to display at craft shows.  I have been throwing around ideas for business cards and web pages, again starting small to keep costs down.  I also need to price and tag the things I have already made, perhaps also taking pictures of items to sell online.

I think that is a pretty good list so far.  Plans are always changing, so I'm sure there will be plenty of revisions to these goals. For now I think I have found a pretty good place to start.

How I Got Into Spinning

As a child I used to watch my grandmother and my aunt crochet all manner of things as they sat on the couch and socialized.  I often tried to immitate them, though I never quite caught on to how to make anything but a chain, so chain I did.  I chained entire balls of yarn because that is the only stitch I knew at the time.  Twenty years later, one of my friends showed me how to crochet a blanket using what I call the granny square method.  Once I figured it out I was hooked (no pun intended) once again.  I worked on my first blanket for months, and when I finally finished I was so proud of my-self.  I had learned an important lesson about myself: I could make useful things with yarn!

After that I became a little obsessed with all things crochet.  I bought books and practiced different stitches and learned how to read patterns.  It was only five or six years ago that another friend taught me the basics of crocheting hats.  I made bunches of hats.  It was fun trying different yarns and making different kinds of hats.  I made hats nice enough that I started making them as gifts.  Those went over so well, that I soon started working on a hat and scarf collection in hopes that one day I would have enough for a craft fair booth.

In the mean time I had gone to my first fiber festival with the friend that taught me how to make hats.  It was there that I discovered roving and hand made yarns.  There were demonstrations of sheep shearing and spinning, and many many displays of hand dyed roving and yarn.  A whole new world had opened before me.  It had never before occured to me that I could get yarn from somewhere besides a hobby shop, or a craft department.  

But then I found out how much it costs to own a thing like a spinning wheel.  Even the most basic wheel was well out of my price range, so sadly, I knew that spinning was not in my immediate future.  (I had learned much later that a thing called a drop spindle exists and was actually a precursor to the spinning wheel)

Luckily for me I lived with a person that listened when I talked about the things that make me happy and one christmas I got a spinning wheel as a gift.  It was an old used ashford wheel and was actually an extra wheel that a spinning teacher used to teach her students on.  I was given a brief lesson in the mechanics of spinning and given a book and a bit of roving and away I went.

In the beginging it was a struggle.  I couldn't get the hang of pinching the fiber with the right amount of twist and fought constantly just to keep the wheel going the right direction.  My first yarn was thick and lumpy and ugly, but I didn't care.  I wanted to keep spinning just to see if I could make an even and thin yarn - something I could make into a hat or a scarf.

The learning process was slow and finding time to practice wasn't exactly a priority, but my spinning did improve, slowly but surely.  I am finally at a place where I can consistanly make a decent yarn and am thrilled at the possiblilties of colors and patterns that have opened up for me.  I am quite proud to tell people that I make things that you could never find in a store, and I do it from scratch.

Introductions

Hello there, thanks for stopping by.  Here at the Handspun Homestead I plan on covering a large variety of topics.  Follow me on my journey as I learn the ins and outs of homesteading.  I will try to share as much as I can about what I have learned about gardening, spinning, crocheting, and raising livestock.  I am so happy I have this chance to share my latest adventures and experiments with you!