As the gardening season comes to a close here, my mind often wanders to what next years garden should look like. This was my first year on this property and I have done a lot of work here to get this garden started. Now that I have a good foundation for my garden I think I want to expand it a bit more to utilize more of the ground that I have. There are areas where the chicken's hoop house stood this summer that have been thoroughly weeded and feritlized by the chickens this year, so they will make ideal garden plots for next year I hope. I will probably keep the original thirteen beds, but may add a whole other section of five to eight more beds to fill out the yard. I figure it will have less weeds if I turn it into garden, than if I just let the yard take over the area again.
There are some crops that I want to have more of like onions, since I don't think that this year's harvest will last me through December at the rate that I am using them up. I may also plant a third bed of potatoes depending on how long this year's crop lasts me. I was thinking about trying a couple of new crops like tomatillos and celery which might need their own bed to get a decent harvest.
I was toying with the idea of starting a market garden here. I have been helping out at a friend's farm to try to get an idea of if that was something that I could manage. After seeing all of the work invovled in her operation I am quite sure that I couldn't pull off something of that magnitude and still have a full time job. However I do think I could do something on a much smaller scale, but I'm am still trying to figure out if it would make me enough money to be worth the trouble. It would probably become a full time second job. I figure it would be a way to start small and build up some clientele at the very least. I would probably start with just a few varieties of some of the higher value crops like peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and maybe some herbs If I did plant those crops for a market garden I would probably keep them in the long rows that were occupied by the corn and squash this year. Of course I would then have to plan on starting many many seedlings indoors this winter and I'm not sure I have the space or the lighting for that, but that is something I could work on in the meantime. It sure would be nice to have some dedicated shelving for starting garden plants. I suppose I could also sell eggs at the farmer's market if I have a few more chickens. I do have to keep in mind my costs in all of this though, since I can't afford to grow too much extra and not have it pay for itself.
Next year I also hope to expand the herb patch by adding in some more annual herbs like basil, cilantro, dill and chamomile. I am hoping that most of the other herbs make it through the winter and will mulch them in heavily to help them survive. The other half the bed where the herbs are growing has become a nice flower garden. I hope those flowers reseed themselves next year with minimal help from me. The biggest problem I have been fighting in this bed is the ragweed infestation, but if I can keep it pulled, then hopefully the flowers will take over and crowd out the weeds. I like the large flower garden because it attracts all kinds of beneficial insects from honey bees and lady bugs to praying mantis.
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