The Garden is Waiting

The garden is ready and waiting for the Spring planting! We’re in Florida, so the spring planting starts in February. Tomorrow we’ll plant radishes, turnips, lettuce, brussels sprouts, broccoli, red La Soda potatoes, and Yukon Gold potatoes. Next month we’ll plant beans, cucumbers, collards, peppers, tomatoes, herbs, and flowers for the bees.

We rotate our crops.Whatever is planted in one row is moved a row the next year. Last year, we planted beans in the fourth row; this year, the beans will be in the first row. Second row will be root vegetables – turnips, radishes, sweet potatoes later in the spring. Third row is for the leafy vegetables – lettuce and collards. The fourth row is cucumbers and peppers. We plant our tomatoes in buckets.

We got a pickup load of compost from a nearby farm to add to our own chicken-provided compost. You know you’re on a good farm when there all kinds of compost around and you don’t smell anything but wonderful, rich dirt.

Speaking of chicken-provided, our 61 hens are in full spring production! We’re averaging over 40 eggs a day. If you decide on a visit, be sure to bring a cooler so you can take eggs home. The eggs you buy in the grocery store are 30-60 days old. It doesn’t take us nearly that long to walk from the backyard coops to our kitchen, so you can have yesterday’s eggs or if you want to wait a second, today’s eggs!