We moved to Stokes County because the "Northern Beltway" around Winston-Salem took a swipe out of the middle of our family farm off of Hwy 65. But that's another story....The land we left was some of the best in the state for farming. It's yield had taken top place more than once. Stokes County dirt just isn't as friendly. We planted our garden with high hopes those first 9 years. We amended the soil with dump truck loads of goodies to no avail. When it is dry, it is indeed like a brick. When it rains, it becomes a slippery, mushy, muddy, nightmare. Our garden was like a huge ceramic bowl with no drainage hole.
At church, we had been promoting self reliance through square foot gardening for a couple of years. I experimented with 3 beds, 4 ft square done the Square Foot Garden way...2x10's with a soil mix of potting soil, vermiculite and peat moss laid down on top of landscape fabric in the box. It worked ok. Then one day our church group took a tour of a local man's organic farm in King. Mr Moser was nice enough to tell us everything he could and show us around. It was very inspiring and in 2009 Jeff took over the gardening and began our real transition from traditional row gardening to using beds.
Gardening is always a work in progress. If you have questions, let us help you out if we can.
No comments:
Post a Comment