Putting the Garden to Bed for the Winter

Today, I was overcome with Garden Fever again! Occasionally I will be suddenly compelled to do a crazed home or garden project. Last month, it was making a Root Cellar out of 5-gallon buckets. The month before, it was creating a "built-in" storage area for the jars I've put up. Last winter, it was building an entire seed starting set-up in my basement. Today, it was finally placing the remaining 40-odd cinder blocks that have been sitting in my driveway for 2 years! I muscled-up, and  lifted about 50 cinder blocks to form a reaaally long raised bed- 4 ft x 36 ft! This will add about 144 square ft to my total edible veggie-growing space, bringing the total square footage up to 341 sq ft of raised bed gardening space

New garden bed on side-yard

<----------- Check out the new addition:
I've started planning what I want my garden layout to look like next spring. It's way too early to be thinking about this, I know. But laying out a garden plan is my version of geeking out. Others may play video games, scrabble, or DnD; my "cup of tea' is planning, strange as it may seem.

Canned good "built-in"

This year, there have been several major homestead successes, and several things I'd like to improve upon for next year:

2011 Successes:
+ Two 5-gallon Root Cellars
+ 36 sq ft extra garden space

Winter veggie storage

+ Tried seed starting indoors
   - started zuccs. & tomatoes
 + Made additional storage for canned products
 + Winter veggie and bulk good storage rack added

Improvements for 2011:
+ Add 144 sq ft of garden space
+ Grow enough carrots, onions, & potatoes to eat in summer and last until January
+ Grow and dry more beans- goal= 2 pints of dried beans
+ Try to start everything from seed indoors this year (except for carrots, onions)