I said in a 2016 post that I would “fess” up to some newbie mistakes and, quite frankly, there were quite a few. Some were just blunders, some resulted from pure stupidity on my part and lack of research, but most were the result of simple timing mistakes. You’ve already read about the “House that Jack Built” fiasco, with the re-do’s and re-re-do’s over the blasted narrow strawberry bed! Sigh. But that wasn’t the only big goof for the year. So, here goes with two other mistakes:
Probably the worst mistake (other than the strawberry fiasco) for our newly purchased little homestead was in trying to do too many things in too many different directions all at once. As a result, several projects have either been reworked or they’re on the 2017 list of stuff that has to be redone. One of those projects is the space between the road and an ugly low rock wall in the front yard.
My brother and sister-in-law gave us some day lilies from their yard and I wanted to get them planted in front of the rock wall where they would look charming and where we would eventually plant herbs and other flowers for a cottage garden look. But, because there were several strawberry plants that needed to find a quick home or be left to die, this project was “hurried along” and not done properly. Hhmmm. . . notice that there seems to be a theme running here involving strawberries??? Instead of digging up the existing sod (which was mostly clay with a few sparse weeds), I just put a layer of wood chips right on the ground without putting a layer of cardboard underneath to kill the weeds. The day lilies went in and a sweet rock border was added along with the ten or so strawberry plants that needed a temporary home until next spring. NOTE TO SELF: cardboard, cardboard, cardboard. Guess what it looks like now???
Yep, weeds all over the place. Next spring I’ll have to transplant the strawberries when there’s more growing space available, dig up the clay and the weeds that miraculously multiplied (after removing the new rock border), then lay the cardboard down and put the wood chips and rocks back in place. Soooo glad to have extra work to do. Not. But didn’t it look good in the beginning???
What we eventually want it to look like has a cottage feel, with flowers, herbs and veggies all growing together. Hopefully, it will soon look a bit like the photo below. This planting scheme can be found on the Back to Basics site, on their “Cottage Garden” page here.
The other major mistake we made on our homestead was in planting the garden produce very “higgledy-piggledy” all over The Little Half Acre as I was able to scrape together different growing spaces from pure rock and clay. That meant that some plants went where they didn’t do well. That also meant that there would be no crop rotation in 2017 because I’ll be following nightshade plants with other nightshade plants in the same limited growing areas.
Still, even with those mistakes, we ate large in 2016. We ate peas, squash, zucchini, carrots, green beans, tomatoes and various greens until we were sick of them and were craving pizza and mac ‘n cheese! (And not even healthy versions of those!)
Looking back, It was a fun “first full year” for us here on The Little Half Acre. We’re a tiny bit closer to our ultimate goal of self sufficiency (though there’s still tons and tons to do). We don’t spend a lot at the grocery (except for those pizza cravings) and we eat largely from the garden. Even today, the fifth of January, we’re having fresh picked salad – with the cutest little freshly pulled radishes – for lunch, along with some sweet potato and kale soup.
Now there’s only the rest of the trees to cut down, the rest of the growing areas to develop, the solar panels to put up, the greenhouse to build, the chicken run to build, dozens of fruit bushes and trees to buy and plant . . . you get the idea. We’ll take it one tiny step at a time. So look out 2017, here we come!!!
