Last week took an unexpected turn when my grandma (we call her “Goomie”) passed away suddenly. I was having a really hard time focusing and got on a flight to New York for her memorial service. It was really good to go and cry with my family and remember her.
I feel a bit more like myself again but I will forever love and miss my Goomie!
Some of my more dedicated readers may have noticed an absence of the Weekly Digs last week and that was the reason. But I promised a more detailed explanation of our future plans as long as all goes well with the purchase of our new land so here we go!
The plan for this spring and summer is to set up our garden in our current homestead as planned. We do plan on selling our house this summer too but it will be around the end of May or June, or whenever we finish fixing up our current home.
The idea is to stage the garden so that as we sell the house potential buyers can see how productive the garden can be. Of course that is supposing they are looking for a big garden hehe! Our house is pretty good to but of course my favorite part is the garden. 🙂
Other considerations as to why I chose to continue gardening in our current plot is that it has had many years of organic matter and lots of rich material. Our new land has pastures full of Bermuda grass. If you aren’t familiar with Bermuda grass, lucky you! It’s an incredibly aggressive grass that grows hot climates and I’m going to have a fun time figuring out how to eradicate it quickly for a garden.
My plan so far to get rid of the Bermuda grass is to rent a sod cutter and clear an area. Then I’ll put the chickens on that area for a few weeks. After that, when the Bermuda wakes up in late spring I plan on covering it with a silage tarp until planting time. After planting I’m going to cover everything with a thick layer of wood chip mulch.
The reason for doing that is we will still be getting a new garden set up at the land in addition to the one on our current homestead. At the new land we plan on doing space-hogging crops like corn, tomatoes, and pumpkins.
Having one at each location will give us a back up in case our home sells quickly and we don’t get to harvest from our homestead.
You may be wondering at this point what we are going to do for a house if we sell ours this summer. The idea is to get construction started on our new home in June or July. But since it usually takes 6-9 months to get a home built that leaves us in a bit of a bind.
Option one is to rent a home closer to the new land. As of right now it is a 25 minute drive from our home. Making that trip once or twice a day to tend to animals and crops will be too much so we definitely want to be closer.
Option two is to buy an RV, put it on the land, and live in it until our new home gets done. Then we’ll sell the RV.
We are still deciding what to do!
In the garden:
Indoor starts
- Seeded my cold hardy lettuces like Winter Density and Rouge D’hiver. I also seeded little gem lettuce.
- I also started cabbages- Red Express and Golden Acre. These are quick maturing varieties, ready in 60 days!
- Seeded Winter Bloomsdale spinach and cilantro too.
