posted 15 years ago
The first picture gives a sense of the majority of the house garden. It is all no-till, save for one bed which was chicken tractored and then forked and clawed to loosen it. Most beds are keyholes, and we try to plant at least two crops at a time in each bed, leaving space for wild plants to come in too... Lambs quarters is one of our best selling crops.
The second pic is a little messy but its a mandala thats around 30 feet wide. There is a young plum tree, globe artichoke, squash, leek and lambs quarters in the middle, surrounded by squash, peppers, radish, and random volunteer plants.
The peppers were planted about 2 feet apart, and the squash was planted about 2 feet apart along the inside and outside edges of the mandala. The squash needed a bit of retraining and pruning of leaves in order to give the peppers enough sunlight, and I should've added more height to the bed but it's still working pretty decently overall.
The bed was made by laying down about 10-12 inches of hay, making planting holes for the squash and pepper, and filling those with a manure soil mix. For the radish, I just dumped soil on top of the hay in 2 inch wide strips, waited for a good rain to wash the soil in, and planted the radish. I should've added manure to the soil as the radish aren't doing that great. They did well enough to make a lot of radish chips though, and were mainly a soil improver and trap crop to protect the squash.
The third picture shows tomatoes and broccoli in the forground. What you can't see is the lettuce planted in hte shade of the tomatoes, the leeks and celery planted in with the broccoli, and the celery, cauliflower, artichoke, tomato, kohlrabi, leek and kale mandala in the background
The fourth picture is pretty self explanitory if you look at the picture title.
tom-grndchrry-eggplnt-longshot.jpg
squash-pepper-radish-plum-longshot-mandala.jpg
tomato-celery-broccoli.jpg
squash-tomato-kohlrabi-radish-keyhole.jpg
http://www.greenshireecofarms.com
Zone 5a in Central Ontario, Canada