Relatively new to gardening..... father always gardened but I never had much mind to learning how and what he did. Until my Husband and I purchased 10.5 acres of mountain woods in TN. All I knew was that I had this burning desire to provide food for us.... two at the time and now three as were pregnant and very excited to sow into our little one our new way of living. We refuse to mass clear land.. aka bulldoze it all down, so we cut a clearing with chainsaws and built two raised beds... there is such rich soil here but due to the mass webbing of root systems it’s not easy to break through the top layers of dirt. I began to study.... built our raised bed out of rotting logs and was blessed with full dirt that came from a clean site (half of the soil in this area is a dense yellowish clay (which is good for building our cob home but not for plant growth) I knew I needed to grow a variety of foods to sustain us if the world shut down and I couldn’t go to the local market because I am not vaccinated, I learned about companion planting. I have one 10x30 raised bed and one 10x 20 raised bed and grow shelling peas, bush beans, dry beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, beets, radishes, onions, lettuce, mellons, broccoli, cauliflower sweet potatoes (white and Orange) carrots, eggplant, zucchini, winter squash. By learning companion planting and integrating some vertical gardening I’ve been able to get it all in...growing organic with as much utilization of space. I do have a 9x10x8 greenhouse where I have tables that double as planters in late summer for kale, rutabaga, kohlrabi, spinach and in spring used for starting seeds. I keep a garden journal where I document what works and doesn’t work, what varieties work and what don’t. All my seeds are heirloom so companion planting became key for not only space saving but for big control as well. I’d rather loose a few radishes growing amongst the cucumbers then let a beetle just have its way with my cucumbers! Oh and we do have both beds fenced in to stop the deer and rabbits, the fence helps also by allowing things to climb on them allowing even more space to plant. Between our gardens, ability to forage, chicken, and a few sheep I think were quite well off to sustain if either the grid goes down or if “green rebels” like us aren’t allowed in the mainstream world anymore because we aren’t vaccinated.
