October 28, 2017 MacGregor's Garden Footprint

While not quite as big as I planned (it really never is) the footprint for my first market garden will be a vast area of forty feet by one-hundred feet. About fourteen rows. We mowed it flat and then covered it with thick black plastic. This does two important things:

• First, it takes the light away from the existing grasses and weeds right at the time they ought to be storing energy for winter. Instead they will expend nearly all of their stored energy trying to reach the sun. The plants will either die outright, or go dormant with few reserves on hand to start the new life in Spring.
• The second thing this does is to warm the soil and bring moisture to the surface, encouraging the millions of seed trapped in lower layers of soil to sprout. In about six weeks we will come out and pull the plastic back for one week, then cover it up again. Those plants which sprouted will run out of energy quickly

In December we will come and deep till the soil, but we will need to cover the ground once more. Seeds buried a hundred years ago, but brought to the surface when we turned the soil, will sprout and covering the garden one more time will wear these out.

Weeds are perhaps the biggest ongoing problem in new gardens. Hopefully these early steps will help to keep things a bit easier to maintain.