New Adventures in Gardening for Me

I don't know anyone who enjoys pulling weeds. Do you?

In the orchard area, we simply lay down cardboard, rough compost, and straw/hay every fall. We are still conditioning the soil in that area from hard, compacted, clay soil. We sow orchard grass seeds in the spring, and deer forage in the fall. We've tilled it all under once. Each year the weeds we don't want grow less and less as the plants we do want produces more and chokes out the weeds. Our orchard area is 1/4 acre of terraced hillside dropping a total of 300 ft. There's no way I'm hand pilling unwanted weeds there.

My 2020 garden experiment

In our summer garden in front of our house, we are trying something new I saw on YouTube, landscape fabric. I know we've tried it before with little to no success, but we'll be trying a different tactic, as Living Traditions homestead does. To try it out, I bought a heavy duty landscape fabric like they did. It's 4'x50' and much heavier than we've used before. After Dave's grandson tilled the garden, we let the rains settle the soil a bit. We laid two 25' rows of the weed cloth down. We pinned it down about every  8"-12" and overlapped the edges about 6," I burned holes in the fabric every 2' for the transplants to go in. So it looks like this. The black area is the landscape fabric. I'll put 6 cattle panels anchored by T-posts between the two rows of tomatoes to support them. I'll also be putting a drip hose line between the rows and on the outside edges, so 3 lines total.

For the other two rows of Roma tomatoes, I'll do it the same way I always have. If this works, I'll buy more landscape fabric for the other areas of the garden. This should make it easier to work smarter, not harder in the future. None of us are getting any younger. FYI (for your information), I rotate where I plant my vegetables every two years. I planted my tomatoes where my 3 sisters row is in 2018. I planted them a foot apart and that was way too close together so this year I'm giving them 2'. Even after all these years of organic gardening, I'm still trying new things to make it better, There's no absolutely right way to garden. You can read dozens of books but until you get your hands dirty, get out there, and do it, you'll never find what works for you. You take the basic principle, tweak it, and make it your own.

The only bit of bad news is that our last remaining angora died. I believe the same parasite that killed Buddy Baby was the reason. So we are out of the rabbit fiber business. There goes my instantly usuable rabbit poo tea and time release fertilizer. Well, we've got plenty of chicken manure. It'll just have to be composted first.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

Three Sisters Method of Planting

I REALLY want this from Amazon!

As many of you readers know, we don't do anything by conventional means on this Cockeyed Homestead. Last Sunday. I touched on the way I plant our garden. I do what works for me. I grow an adaptive garden which makes it easier for me to care and harvest my produce. I use the square foot gardening method to plant my garden in zone, but I'll also interplant these zones with multiple crops of vegetables and herbs.

Now I not only do square foot gardening and companion plant, but I throw succession planting also. With a small amount of growing space (less than 1/8 an acre), I can harvest what we need for a year. I get triple duty and harvest from the same square foot of space I have to garden in for optimum results. I don't make raised beds anymore but use the whole garden set up in "rooms" or different sections. The whole garden has had years of ground up tree stuff, hay, straw, cardboard placed on it for years to build and condition the hard packed clay soil into a nutrient dense growing medium. Why would I plant in single rows with plants two foot apart. To me, it's a waste of space.

Hey, what can I say. I'm the eclectic minded in all things. There are many ways to build a gardening and gardening. I do a little bit of most of them in my organic garden.

This leads me to today's topic, the three sisters method of planting. Now if you follow the square foot gardening method, you can plant four corn seeds in a square foot section, or nine climbing beans/peas, or one squash/pumpkin/gourd/sweet potato per square.

I don't do that. I expand my square to two feet. I'll plant three corn seeds 6" apart, seven bean/peas around it three weeks later, I'll plant more for a bumper crop harvest of dried legumes. I'll plant squash/pumpkin/gourd plants in each corner. In the spaces between the squashes/et al, I'll plant nasturtiums and marigold flowers to deter nasty insects and diseases. I'll skip the next square foot and do it again on down the row or section. I do leave myself 3' around each mound to maneuver.

This year around my 46 bi-colored corn, I'm planting black eyed peas, kidney beans, and baby lima beans to dry next week. Two weeks after they begin to sprout I'll go in and plant more bean/pea seeds. Since the peas and beans will be drying on the vines, I want to have plenty to harvest. I planted my corn transplants in my garden last week so next week I'll plant seeds and transplants of vegetables and flowers around the corn.

I honestly love this method of planting. It's a no brainer for weed and pest control. Yes, it takes up space in my little garden, but oh, the havest! In case you are wondering, I do not like pole or runner beans. No fencing required. The stalks will remain in place until the last of the beans.peas are harvested. 

Down in the orchard, I'll be planting my dent corn later in the summer. The ears will dry on the stalks and harvested before the first frost. This is my winter chicken feed and my grits/corn meal/ corn flour. We won't be 100% self sufficient in this, but close to 75% but that's better than having to purchase it all. Oh, Before I forget the mention it. I'll grow three black oil sunflower seed in the 6" center space in the corn. So I guess my cockeyed garden is FOUR SISTERS. 😄 I'll also be planting them in and around my dent corn too. My bunnies and chickens LOVE their snacks. 

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

Gardening at the Cockeyed Homestead

Since the Cockeyed Homestead is such a heavily wooded, small parcel of land, we have a rotation planting system to provide what we need for the year. After all only 1/4 acre is actually cleared and that includes the double wide trailer, a 20x24 barn and a 8x12 rabbitry also in the same 1/4 acre. Not much room for a garden, huh? But yet the planned garden will produce enough food for the two of us for 6 months to a year.

We garden in a 25x25 ft trapezoid shaped area in the front yard. That's not a huge space. The longest section borders the barn. There is a 10 ft wide driveway between the garden and the barn. Another driveway borders the front and right side of the garden area. The house is at the southern border (yellow arrow is direction of the sun). We plant double rows. We planted corn, pole beans, and black oil sunflower seeds in the longest bed. Not a whole lot of each, but enough for us to have a year's worth of corn for the freezer, pole beans to eat fresh, and sunflowers to sprout for the rabbits and chickens to supplement their diets.

The second row has tomatoes for fresh eating on one side and Roma tomatoes for canning on the other side. We've planted a single row of onions in the middle. That's about three quarters of this row. Last year, we went through 35 quarts of sauce and diced tomatoes. We also planted zucchini, and a few okra plants at the top of this row. We separated the plantings with old tires planted with red potatoes.

The third row, was dedicated to canning produce in the form of cucumbers and bush green beans. Not all the cucumbers will be pickled, but a good portion will be. The two crops is separated by an elevated raised bed (1'x3') of spearmint and lemon balm. These are terribly invasive so we maintain them in an elevated raised bed.

We have two 3x6 beds with garlic and onions (G) and strawberries (S). One 4x8 bed(A) that we've sown asparagus seed into. Yes, we know it will take several years to have good root stock for great stalks. We can wait. The boxes marked with an H are our elevated raised beds of herbs on either side of the gate facing the house.

Rosemary and lavender are planted on either side of the front gate between driveways. Eventually the plan is to have elevated raised beds of each herb we plant. The plan calls for both medicinal and culinary herbs to have enough to sell. Since the beds are made from pallets, they are 4X4. 


We have an orchard space diagonal to the barn down a twenty foot slope that levels out a bit before the drop off to the fresh spring water creek that borders one side of our property. We've got oaks, apples, peaches, blueberries, raspberries, black walnut, and pecan trees planted here. Eventually, we have plans to plant muscadine grapes here too.

Along the downward slope we've seeded with wheat and barley seed. This will enrich the soil for future gardening or continue to be grain or flax growing areas. We do cover crops of this type to stop erosion and fuel our organic growing endeavors. In the area where our old chicken run was will also be seeded in this many also. We can scythe the grain for straw for bedding for our flock of chickens. Green manure for fertile new soil.

We have a patch 5x5 dedicated to dandelions and clover behind the greenhouse. This is for our rabbits free grazing pleasure once a few harvests are cut for our use. As we rotate this patch to other areas, a mixed variety of lettuces will be planted. These weeds, to most, have many medicinal uses. Speaking of medicinal uses for weeds, we have wild violets, blackberries, chickweed, and plantain running rampant on our property. As I find these plants I'm transplanting them into easier to harvested areas.

By rotating the crops within these spaces, we can double and in some cases triple our yield. By staggering our crop plantings we can grow things we use the most of like potatoes, leeks, onions and garlic twice a year always giving us a fresh supply year around. We take the plastic covering off our greenhouse about mid-spring allowing us an ample supply of fresh greens, peas, and other "cool weather" crops for a later harvest. The green tree cover allows for filtered sunlight and a drop of temperature for these plants. We eat fresh for as long as we can. By first frost, we will have canned, frozen, or cold stored all the vegetables we need for the gap between November through April.

Eventually, we will cut the trees that narrow our growing area, but for now...this is what we do. While we cannot grow enough wheat to be self sustainable, we do what we can. Without the purchase of several acres of additional land, we will not be totally self sufficient nor do we expect to be. But every step towards getting more self sustainable is one step towards being better off.

Until next week...

Y'all have a blessed day.