We have three 8x4 square foot garden boxes that we decided on running our own personal experiment on this year. I filled the boxes with compost from our barn (goats, ducks and chicken droppings along with the bedding materials) and compost from the town landfill, made up of decomposed roots and leaves and let me just say OMG! I have never seen a garden grow so quickly and lush. My lettuce was up and ready for harvest in three weeks time. We have been making salad from the garden while we moon over the rapidly growing corn, squash, tomatos, eggplant, broccoli, peas, cucumbers and zucchini squash. The only plant that seems to be taking it's time are the peppers but we have high hopes. I am however working on a few pests in regards to the broccolli and eggplant.
Just as we did last year, we are adding no fertilizer nor pesticides and things are going just great. Last year everyone was hit with the Tomato blight and I still think to myself the only reason we were not hit was because our gardens were all raised beds so easily drained and that I rarely watered it as nature seemed to just take care of that last season.
I am getting ready to plant my fall/winter harvests. We decided with things going just so great we might as well see how long we can drag out our growing season here on Cape Cod. So far I have some nice seeds to plant like spinach, purple top turnips, broccoli, beets, kolhrabi, carrots and cailiflower.
There is really something about cooking with foods and enjoying what you have grown with your very own hands. It tastes like a whole lot of heaven!
