THE GARDEN

Before I start, I'm going to provide some background about my garden. When we bought our 8 acres of Agricultural property on the Colorado foothills in 2006, we had no clue about gardening, planting zones etc. I knew I wanted chickens and do some gardening - that was it. 

In 2008, we got some of our hill leveled. We decided it was time to set the foundation by planting some fruit trees and berry bushes. The problem was, we did nothing other than just digging a hole in the ground and putting some fertilizer before planting. The result was either dead twigs or sickly plants (and yes, I say plants, not trees or bushes). Our overall fruit production from 2008 - 2011 was about 10 berries at the most.

So, word of the wise: prep is VERY important. Here's an example of what our land looked (and looks) like after the leveling off.

So, as you can see, nothing but mountain grass (and some onions!) made it on that ground.

My Egyptian Walking Onions

These were the only plants that I planted that did well. Egyptian Walking Onions are great. They do well with little to no care, and can (obviously) withstand poor soils, drought conditions, wet feet, high altitude, and a searing sun.










Because of the relatively large size of the plot we decided to prep it by lasagna gardening.

We first removed any large rocks then laid cardboard. If you don't have cardboard, you can use non-glossy newspapers. Possible sources of free cardboard are: Costco, Sam's Club, grocery stores, craft stores etc. Be sure to pick the non-waxed/non-glossy ones. If possible, I try to pick the non-colored ones as well. Remove all staples, tape etc before placing it on the garden.

Next, we dumped old potting dirt, poultry bedding (pine shavings), horse manure which our neighbor kindly trucked over, cow dung, and chicken poop. If you don't have access to this, you can contact your local nursery. Many places sell composted manure at a reasonable price. Some will even deliver within a certain radius.

Other possible additions: non-greasy fruit and vegetable scraps, spent coffee grounds (your local Starbucks might be able to give you some for free), grass clippings, dead leaves, compost, seaweed.

I didn't add vegetable scraps since my chickens eat those and I didn't want to invite more mice into the area.

This is what the prep bed looks like so far

 The plexi-glass sheets were placed on top for solarization - basically an attempt to kill weeds and disease. Many sources recommend using plastic sheets for solarization but we've found that they tend to disintegrate, leaving hard to remove bits of plastic everywhere.

We therefore decided to just reuse the plexi which we had when we converted the existing greenhouse into a chicken coop. Here is an example of the effects of solarization:

If any of my readers have any advice or comments to add on this article, I welcome them. There is always so much to learn!