Our fall garden was a big disappointment.  Our goats got out of their fenced-in area and devoured my vegetable plants.  They stripped the broccoli leaves, ate the cabbage to the roots, etc.  The only things they left alone were bunching onions.  I guess they didn’t want onion breath.

The spinach was resilient and is almost ready to beginning giving us leaves as well as some beets.  Eventually the broccoli plants sprang back and gave us a nice broccoli harvest, but the other plants were so severely damaged that they yielded nothing.  If it wasn’t for our chickens, goats, and the summer drought, we would of had a great year-round garden.  As my husband says, “it is what it is.”

We are now planning to put a fence around our garden plot to hopefully keep animals out of it.  How we do it and which materials we decide to use is still up in the air.  I am glad that we have produce available and are not completely reliant on our own to survive because this would have been a slim year.

But like most homesteaders, we are learning from our mistakes and planning for our future garden.  Believe it or not, but in our area it is time to begin planting many vegetables.  We have an average frost date from November 28th to March 5th.

The following list are vegetables that you can plant this week (approximately January 20th):

asparagus*
beets
broccoli*
cabbage*
carrot
garlic
kale*
kohlrabi
leaf lettuce
spinach
mustard greens
turnip greens
bulb onions*
english pea
radish

*do not plant with seeds, but with bulbs, crowns, or transplants.

Planting this early gives you a head start for your spring garden. We typically do not have hard freezes.  However, you risk losing your crops to an unexpected frost if you are not careful.  You must be diligent in watching the weather and planning to protect your young and vulnerable plants.  We like to use old hay as mulch to cover the leaves of the plants at night.  Then you have to uncover them during the day so that they can soak up the sun’s rays.

You can plant most of the aforementioned vegetables through the beginning of March.  The longer you wait, the less likely you will be affected by a sudden frost or hard freeze.  It is a decision you have to weigh carefully.  There are pros and cons either way.  Fortunately, gardening is about the biggest gamble we take as a family and the stakes are not high.  Seeds and plants are inexpensive and the rewards of gardening are priceless.

Raising fresh, organic produce is cost-effective for our family.  It is a rewarding experience.  Gardening teaches science in a gentle way.  Parables in the Bible like that of the sower make more sense as you learn the importance of having good soil in your own garden.  Working together as a family is also a worthy experience.  Knowing that your children are learning an important skill such as raising their own food is enough to start breaking soil for me.

The DeHaven family is not running out on the 20th to plant the entire list of vegetables.  We are going to plant some 1015 onion sets and garlic.  Then we are going to plant carrots, lettuce, and spinach.  We have decided to wait a little while before planting cabbage and broccoli.

The one thing that we really want this time of the year is a nice salad at dinner.  It will be great to have fresh lettuce and spinach leaves.  Since our system is to only pick the largest leaves on each plant so that the plant will continue making, we should have fresh salad until it gets too hot in the summer and the plants bolt.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2012 at 10:32 am and is filed under Gardening, Homesteading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.