Plant and cultivate a 1-acre garden.

“Our one-acre garden plot is way more than I anticipated, and it took all month to slowly get plants and seeds in the ground. In the end, I accepted defeat, and we seeded half of the acre for green manure. That still leaves us with nearly two thousand linear feet of vegetables, a giant undertaking after my 100 foot plot of years past. We have multiple root vegetables- new to me this year, three new varieties of beans- plus three from last year, 6 winter squash, 5 summer squash, 3 watermelon, and assorted peppers and tomatoes. With the new produce, I’m hoping that we’ll be able to preserve a variety in addition to sharing the bounty through our roadside stand.”

“We are blessed with deep clay-loam, very fertile topsoil in our garden area. We knew the area had been in pasture for many years, and grew a bountiful crop of wild plants. In the spring it looked like a wildflower garden! [...] We hired a neighbour farmer to plow and disc the big garden. For the first couple years I used a walk-behind rototiller to make the raised beds. Then I found a neighbour with tractor-driven bed shaping equipment and he did the whole garden for me in one afternoon. [...] That garden consisted of 200 raised beds, each 50 feet long and 30 inches wide, with an 18 inch path between them. Total bed area equals 50 feet x 48” x 200 = 40,000 square feet. My beds were oriented north-south for maximum sun exposure. The garden was divided into four plots, with 50 beds in each plot. The south-east plot had that shady and last- to-drain area, so I planned accordingly.”