Double Cropping

The weather here is superb! Thanks to the sunshine, warmth and long weekend we got the entire garden in. YAY! We also tried something new this year - double cropping. We love winter squash and really don't have room in the main garden for these plants anymore. We also have a young orchard with tiny trees so we decided to put our squash patch in this zone this year.

Steve gets very excited about shoveling heavy soil from one area of our property and moving it to another. He couldn't get enough of it this weekend! Seriously, he deserves a gold star for the many loads he sifted, hauled and dumped.

To start our double cropping system, Steve removed a chunk of sod, knocked off the topsoil...

filled the hole with freshly sifted, loose soil...

and shaped the soil into a nice little mound for our seeds.

I then added a scoop full of worm castings to the hole and sowed squash, colorful flour corn and flowers. It's quite clear who got the easy job!

I used old stakes to make note of the various heirloom varieties we planted...14 or so total. Finally, we added some grass clippings to the mounds to break up the force of forecast rain.

The next project will be smothering all the grass before it over takes our new plants. We anxiously await this season's straw!