Digit,

You're not nutz, just ambitious! Cover crops look like the way to go with that much space. Experiment with some new stuff and have fun with it. I'm glad you kept your dahlia garden, that's a little wonderland!

The drought last year definitely curbed my enthusiasm for taking on big gardening projects. A grower in Pennsylvania hasn't been able to deliver an order of 25 various hardwoods and conifers I placed in the fall. Their ground stayed frozen through most of March, which is when they dig. I told them to wait and ship in fall. That left me with 40 trees seedlings from U. of Idaho and I've planted about 20 of those. I'm actually kind of grateful. It feels like enough this year.

At least we know what you'll be up to!

Barb

Certifiable.

No one can ever accuse you of being lazy. How you get done what you do is always the mystery to me.

Maybe a "you harvest". Not sure how far you are from town folks but they do love to pull food from the ground. Pumpkin Patch?

What Lucky said! ALL of it!!! And definitely Certifiable! ;-)

I won't be 70 for "a while" yet either! Nine more weeks! I can't even FATHOM all the gardens you have--all over the place---and HUGE! On the other hand, I do wish my tiny yard was "a little bit" bigger! Probably couldn't handle much more anyway so I'll just celebrate what I have!

Rather than "traditional" cover crops why not go with Lucky's suggestion and plant pumpkins and/or gourds and then have an open garden, Pick & Pay weekend or two in fall! Sounds kinda fun!

Gotta go! Gettin' ready to go trippin'! Will look for a report on what you wound up doin' when I get back!

Skybird

Of course, if the customers show up there - they'd be parking on someone's property and it wouldn't be mine. Besides, I can imagine this deaf guy handling things on a retail level:

"We want a pumpkin." "A what?" "Pumpkin." "Somethin'? Well, you're gonna have to make up your mind!" "No, no a pumpkin for Halloween!" "Sewing machine?! You ain't goin' find no sewing machine around here!"

I'd better just grow somethin' I don't want . . . but, maybe the soil critters do. It is old but there's quite a bit of mustard seed around here and I could pick up a bag of sunflower seeds real easy. I've been wanting to see if my tiller can handle winter-killed oats in the spring garden.

I've never succeeded in doing much of this sort of thing in the past. Except that time I lost an entire field of grain to an early snowfall and my girlfriend left me.

Steve

I've been giving this some thought, Steve, and here's what I've come up with.

1) - you need to do 4 years of gvt subsidized row crops. Dried peas count. Take out crop insurance. Have a weather disaster or two, cash in on the insurance. Till under the peas, which, as a legume, builds N levels, and then......

2) - put the land in CRP - the payment based on the soil quality, now newly improved by all that Nitrogen.

Have you considered recruiting some interns? Plant some seeds of knowledge...
Steviewonder

Stevie', I used to be assigned a "crew" now and then, at work.

It wasn't for me . . . I'd end up working harder than if I didn't have anyone for assign tasks. I hated it!!

No, David's idea sounds better to me - altho' I didn't know about those in's & out's! I just knew that the crop insurance world has become something of a racket. There really should be a better way to keep farmers in the business of farming.

Steve

Trying to make good use of all that "clean slate" space - I have come up with a high tech tool.

Yeah, I mean other than moving rocks around to indicate ends of rows and pacing things off with my almost exactly 12" shoes.

I am sending texts from the phone to my Evernote account. Yes, when I pace things out, I can note how many "feet" and send that off. Later, I can edit this cryptic information to make sense out of it.

It is somewhat greater than 12,000 square feet so, very close to 1/4 acre. I still haven't gotten a commitment from the neighbor about what he will use and where on it he will be. He seems content with my first plantings. I've got 540 square feet planted! Hope to get out there today to put some seed in additional ground.

Steve

Here was the view from the end of the pea patch yesterday afternoon:

Those black lumps out there are upturned 8" pots covered with a shovelful of soil and covering pumpkin and squash plants. The buckets are just a few of those I'd set out to cover the 50+ tomato plants tonight. There is a rock in each to hold them against the 25mph gusts. They may have quite a lot of rain in them this morning.

"Seasonal" temperatures returning this weekend . . . I'm hoping so.

Steve

Yer nutz, but I admire the initiative, Steve. Good luck!

Heavens no!

Seems like you just have amazing energy!