Progress of the Family Vegetable Garden

Last year, my 'Honeycrisp' was loaded with bloom.  This year not a single blossom.  The crabapples and wild apples around me have blosssoms, as well as the probably 150 year old apple tree at the historic house of my brother.  On further investigation, at the tips where I would expect a blossom are tiny dead dry dots which fall off easily when I touch them.  My blossom buds from that night in April when the temperatures fell to somewhere around 9-12 degrees (F).

We like to make a lot of sauce, juice, and sliced apples and can them as a family.

Planting the Small Garden in Central Wisconsin

Four trays on the top shelf of my grow rack filled with seedlings fro transplant

Choosing the best varieties, for me, is part seed saving, part experience, and part leg work.  I have been talking to truck farmers, market growers, and checking out the winning varieties at the local county fairs for a few years now.  My goal in seed saving is develop cultivars with provenance, that sense of place, cultivars that will grow well no matter what Mother Nature hands us.

By talking with other growers and checking out the county fairs, I am attempting to cut down my research time frame and develop some good knowledge for local growers.  Here in central Wisconsin we live in a unique horticultural climate bounded by gardening extremes.  I don't want tomatoes in the hot year, I want them every year.  Same for peppers, potatoes, lettuce, and broccoli.

Over the past few years I have started to develop some favorites.

My seedlings are typically a bit larger, but this year, I didn't start many until March 15, including the annual flower transplants.  As spring is slow in coming this year, I am not particularly concerned that I will be late.

Sweet Peppers:

Surprisingly 'California Wonders' are the best bell peppers with the best probability they will get red, even in a short growing season.  They are sometimes marketed under some other names like 'King Arthur'. Also surprisingly, they seem to come true from seed, although they are F1 hybrids.  I have not noticed a difference over seed collected over the course of a number of years.  Additionally, the saved seed germinates at nearly 90 percent.  I wish I could say the same for the pricey purchased seed of new cultivars I would like to try.  As an added kicker the purchased seed sometimes runs 50 cents a seed, for seed that does not reliably germinate.

Pimento Peppers:

'Sheepnose', by and far, is the meatiest of these pimentos I have tried.

Other peppers:

Peppers are an interesting group.  They are super easy to wash, slice up, and freeze.  You can dry them.  I use them in a wide variety of foods from stir frys to fajitas and soups.  Surprisingly, seed saved at almost any stage of harvest will germinate-- whether it is a red pepper or a potentially red pepper harvested green.  All the mumbo-jumbo about hybrid seed does not seem as rigid with peppers either, which means you have a really tasty grocery store pepper, by all means save the seed and try and grow it.  I have had good luck growing  peppers from saving the seed from the nearly seedless roasting peppers you see in supermarkets for tail-gating coming football season.

Tomatoes:

Well, there are these, and this...

Beans:

When it comes to green beans, I will admit I wasn't a fan...until beautiful SIL made her gluten-free green bean casserole.  I will say I planted a short row of 'Fortex' last spring and they were incredible.  Even just blanched and frozen and then heated in a microwave these were really good.  Previously I have grown some other beans, like kidney beans and white northern, primarily to use as dried beans.   The white northern were a pain to shell which had to be almost completely done pain-stakingly by hand, while the kidney beans could have been beaten and shook loose fairly easily.  I have also grown some of the white and red mottled bean of the dragon tongue type, beautiful mottled red pods on smallish plants, singles this bean out for use in a well-designed decorative garden space for edible landscaping.

Onions:

I have struggled with onions.  First off, I like them fresh, like as scallions.  Second I would like some good storing onions. I also, because I like onions, am a fan of all the nuances the right onion can add to any dish.  Unfortunately, central Wisconsin is a long day length onion growing zone.  Most of what is sold here are onion sets, which certainly seem to not actually set onions of much size at all.  They certainly don't have the nuances that a sweet Spanish yellow can impart to a dish or even the flavor of a Vidalia.  Both of these are short day length onions and will not grow very well here.  For flavor and storing potential 'Alisa Craig' seems to have the lock.  The only way to grow them is to start your own from seed.  Some of the Asian onions will do well to grow as scallions, and grow fairly quickly.  I have tried the flat, red Cibolla types here and they were okay although only about two inches in diameter.  Onions do germinate fairly well from seed, so if there is a variety that is a favorite I do encourage you to start your own sets sometime in the end of February.

Next Post: Salad greens and peas...

A Garden Sense of Home: What's on Your Plate?

(Photo: www.softpedia.com)

Mother Nature is seriously messing with us.  I suppose she feels we (people) have it coming.  Gardeners are just the collateral damage.

Overnight the rain turned to snow.  It is a heavy snow, but it doesn't appear it is primarily  sleet clinging to the needles of my white pine and various shrubs, so that's all to the good.  The last couple years with the fits and starts between winter and spring, we have had a couple bad ice storms which knocked down power lines and brought down huge branches from my monumental white pine, bouncing them off my tiny hobbit home like it was the backstop on a baseball field for an angry pitcher told to practice.

Ice storms so bad, you remember the dates; last year's on April 10, two years ago on April 12.

Conversations, though, are turning to gardening.  Even among the eaters, who have benefited from my gardening without the work input required.  "Eat local, know your farmer."  For them, I am that, their source of local produce.  Seems beautiful sister-in-law (SIL)has been sharing the wealth, without leaking that information up, or down," the food chain."

Adding Ornamental Edibles to Your Landscape

The beautiful fall orange color of a blackberry cane is decidedly ornamental.

I have always had an eye toward growing my own food.  Maybe it is because my dad is a farmer.  I know where food comes from; someone has to grow it.  Maybe it is because I live in a food desert of a sort; because I live in an agricultural area, unless you grow it, it is terribly expensive, or not to be had unless you find something that is damaged falling off a truck.  Maybe I am just too cheap to buy it because I can grow it.

The decorative aspect of the savoy type cabbage which was grown in a large pot along with a canna and crocosimia  (non-edibles) is hard to deny.  As I only eat a cabbage or two a year, growing a couple in a pot is ideal.

I don't know, but I have always tried to incorporate as many edibles into my landscape as possible.

Pepper 'Sweet Heat'

This year, I grew a variety of peppers looking for the best ones for our area conditions. Last year, the family garden yielded nary one red pepper and scant green ones, being inundated with rain and cool temperatures. This year we have exactly the opposite conditions.

Brother and Sister-in-law are not lovers of hot peppers, and while I like jalapenos, I only eat a few over the course of the year, mainly in my canned salsa and sliced on pizza. This year when I came across 'Sweet Heat'; a pepper with some heat, but not enough to earn it a Scoville heat index. It also has a short span of days to red maturity, so it got a spot on the list of peppers to try this year.

It has just a bit of a kick, not anything near a jalapeno, and a sweet red pepper taste. The pretty color and heat make it just the right pepper for a salsa, fajitas, or a roasted red pepper spread.

Sister-in-law and I have already made a salsa using a combination of this and 'Sheepnosee' pimento peppers and 'Olpaka' and 'Amana Orange' tomatoes. Sister-in-law confesses she really loves this salsa, which she has started using even before the different ingredients have had time to blend and develop. I would typically label her a non-salsa eater.

The plants are prolific and germinated easily. The peppers are approximately 4" long and 1 1/2" wide. From just a half dozen plants, we are easily going to harvest nearly a bushel of red peppers by the end of the season. From transplant, expect to wait at least 90 days from transplant to harvest.

We'll be growing this one again!

Pick a Peck of Pickled Peppers

This is an interesting pepper we have growing in the family garden. I saved seeds from a pepper I bought marketed as roasting peppers in bags in shades of yellow, orange, and red. The seed is available to commercial growers, labeled as a hybrid; however, the plant and peppers grown from saved seed seem very uniform. The heavy yield on each plant and the quick ripening make this a neat little pepper for the home gardener.

I saved seed from the obviously ripe red ones and from a couple orange ones. There were yellow peppers in the bags. I did not feel the yellow peppers necessarily had ripe seed and did not save seed from them. It is interesting to note seed germinated equally well from the orange and red peppers, yet the peppers all seem to mature in a similar manner. Yellow is NOT one of the color changes through which the peppers transition.

This whole maturation process begs whether the peppers, when grown commercially, are artificially ripened using some sort of fuming or chemical reactant.

They are not hot and have a slightly tough skin. I felt this would make them ideal pickling peppers. This first batch I have pickled in a vinegar and oil mix leaving them whole and hot water bath canning them. Although I trimmed back the stems, I should also have pierced each peppers so them would not float to the top of each quart jar.

They should make a tasty garnish for a sandwich or a salad.

Busy Saturday in Review: Opportunities

Yesterday, I happened to be in Wausau, Wisconsin, had an extra hour to spend and thought I might spend that at the Leigh Yawley Woodson Sculpture Garden. What could be better? Sculpture AND a garden!

Woe to me though, my hour was from 11 o'clock to noon and the Woodson does not open until 12. I was left to peer through the gates and fencing. Even worse for you, I forgot my camera. These pictures are all from a trip shortly after I got my first digital 5 1/2 years ago.

Opportunity missed.

For me, the iconic image of a horse done originally in tree roots and then cast in bronze is the Woodson. If I had had my camera I could have done a better job of capturing its spirit. Birds, however, are the Woodson's bread and butter as the core of the Leigh Yawley Woodson is birds in art.

The bones of the sculpture garden remain much the same in either April or high summer. This garden is all about the sculpture. Unlike my visit five years ago, the main entrance area boasts a large sculpture of whooping cranes (or maybe they are mallards for all I know, in bronze, identification of ducks unlike plant is a bit dicey). Its size and visibility from the parking lot across the street its makes the statement on arrival. However, the brooding eagle watching over the sidewalk to what is actually the front entrance to the art museum, is probably what the staff at the Woodson feel is the Woodson.

To the left of the entrance is what is labeled a secret garden with sculpture of a pair of herons in what I believe is the Woodson garden's only water feature. This hidden garden could easily be incorporated into any back yard, which is what makes it very special.

Although if you google for images of the museum you will get quite a few pictures of the sculpture displayed with grasses, this year that was not true. I saw one sculpture of some ducks with sapphire grass, but that was about it. Most of the garden is herbaceous plants of the shrub, tree and vine sort, with just a couple large pots, and not any bedded annuals. The secret garden was well-planted with a collection of drought-tolerant shade lovers.

I could not help but walk away thinking how wonderfully improved the display of the sculpture would have been by incorporating native plants native plants into this mix.

Opportunity lost.

The rest of the day was spent at the family garden. My sister-in-law and I picked sweet corn, basil, and green peppers to freeze. With Baby Gardener and the Twins in tow, preserving goes slowly when it goes at all.

At 6 PM, I decide it is necessary I switch gears and water in the daylily 11-214. This is a discarded cross done by my neighbor out of hemerocallis altissima x 'Oh Joy, Oh Rapture' (APPS). He was hoping for offspring with closely held flowers of something in a peach or orange. Instead, something very similar to the parent, with about 25-30 buds on a stalk.

Its destination? The compost pile at his family's farm.

So I am touring his breeding plot and we are looking at what is interesting out of his 2010 crosses and we come to 11-214. The flower form is very nice in form and color. With the length of the stalk, it screams to me cut flower. In Korea, daylilies as cut flowers are all the rage. Not so in the United States. With a bloom that lasts but a day, it's a non-starter. I think this attitude should change. With branching stalks of 25-30 buds lined up to bloom, day after day, I don't see a downside. Okay, now the bloom is 2 inches to the left and we need to groom that arrangement, actually looking at it! Horror!

I stand there studying it. I'm thinking cut flower bouquets in farm markets. Darrel is reading my mind. He offers it to me.

I gasp.

"But you can't sell the plant," he cautions. Yeah, this I know. He doesn't even like to have his plants passed around that he discards. And in case you haven't guessed his discards are often nicer than 95% of what the typical gardener has blooming in their yards.

I say, "I'll even dig it out!"

"Okay."

So the other day I dug out all the plants grown from cross 11-214. I took and cut them back and planted them in two 30' rows a foot apart down the center of the orchard area in the family garden, and labeled their row tag with 11-214 and their parent cross info.

Opportunity taken.

So I am finished watering in these daylilies now destined for a brighter future and am crossing the road back to my brother's house. I have a road crossing ritual, because of the twins and their love of the garden which is across a road.

"Look left,
Look right.
No cars in sight!
Cross quickly!"

We repeat this little rhyme, looking each time we cross. My attempt to get them to stop rather than darting to look for that one car that may someday come.

Today, I am alone, yet I still (habit) repeat our little rhyme, actually turning my head each way to look as I have modeled for the Twins.

"Look left,
Look right.
What! Hot air balloon in sight!
And its like right above the road!"

Cool!

I trot off to search for the Twins because this is so cool. Eventually, I find them and they are entranced.

"See it!" they scream!

So my sister-in-law, the Twins, and I hop into the car to chase down the balloon which has now moved out of sight down the road. Baby Gardener and my brother being left behind.

As we come up to Shenington (a unincorporated twist in the road with its sole mercantile establishment being a bar), I see a different hot air balloon on the ground in the large manicured grounds. The owner of the bar had yelled out as he and his patron watched the balloon float at tree top level, "Land, and we'll buy you a drink!"

So they did. Everyone in the area, not just the Twins and us, are enraptured by the hot air ballon sitting so unexpectedly on the ground. The balloon has quickly gathered maybe 60 people, a lot of them under 10 to see it so close up.

At one point, one of the helium heaters ignites. Making a loud and startling whoosh noise. The Timid Twin asks as we walk closer, "Will it be loud?" He is frightened a bit seeing something unfamiliar so close by.

Soon the ground team shows up and after a few minutes they take over the elaborate and well orchestrated team work of collapsing and stowing the balloon.

After the helium has been wrung from the nylon and the balloon is lying snaked out on the lawn, the Elusive Dream Ballooning balloonists allow the small children to touch its silky ripstop nylon. Even the Timid Twin reaches out.

Touch it, touch it.

Opportunity taken.

This is not the first time I have seen a hot air balloon so close. Before Beautiful Girl became Sister-in-law, she and my brother were hanging out at my dad's dairy farm one day. Suddenly, I see the cows stampede. Crap! What's frightening the cows?

Only citified Beautiful Girl and I were around, I yell to her, "We need to see what has the cows so spooked before they bust through the fences and end up in the next county!"

We jump in my truck and drive down to the pasture on a field road and into the recently cut hay field. Cow chasing alone is no fun. Hopefully, I can get Beautiful Girl to jump up and down and wave her hands at the appropriate times.

At this point, we hear and see what has caused the cows to go nuts.

"WHOOSH!" A hot air balloon igniter blasts. "WHOOSH!" Again. When you are not expecting it, the sound is startling. The balloon is bobbling just a few feet above our heads.

"Can we land?? they call out.

"Sure, just stay out of the corn and don't put it in the cow pasture. You're scaring the cows," I holler up.

So they land. Their tracking team eventually finds them and they resolve their problem. We are talking to them the whole while. They are sorry they scared the cows. They say they usually don't fly so low.

They ask, "Do yo want to go up?" Beautiful Girl and I exchange a glance. Do we want to?

"YES!" we answer in chorus.

Opportunity taken.

So we get into the basket. They seem so small on the ground, not so when inside. We are looking up into the balloon, talking a mile a minute. I happen to look out and wow!

We are like 30' above the ground. Neither of us felt a thing. No bobbly motion as we took off or launched. Nothing. Suddenly, we are 30 feet in the air.

"Whoa! Down!"

We both ask in unison.

Up. Down. Complete opposites with like nothing in between. It was unnerving.

It was like being IN the sky. I can understand the allure.

My parents and my brother show up and lots of talk about ballooning, the ins and outs ensue. No one else has the courage to go UP, even for a moment, when offered the opportunity.

Yesterday, now Sister-in-Law says she'd like to have a hot air balloon. Yeah, I would, too, I admit. I think I could make the balloon, I say. They're make of that ripstop nylon, a heavier weight probably than say a windbreaker. I consider it a bit, the technical aspects of the balloon's construction.

After a minute, I look over at her, watching her boys watch the balloon and its team.

"How many times do you think they go over the seams to reinforce them?"

"Oh, that's a GOOD question," she laughs. "After you make it, you can test it first!"

I think of that one neighbor of mine made an ultralight out of a lawnmower back in the 70s...

Postcard from the Family Garden

Cabbage 'Red Acre' and sage

'yum Yum' pepper

'California Wonder' pepper

Amaranth

Sweet corn 'Early Sunglow'

Amaranth

Leaf lettuce mix

Pineapple sage


Cucumbers and tomatoes

'Contender' beans

Potatoes and tomatoes

Sweet potatoes

Turnip greens

Mizuna

P.S. Wish you were here! It would beat a lousy t-shirt!

Saturday is a Projects Day

I have been substitute teaching a lot this year. Politics being what they are, here in Wisconsin; there are a lot of teachers re-evaluating their life choices. One teacher I know is getting his CDL and I moving to India (where is wife teaches in an international school. Another, having her first child at the advanced age at which I gave birth to Handsome Son. All of this subbing, although great for my paycheck, is not so good with just getting everything done in a single parent household. It seems my car is constantly behind on its oil change. The vacuuming is never done, a job I thought I could delegate to Handsome Son who failed to realize we had a busted belt and the roller was not turning. It wasn't until I attempted to follow up on his shoddy performance on his bedroom carpet, that I realized what the problem was.

So today, I have a full day looming large. A day filled with laundry, replacing said belt and vacuuming, cleaning, potting on seedlings, planting seeds indoors and out, and also, in general, sprucing up my home in anticipation of the Commencement of Handsome Son.

I have also taken on a quilting project  for the mother of the manager my Handsome Son's basketball team.  She wanted a memory quilt comprised of squares from T-shirts her daughter had collected from various school and extracurricular activities.  The quilt sits at the top of my to-do list because the mother wants to display it at her graduation party.  The top of the quilt can be seen in this picture.  It gives you the general idea of the project, although unfinished.

Watering my potted seedling like the pretty peppers, pictured here, is also taking up more of my time. I am not sure what sort of harvest we will have, but with five weeks until the earliest plant out date for peppers they will demand a lot of care. One thing gardening does teach is consistency and follow-up. It is so easy to lose an entire crop with one day's indifference to the goal.

These are petunias I have grown from seed without special lights. I used regular shop lights, 4' florescent bulbs. They have been spending most days on the deck (out of room under the lights as I continue to pot on more veggies) that needs it yearly painting (being south-facing), but although frost-tolerant, even these guys have been brought in most nights. As for the beginnings of our local food harvests: There was no maple syrup season to speak of this year. My apricot tree looks pretty sad, its leaf buds and any small leaves having froze; I can not foresee a crop. Not only have the first blossoms of my strawberry plants froze, but additional blossoms as well, all spotting the "black eye" foretelling a sad tale. My very early 'Honeoye' are probably a loss. My neighbor has been putting a frost blanket on his,but as cold as it has been, Dr. Apps reports it has frozen through this safeguard, as well for his earlier cropping strawberries. He does have hopes for 'Sparkler', though. I do not have any 'Sparkler' planted this year. My blueberries, I have 'Blue Ray' and I think ' Northern Blue' like it cold, it seems; and the early variety is loaded with blooms. I may get a quart or two on the small number of bushes here in the potager. The family garden's blueberries, I do not yet know the status. As for the rhubarb, one of the earliest perennial fruits, it has a number of stalks, all very short. There are two flower stalks forming already though, which I will need to yank out. I thought this year to make rhubarb juice using my brother's fancy steamer. Hopefully, adding a fruit juice to our larder, low on juice types Handsome Son will consume. So start your projects people. It is a spring Saturday-- although at 47 degrees here-- it does not feel much like one!

Update on the Seedlings

Pictures tell a 1,000 words, so here are the pictures from the growing rack!


Great germination for the onion 'Ringmaster' from Botanical Interests.


Celery seedlings, their color is really much better than that!


Those pepper seedlings from an OP hybrid, sweet red poblano type pepper germinated like hair on a dog!


Ah tomatoes!


On the right side, in the middle you can see the celery core growing new stalks, one of my "garden investigations".

So NOAA has released their Annual Spring Weather Forecast. Wetter, cooler with a chance of flooding increasing through April. Okay. I was sorta getting that impression myself. Right now I can hear the wind sorta howling around the house, too.

Checking the 10-day forecast though, after tonight, I don't see freezing temperatures listed. Close to that, but no freezing temperatures are listed for the next 10 day cycle!

There are lots of periods of drizzly rain.

That will slow me down.

I haven't checked with the village Snow Witch, but I am hopeful. I am sure it will get chilly again next full moon. I will have to check when that is, but I am cautiously optimistic that Spring will eventually make an appearance, that my crocus will pop out from beneath their snow cover on the north side of my house, that the forsythia will bloom, that those inch-tall tulips will grow.

I think the planet can take a collective sign. This has been a rough winter. Spring is coming.

Torrential Rain, Thunderstorms Today

Heirloom Marigold 'Simba'

Today is a good day to be inside gardening. Torrential rain is pelting the last remnants of the snow outside. I just heard a might crack of thunder. We are decidedly in the "April showers..." phase today.

I just finished watering my transplants on the light racks. This is getting to be a more onerous chore. They need watering cell by cell, pot by pot daily now, not just a mist with a sprayer bottle.

I planted more fennel seed. Although I got a good germination rate the first time around, the pricking out survival rate was very poor. This surprised me because my luck transplanting direct sown seedling in the garden from one spot to another is fairly good. I like fennel for its seed, and good with it a lot, but it can be pricey. My son likes it in biscuits and gravy, and I would cook with it more frequently if I had more of it. Also the type I planted has a nice mild anise flavoured bulbous root I like raw like celery.

I planted a second type of basil, lemon dani, and it is coming up. This variety is good as a garnish and in salads, but although its lemony flavor is quite nice I have a hard time using it for my traditional pastas, pesto, or my basil aioli. For those things I like a good Genovesee.

This week I also started two edible flowers that are good bug chasers, too. They are the heirloom chrysanthemum-type marigold and the frothy marigold Tangerine Gem. I prefer Lemon Gem for its paler yellow color, more workable when blending colors in the garden, but the seed is not always easy to find. The germination rate I got with this one has been great. The heirloom, I generally see marketed under the name Simba because these days it tends to remind one of the Disney "Lion Story" character. I am sure there is a trademarked marketing scheme in there somewhere. Although an heirloom, there tends to be about 25% of the plants that are singles versus the frillier more than double blooms. I am very careful to collect from the phenotype with the type I like and pull out other, but I have a feeling this one is capable of crossing with all the different hybrids growing in my neighbors' yards.

I also decided I did not have enough onions started. I started one named 'Ringmaster'. As I mentioned I have not been impressed with my results planting onion sets in the past so I decided to grow my own this year from seed of varieties I know to be long day types, versus using the generic sets labeled as white, yellow, and red.

Following along on yesterday's theme of garden experimentation, I planted the seed from a poblano-type red pepper I had been given last year that I thought was an incredibly sweet, large pepper. I know the prevailing wisdom is this was probably from a hybrid plant and I will not get the pepper I so enjoyed, but I will let you know. I do know one thing so far-- germination rate is incredible.

I love sweet red peppers; however, I can't bring myself to pay nearly $4.00 a pound for a red bell pepper that has been shipped 3,000 miles. It just goes against the grain for me! Buying pepper plants is not always an option, because I am never sure whether the peppers haven't been exposed to temperature between 40 degrees and 50 degrees. Temperatures below 50 degrees wreck havoc with a pepper's flower setting rhythm and generally drastically reduce how much fruit you get.

Germination rate which seems to be between 35% and 50%, though, for the pricey ($.35 to $.50 PER SEED!) packets is such a rip! I started Jung's 'Carmen' (50% germination), 'Marconi' (nothing so far, but early), and the collected seed (I'm guessing around 90% germination rate). I started some Jung's cayenne type peppers and got 72% germination with a pricking out rate of around 65%. Some of those seedlings were slow to germination and have not really thrived, so I should have probably culled them at the start. I have also started about ten jalapeno seeds, about 50% germination. The cayenne and jalapeno I use in canning, salsa, and dried in cooking. I definitely don't need 72 cayenne, but I am hoping to be able to sell or trade half of them as seedlings or as dried ristas, if I end up growing them out.

The Botanical Interests cauliflower looks to be a winner so far. It is the combo packet with a purple, cheddar, and green variety packed as one. I think I got between 90% and 100% germination. Cauliflowers are acknowledged hard to get a yield here because of pests and weather conditions. I intend to use some sort of row cover with these.

My sister-in-law and I went over our garden preparation schedule last night over supper. The garden we have planned will take up about one acre. This is huge for many people, but our goal is to provide for more than just our immediate households, and also establish some perennial fruiting areas with berries, rhubarb, herbs, and grapes.

Currently, this area has been fallow for a number of years. We want to have a local farmer plow it once and disc it for us a couple times so we can till in composted manure and organic materials. The snag is many of the local farmers have such big tractors and equipment they can not get effectively work a plot even as large as an acre (or for them as small as an acre)! Flip-flopping our intended gardening area with an area previously fenced for my sister-in-laws donkeys might get it for us, in that it that acre lies adjacent to a field typically planted by the neighboring farmer to corn or soybeans, depending on the crop rotation. Regardless, getting everything prepped and ready will undoubtedly be a time crunch for all of us.