Tuesday, September 28, 2021

New Home Garden Planning



Well as some know I sold my house in Port St. Lucie area and bought up near Jacksonville. The new place needs some love, but it feels like home in a way the other house did not.

With my new home I also have just over an acre of land. Of this land only about a quarter was cleared the rest is wild and over run with vines. The idea being that with more land I would have more room to raise my own food. So far I have about 30 square feet of container garden going, however with the recent changes in the world i am getting more aggressive in my planning.

I found this free goal setting journal online in pdf format and decided it would be great for planning my garden goals.

The goal is to produce 80% of my food from my own land by 2025. Ambitious, but long term goal shouldn't be? My reasons being that I want to be less dependent on the grocery chains, less dependent on having a job to have food, maybe find a way to make money from it, and have more money free to improve other areas of my life or less need for money in general.

To achieve this I will need to keep a grocery journal for the next year so I know how much I eat and thus how much I need to grow. Once I know how much I need to grown then I have a definite idea of the space needed. 

But I dont have to wait for the results of my food journal to start, so I am also working on improving the existing cleared areas on my property as well as starting the work of clearing at least the vines from the back yard. 

 Improving my front yard had already started by planting 2 different varieties of plumcot and trimming up a large Bush that existed prior to my inhabiting the land. Under the Bush is a good part sun and shade growing area. The front yard has also been treated with yard lime so that its acidic nature can start being addressed. 

The next phases of improvement for the front yard was to remove an old field wire fence, thank you Mommy for the help there, and to plant a roselle hibiscus. Roselle hibiscus are very etible, their leaves, flowers, and scapes can be consumed in one fashion or another. The hibiscus was placed in a corner of the property that requires a low of weed eater use to keep maintained due to the angles of the fencing. So rather than having to constantly weed eat around there, I am going to turn it into a garden patch that has 2 7ft fence sides. 

My next project will be to get the planter under the bush fixed up and ready for spring, if not before. This will be a 8ft by 10ft bed, but only the outer two feet will really be implantable due to the bush taking up the center. This is again an attempt of mine to reduce the weed eating needed as mowing in this area is not possible. 

Hopefully I will figure out soon how to add pictures from my phone to there blog posts so y'all can see the different projects take shape.

Until next time....

Please leave comments and ideas, they are always welcome.