Porcupine gardens?

[MaineShark]

[also posted here]

Denise and I have a couple acres of field out behind the house, just sitting there.  Any interest from fellow Porcs in planting some crops out there?  We were thinking either something along the lines of "supply a share of the labor, get a share of the produce" or "rent land grow whatever fruits/vegetables you like."  We'd like to grow some food out there, but I don't think we can manage to do all the work to get a new garden going, by ourselves, so this would be a mutually-beneficial arrangement.

Any interest?

BTW, we're located in Northwood.

Joe

[Crocuta]

We'd like to grow some food out there, but I don't think we can manage to do all the work to get a new garden going, by ourselves,

I highly recommend the book "Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholomew.  It takes about 20% of the space and about 10% of the time of traditional gardening.  Hmmm.  I just saw that there is a new edition out.  Guess I have to buy it now. 

[Insurgent]

Due to the commute from Concord to Northwood, it's probably not doable for me. You didn't mention how the soil is though; I know that in Deerfield it was pretty poor quality. Would it take a lot of work to get good soil?

[Dreepa]

We'd like to grow some food out there, but I don't think we can manage to do all the work to get a new garden going, by ourselves,

I highly recommend the book "Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholomew.  It takes about 20% of the space and about 10% of the time of traditional gardening.  Hmmm.  I just saw that there is a new edition out.  Guess I have to buy it now. 

I give that book two (green) thumbs up!  I am not a garderner but this book is great.  This year we will implement all the plans laid out in that book.

[EJinCT]

You didn't mention how the soil is though; Would it take a lot of work to get good soil?

Conditioning soil is not hard to do; but it may take considerable time and effort depending on the quality of the soil, the types of produce that one wishes to grow, the size and location of the garden, if the labor is being done mechanically or manually, etc.


A side note: For novices that have yet to develop a "garden", I would highly recommend familiarizing oneself with composting. 

[MaineShark]

Due to the commute from Concord to Northwood, it's probably not doable for me. You didn't mention how the soil is though; I know that in Deerfield it was pretty poor quality. Would it take a lot of work to get good soil?

Depends where in Concord you are.  We're almost at the Epsom line, so it's only like 20 minutes to the Concord end of I-393...

As far as the soil quality, I dunno.  I'm not a gardener.  I'll ask Denise if she knows.

I do know that the previous owners had gardens in several places, and apparently accidentally dropped some tomatos in some spots, because there were random tomato patches in places one wouldn't normally plant tomatos...

Joe

[Lloyd Danforth]

You can improve whatever you find

[MaineShark]

Denise says, "well, since it's a field that hasn't been farmed in quite a while, it should be doing pretty well."

We do also have a composter, although I don't know what volume of compost it has generated.

Joe