Ok, I am going to do this in bullet form first..
- Nursery Garden -My oldest gardening spot, its super sheltered, I have grown up a ring of tree’s around it, with a building on one side of it.. it my early start garden for transplants, and my shade garden in the heat of the summer.. Amzing soil in this garden area.
The main garden area is as wild as most of my gardens, it has a hedge of elderberries, that are just growing up and going but someday will look very much like my mature area of elderberry bushes.. it has one edge that has 14 rhubarb plants, then row of blueberry and then rows of currents, and a big chokeberry tree, three rows of rasberries (different kinds) and a big blackberry row, along with a big old patch of nettles and six rows of strawberry plants etc etc..
This area is where somewhere you will find a good amount of my potato’s planted and mulched out..
Then there is the assorted hot box’s made of all kinds of things.. here is one of my biggest..
Then of course the smaller area filled with different hedges and plants including the elderberry area..
Three massive with a fourth being built Hugelculture beds, including one also built at a friends place,all working well..
Then there is the grapes vine area, it seems like each year since we have been here, we have added another vine here or there, we are upwards of over a dozen vines in at least fivee kinds and the bounty is now starting to flow in..
Then there are the assorted raised box’s gardens that are covered to protect from roaming birds and other critters, mainly salad box’s or root growing box’s depending..
then you get to the food forest, filled with different fruit tree’s, fruiting bushes, nut tree’s, and many, many different kinds of small scrubs, fruiting plants, herbs, flowering plants, including our own homemade small peat bog for cranberry’s.
Last but not least, my many compost piles around the farm that tend to have wild crops of tomato’s, squash and other goodies that just grow like wildfire with no help from me in any way.. until the plants get so big they are falling down and need help being lifted up so that fruit can ripen, like this massive self-seeded tomato plant from last year..
Well, I can see that I need to take some time this coming year and take more overview photos of my area’s but hopefully this will give you a good idea of what I currently have in production.. Lets not forget the area’s that are cut and raked and hauled as hay a couple times per season..
In total my working garden/cropping area is sitting right around an acre plus and I am adding in another 1/4th acre this year for the fodder/mangel beets and other fodder root crops for livestock feeding..
Just another Day on the Farm 
I’m praying hard that your place isn’t covered in snow when we arrive there because I want to see all of this up close. Like the hugelbeets – I really want to see those. And I want to see how much space each of these areas takes up. How much corn do you plant? And is it only one variety?
I notice that the more I learn, the more questions I have.
Well, given the winter we have had the odds are yes it will be covered in snow, or melting snow/ice, the odds of getting to see the gardens at that time of the year are pretty much nil, but I can stand and point out things 🙂
Now seeing the area’s that can indeed be done. I don’t plant that much corn and it depends on the year, the biggest factor in my corn planting is when the GMO field corn around me is going to pollen, I plant so as to avoid any cross pollinating, if the corn is right on my garden edge, there are years where I would raither buy locally then trying to grow around it.. and yes more then one kind typically.
Thanks for all those lovely pictures Farmgal! It makes me hunger for spring/summer…..
I am hunger for spring! I can tell that spring is coming and it makes me want soil and plants and sun! it will come in time..
I love your lush and bountiful gardens! You grow grapes? What gardening zone are you in? I’ll be in zone 3b in April, but do you think that I could grow grapes? Here I am about to move away from the vineyard capital of Canada and now I want to grow grapes, lol!
Zone 5a
You will need to look it up to see what is recommended for your zone.. Mirco Climated can also be created which help a great deal..
Awesome and beautiful. That elderberry is gorgeous. We keep adding grapes too though I might have lost some along with other new plantings in drought 2012. Do you normally haul hay by cow?
Hi, thanks, the elderberries do very well in that spot, I take out 1/3rd of the flowers for drying and even then, its so heavy with fruit, it needs help being held up at times, and I prune out all the third year growth as they are never strong enough to go more.
I will see if the grapes that went out last year will have made it or not, hope so
Before the cow, we rolled it and hauled it by wheelbarrel but after we got the cow, even the first summer when she was five or six months old, yup, she hauls her hay in..
She is trained as a draft, riding and family milk cow to be, but in 2012 we added in a riding, broke to drive half clyde horse, we do pretty much everything on the farm by either our or draft power.
Yep, looks like some varieties of grapes are cold hardy to zone 3! I would love to create or find a micro climate area on our land. Zone 5a is pretty good; I’m in 6a right now.
wow I wished my place was as nice as yours