Do this NOW for an Abundant Garden in the Spring

Walnut Wars. Come on, you dweebs, garden time! La la la la la, let me be free. All right, if you want abundance in the growing season, it helps to start in the fall. The first thing we did— you want to do it at least 2 weeks, we've— it's been probably over a month now— is cover the garden area with a silage tarp. You see, being covered for a time softens it up naturally, and we don't have to till. Doable. It killed and softened all the vegetation that was left. I mean, we removed the bulk of it. We didn't unroot it, and there's a lot left. Yesterday we uncovered this. First thing we gotta do here, expose this bed. We've been putting this off too long. We need to shape these beds and get them resting for winter. We've done these beds, it's time for those. Annie's getting it uncovered. This is a 21-foot by 50-foot garden plot. I found that to be the sweet spot. We have marked the corners this time with T-posts because when we mark it with something like this, some kid inevitably comes and pulls it out. Eventually we'll do pretty 4x4 posts or something. To set my corners, I basically go 21 feet across, 50 feet out, and then I measure on that side, and then I measure along, and I just keep measuring till I get it about right. You can do a square where you measure diagonally to check your corners and square it up nice. I think you get close enough just measuring it a couple times and adjusting the poles. Don't put them in permanent until, uh, you've got it to where you've got 21 feet this way on both sides and 50 feet this way. Yesterday we put in our cross line. This cross line— can you see it? It's pink— helps us. We measure along that line. It helps us know where exactly the garden comes to, so we're not guessing. Now we need to take a twine from this guy to that guy, and we can dig our first path out. We're reshaping these beds. Can you tell they were once beds? Uh, I don't think you guys can see that line. Let's try the GoPro. Jonah, come on! We need a digger. Josiah's got to go watch the baby. Lily is— nope, she's got a lesson. Jonah, you start shoveling. And Annie, you want a broad fork since you never have? Let's do it. You ready to learn how to broad fork? Jonah, shovel on this side, casting it the bad end. Okay. You gotta love the Meadow Creature. Not sponsored, just— this is a generational tool, Annie. My grandkids will use this thing. Okay, all the other broadforks are— our soil is getting pretty good. You can basically just do that. Sometimes you have to stand on it and you go up, up and down, not sideways, okay? And then you get down to the bar, all the way to the ground, go about 45 degrees, go back about 6 inches. This aerates it, hydrates it without flipping the soil, without destroying the soil microbes. You look excited. Yeah. You like to try out new tools? I do, I do. And this is your line to kind of base off of. You went in just right there. Good. A little hop. You can also wiggle it frontwards and backwards. Trying to shape in the bed, and he's got it. You can go a little further down. There we go. I like it. Time out from the time lapse. Another meadow creature. This is like a matic. That you can stand up with. I think this is where we're gonna need it. Got a little bit of sodding on, don't we? And it's hard to get it with the shovel. He's getting it, but it's not fun. Yeah, see? All right, let's see if this helps you, buddy. Better to go forward like this, but I'm gonna go ahead and get him started. Yeah, see how tough that is? Couple potatoes, a bonus. This is the tiny potato. That's what we get for a bonus. They're another bonus. We may measured 30 inches off our corner, and that's going to be our bed. And, and this time we're doing the digging path on this side and putting the material there. It's a little easier because we don't have to hop the string. And Annie has to broadfork though. She has to account for that and start a foot off of the string, right? Not, not right next to it. Annie, you're a bed and a half in. You still like the broadfork duty? Hanging in there. And then it was really hard to sidestep that doody thing. Duties, duties. Yeah, yeah, homeboy got us a wheelbarrow of compost. How much compost this year? I'm actually a fan of buying compost and recommend, especially people starting out, just buy the compost. It's like a bulletproof method. Just buy your plant starts. Same for us. Our compost source that we really liked and trusted dried up. What happened? They dried up. They quit delivering this far, and there's from Tennessee. Then we found some local. When we got here, it smelled like burnt tires. That was a little too sus for us. Did your food taste like burnt tires? No. The good question— she said, did the food taste like burnt tires? Actually, it ended up being just fine. Everything grew fine. We know exactly where this came from. This is cow manure, sheep manure, chicken squat, Chickens help scratch this. We turn this ourselves. This is wood chips, which is generally definitely unsprayed. Nobody's going around spraying the trees. There you are. You went and got the Henry cart, didn't you? Actually easier to do the wheelbarrow. Wheelbarrow's got one wheel and you can stay in the path. You want to compact the paths, not your growing bed, because if you compact that growing bed Hard to get moisture, hard to get air in there. Kills the soil microbes. You keep doing that. When Jonah gets done digging over here, he'll get the mini axe. Come on, let's keep going. Gonna say 2 wheelbarrow loads per 50 feet. That's what I'm gonna go off of. We have that compost pile there and that one there. We're making more that we end up being for the high tunnel. And he's hanging in there, 2 out of 6 rows. Jonah's shredding it. The sun has come out. Oh, Annie's shredding it, getting rid of the scarf and the Carhartt. Done shaping all the beds. Got one bed composted. Come on, don't peter out now. And then Jonah's gonna start loading with the mini ax, and that's gonna speed things up considerably. Annie, you're at 3 and a half beds. You still excited about the broadfork? You're sweating. She says they're still friends. She's lost her voice. So now we're gonna get it done, huh? Get in. One scoop versus 30. Next to last step. Josiah is raking the beds even and spreading the compost. I think we had more compost than We think we had, Rebecca. We had a bounty of compost, girl. Did we? Yeah, we still have some more, and we still have that pile there, so we got compost for your high tunnel. I've got low pH here. The way you find that out— well, you get a soil test. Uh, we're gonna put lime on it. Be better if I had a whole bag, but this is what we got. You want to help? Yeah, sure. The moment has arrived. All hands on deck. You gotta love these silage tarps, and just like that, they keep it covered until we're ready to plant. Pull it up, plant.