![\"Tomatoes](\"http:\/\/cocktailfarmers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Tomatoes-5-22-300x225.jpg\")
![\"Eggplants](\"http:\/\/cocktailfarmers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Peppers-Eggplants-5-22-16-300x225.jpg\")
These are the leftovers, which we will be giving away to friends and family.\u00a0 Old MacDonald likes to have extras on hand, in case of premature vegetative death.\u00a0 Or because he has the flats, so why not fill them?\u00a0 I just nod and smile; as we all know, I don’t do the seeds.<\/p>\n
Out back, though, we’ll be trying something new and different.\u00a0 In previous years, the Back 40 has been a 25′ x 90′ monstrosity of a garden, where whatever is planted must survive on its own – we’ll weed, but we don’t water, and we’ll fence it to keep critters out but we don’t do much about the bugs.\u00a0 Last year was such a disaster, weed wise, that we knew we had to do something different this year.\u00a0 It was so bad we barely harvested anything from the gardens and I refused to go back there by late July because the conditions were so depressing.<\/p>\n
This year we’re cutting that garden in half.\u00a0 As much as we’d like to add to the square foot total of gardens, to make people question our sanity (go ahead, we do too!) – last year was depressing from a yield perspective and until we retire, we need to do what we can manage.\u00a0 Its been reconfigured, too – a series of raised mounds of dirt to help create beds that can be mulched to keep down weeds:<\/p>\n We’ll fence it, as we always do, and we’re going to try putting down grass clippings as our mulch to control weeds and lock in moisture.\u00a0 We’ll see how it goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Howdy!\u00a0 It only seems like we didn’t do any gardening last year, because I never updated the blog.\u00a0 We did grow plenty of vegetables, although the Back 40 garden was a complete disaster, overwhelmed by weeds.\u00a0 I was also overwhelmed by a new job, hence no posts.\u00a0 But we’re back, and this year there’s a … Continue reading And the season begins<\/span> ![\"The](\"http:\/\/cocktailfarmers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Back-40-First-Photo-2016-300x225.jpg\")