Once I'd plowed it, it was still long strips of sod, impossible to plant in. I tried to plow it a second time at a right angle to the first plowing, hooked the first strip of sod, clogged the plow, and dragged the sod strip a good distance out of it's furrow. That clearly wasn't going to work.
Plan B turned out to be a "bog harrow". We got it through Uncle Henry's (Maine weekly classified ads). I knew I needed to harrow somehow, saw the add, and called. I asked what a bog harrow was and was told it's a heavy disk, single gang, with four notched disks on each side throwing outward. It seemed perfect. We went and got it, put it behind the Ferguson, and dragged it around for a while. It left a very uneven field, with broad furrows and ridges, and big lumps of sod instead of strips.
We had delusions that if we let it sit fallow for a while, the sod would break down (it did, mostly) and the soil would mellow (it didn't). So the next year we plowed up a larger area to the east of this and planted cover crops in it. You can see four swathes of this, sections of 50' rows running north-south, to the right and upper right in the picture. The reason they're dark is that at the time, I hadn't abandoned them back to pasture and had spread several large loads of seaweed (rockweed, a.k.a. bladderwrack) on them. The year after that fallow, we planted the "regular garden" in all that, with a 3-dimensional electric deer fence around it. It was miserable. The year after that, we went back inside the fence, thinking we'd switch back and forth, cover cropping one while we had production in the other. In the end though, I stayed inside the fence for most things.
We also bought in four loads of sawdust from a local mill, which explain the band of tan on the east end of the north side. Perhaps I should mine that still, or maybe use it as a planting area in the future. It got crab shell mixed into it at one time to help it break down, and has grown some of the thickest pasture grass on the whole farm. It's mostly rhizome grass though, and would need thorough sifting before being moved into planting areas. (Not that those planting areas don't have their own bit of rhizome grass...)
Over time the character of the soil has improved from the seaweed, picked out crabs, sawdust, stable cleanings, wood chips, and whatever else I've thrown at it. It's still heavy and weedy at times, but better.
Two years ago, the southeast quarter was very wet. It's about the most level part of the garden, and it didn't drain well. I had added enough organic matter that what I started to see were plants I'd associate with an organic bog. I can't name these plants, but the thin grasses and mossy look of the soil surface told me something about what was going on. I dug ditches with a square point spade every 20' to 30', about 8" deep, and connected their south ends with another ditch that runs east, out of the garden. That took the excess water out of the top and made the soil look pretty good.
The result of all this is a garden of sections, each with it's own unique history, each somewhere between 24' and 40' wide by 50' to 70' long. It may not look like much in winter, but let me start the tour.
In the northeast corner, quite some time ago, we planted three varieties of Jerusalem Artichoke. I lost track of which rows were which long ago, and besides that, they've probably moved around some. The thought was that if we needed to, we could just pasture pigs on top of them to get them out. Now I'm not sure that would work, but I haven't tried to get rid of them yet either. They are spreading slowly. I've dug some in the past, but they're a pain to clean and they give me wicked gas. Maybe if I build a root washing machine and slow roast them, they'll be worth both cooking and eating. Meanwhile, the dead stalks are all you see in the winter.
In 2005 the rows looked like this, looking south at them:
They've grown a lot since then. Now you can't tell one row from another and the patch is twice that wide.
Another long term feature is that the south side of the garden has raspberries to the west and a more or less unused area to the east. The unused area has been tried out for several things, but seems to be doing well right now as the site of the hen house. The reason it exists is that we originally put east-west rows in both the southwest and southeast quarters. In the southwest, the first several rows got re-spaced and planted to three rows of raspberries, about 6' on center. In the southeast, a row of day lilies forms a permanent divider that the current north-south rows haven't disturbed. With the chickens in place, I was worried their traffic would set the day lilies back, so I put short trellis cages around them. This has worked pretty well, providing weeding services outside the cage, and room for growth within it. Here they are at present:
Looking west from near the duck/turkey box, you see the raspberries. The gambrel plastic dog house top in the foreground is also visible from a very different angle in the picture above.
In the northwest corner, the slope is steepest, so the old layout followed the contours more. High-bush blueberries box in a triangle in the corner. That's been fallow many years, but in the last two I've tried getting some potatoes in (successfully) and out (unsuccessfully). The blueberries are currently inside an old plastic greenhouse tunnel frame, with the plan being to put bird netting over it all so that we get a crop. The frame just needs minor repair on the near end.
To the right of that (east) is a bed that's one of the best amended in the garden. There's currently a 6'x12' mini-tunnel sitting there, as well as a smaller 4'x10' wire covered mini-tunnel there. The 4'x10', as well as the wheeled dog house sized box in the background, housed the chickens when they were very small.
Next, again to the right (east) is a triangular patch that fills in between the grapes and the north-south rows of the northeast corner. This area is planted with daffodils. I'd like to get it filled in with other bulbs too, all intended for cut flowers. It's not much to look at in winter:
The rest is filled in with growing areas suitable for annual planting. Some have been planted more recently than others. Here's the view looking north from the hen house. To the right, the section has tall weeds, lots of rhizome grass, and will probably be a struggle to control. Straight ahead is a section where the weeds have been controlled by chickens digging over the crabs repeatedly. It has a thin cover of what I think is an annual grass. In the far section straight ahead, the remains of last years most productive section remain, not properly cleaned up. There's a poultry-net fence too, which was supposed to keep the chickens out of the active section. It's partly taken down now.
To the right of that is an area I wanted to do corn-beans-squash in. I got the corn planted before I ripped a muscle in my back late last spring. All there is to show is dug rows, which were going to be hilled more, and white flags marking where the corn hills were.
Finally, uphill to the left from the corn, are two or three indistinct sections that run into each other. The top most has been partly dug and spread with crabs. The next down was spread with crabs but not dug. I think of dividing lines being there, because there were areas where I had some weed control two years ago and areas where I never got the grasses fully in check.
Also visible in this picture are the gate, the large rock that defines how far west a bed can go in the southwest corner, and the cross bar of a steel bed frame, used as a row end stake. In the satellite view, the rows ran east-west, but now they're north-south. There was also a greenhouse tunnel frame in one spot in the satellite view. I think that's the frame now over the blueberries.
And that's the basic geography of the space inside the fence. There are more stories to tell, but I'm on battery and it's almost dead.
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