I agree, watching these things grow is the best aspect of the whole process. To watch this little plant grow up & produce food just facinates me. I have never grown broccoli before & was beginning to wonder if it was gonna do anything besides put out these huge, dark green leaves. But sure enough, all of a sudden the heads started forming... & I felt like a champion.
With these raised beds, I grow stuff year round. I'll have one crop in the Spring, take it out when it is finished & plant summer stuff, then go back to cool weather foods in the Fall. A rotation for one bed would be lettuce in the Spring, peppers in the Summer & carrots & cabbage in the Fall. With a mild winter, like last year, & row covers for when it gets below freezing, my greens, cabbage & carrots grew all winter. Kinda cool to go out in February to pick a batch of turnip greens.
I am rather proud of my garden & don't mind saying so. It has been a work in progress. Started out as one big, long raised bed. But I soon found out I couldn't keep my dogs off of it. They loved to sit on it & gaze down the hill toward the orchard & horse pastures. They also liked to dig in the soft soil to burry their bones. So that forced me to fence in that area & redesign the garden. I shorthen the big bed down to 48' & cut it in two, to allow passage to the other side. I designed the garden to have 10 smaller raised beds on one side of the big bed & to have two sections on the other side for corn.
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