Next year this time....

The past few Spring planting seasons have passed me by and this year I've decided to not let next year get ahead of me. My timing is perfect as the three amigos are eating us out of house and home AND I finally have enough sun to produce a decent harvest. Andy's also encouraged me to read Animal Vegetable Miracle and watch Food Inc and so I've decided its about time this NC girl gets going in a vegetable garden! We are excited to see how and what we can produce off of our modest half acre lot - I guess suburbia does have some benefits!

As my foray into anything typically begins, I started doing lots of reading earlier this summer. Here are a couple of my top organic gardening picks that are laying scattered throughout my house marked up and highlighted like someone getting major major plastic surgery. No kindle or ipad here, still doing it the old fashioned way with dog eared corners and highlighter in hand!

• Backyard Homestead, by Carleen Madigan. Great resource on info for doing almost anything in your backyard from gardening to keeping chickens, fruit and nut trees, and even bees and lifestock. 
• Organic Gardening for the 21st Century, by John Fedor. This is an awesome resource for organic vegetable gardening. Everything from soil testing and fixing to, gardening planning, planting and harvesting to preserving and canning your foods. 
• Organic Gardening Magazine - Got this one free from Stoneyfield.

I've plotted out my beds. So far, I've been able to negotiate  two 4' x 16' beds and one 4' x 8' bed from my "yard boy"! So, currently I'm figuring what I can plant in my ~150 sq. feet of garden. More on that later when I've plotted out better plans for the various planting seasons, succession plantings and crop rotation. Its a lot to figure out and I have a whole new respect for our farmers.

So for this year I'm eating local produce from Cane Creek Farms, but next year I hope to be eating real local: backyard local. And so it begins.....