Feb 29 2008
Garden General
A small grower in Canada at Tiny Farm Blog calls his 2 acre farm a “micro farm.” By this standard, I have a “nano farm.” However, it does produce enough food to keep my family in fresh produce from May through November AND sell a portion at our farmers’ market.
I am located in an area that might be thought of as transitional to Zone 4: we do occasionally have temps fall below -30 F, but that is becoming rarer. Our last frost might happen during the first week of June; our first frost during the first week of October. I’ve found from conversations with other local growers that my hillside, south-facing site gives me an advantage in keeping frost away.
The soil here is acidic, sandy and rocky. My garden sits on a mix of glacial till, with rocks from pebble to watermelon in size cropping up continually. There is good drainage; that, and the generally low humidity and cold winters might help with disease. With a few exceptions (potato beetles come to mind) insect damage is usually not too much of a problem here. That is, if you don’t count the damage to the gardener from black flies and sweat bees!