A few of the squash plants. Lookin' good

When we first moved to Tennessee in March one of our top priorities was to get a little garden going. The quickest and easiest way at that time was to set up a few square-foot garden plots around the house. We didn't have any clue where to start with a "real" garden of the scale that we ultimately envisioned. Thus, our six square-foot gardens plots worked out well and produced a significant amount of our veggies and herbs for the past 4-5 months. Sweetbreads and her Mom did a great job companion planting and getting it all up and running.

However, I was itching to tear up the lawn and plant a bigger garden. One with rows and that was capable of providing all of our vegetable needs for an extended period of time. It will take a few years to reach that goal, but I think we made a good start.

I posted over on Farm Dreams a couple weeks ago about the initial processs. We borrowed a cultivator and tore up a 40'x40' area in our 'lawn'. I picked up a load of compost at a nearby garden center and we worked it into the ground. Next we sawed posts out of cedar trees from one of our wooded areas and set them in the ground. I put up some cheap wire fencing to keep the chickens out and we were ready to plant. All in all it took just over a week to get it ready and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Chickens taking their final dust bath in the new garden

There's still a fair amount of weeds that get uprooted, but for the most part the weeds haven't been too bad. We planted our crops a couple weeks ago and it's looking pretty good. Hopefully the frost-sensitive plants will make it in before frost, which is expected sometime between October 10th and the end of October.

A row of greens

We planted three rows of squash, including Turk's Turban, Acorn, Blue Hubbard, Pumpkins, Butternut, Red Kuri and a few other varieties. I lost track of the transplant order, so it'll be a total surprise to see which ones come up. 

In the other rows we planted collards, kale, turnips, rutabagas, spinach and a few others. We forgot about broccoli, which is a bummer and I don't think the brussel sprouts germinated.

Every couple days we spend an hour or so weeding and watering. I'm really curious to see how it all turns out. Hopefully we'll have plenty of food to stock up for the winter.

Do you plant a fall garden? If so, what do you plant?