The Maplewild Project My Little Garden Project

Even though it is still fall, I would call this winter gardening. It has already been well below freezing, the killing frost has caused its damage. I am surprised that my garden still shows signs of life. I had planted some turnips and have forgotten all about them. They should be pretty dead by now, but I was wrong. I looked at them today and they are huge! And they are not dead, the greens are alive and well.

Abandoned Purple Top Turnips
Other signs of life include my collard greens. They have been frozen, windblown and rained on, and they look good.

Champion Collard Greens
Other healthy specimens are the kale plants. They look more vibrant now than they did a month ago.

Siberian Kale
This is also the time of year for cleanup. I have a lot of leftover work from the land clearing phase of this project. I have some forest slash to burn off very soon. There have been too many high winds lately to do any burning, but I hope for a break soon. This is one of the burn piles.

Forest Slash Prior to Disposal 

This is the start of my little project, The Maplewild Project. My goal is to turn my yard, a piece of second growth forest land into an organic vegetable and herb farm.
The project began before I realized what I wanted to do. My house had become quite shaded as the trees around it had grown considerably in the first 15 years. In the winter I never got much sunlight so last fall I hired a man to “cut a couple of trees down”. Before I knew what was happening, the logging trucks were hauling away my yard.

Truckload of Western Red Cedar
After the initial shock wore off, I began to adjust to my new yard

Newly Cleared Land
A couple of tomato plants followed me home from the grocery store one day in May and a few more in June. Before I realized it, I had a small garden going.

Siberian Kale Seedling
At some point between then and now, I decided that I needed to do this organic vegetable growing on a larger scale. And so begins the Maplewild Project!