We moved to our new property in July of 2022 and immediately started making plans of where our gardens would be located. Unfortunately we just didn’t have the time to get the ball rolling until 2023. Between getting settled in and visiting every vineyard within a 20 mile radius of our home, we were pretty busy.

This year will hopefully be very different seeing as how we are now settled in and on a first name basis with the owners of half the vineyards in Gilmer County. Our first step was to fence in our larger, main garden area first. We have numerous fruit trees that attract deer so we needed something to help keep them out of the garden. We are working on electrifying it to help deter them.

As you can see, there is still a lot of work to be done tilling. I was told the previous homeowner had a vegetable garden here so hopefully the soil isn’t too rough.

This brings us to our second, slightly smaller garden area. This area has been thoroughly fertilized by our chickens over the last 7 months so hopefully the soil here is very good. We still need to till and find a way to keep the deer out. I did plant some basil, rosemary, and experimented with growing lettuce in the lower portion of the garden. The herbs did great. The lettuce however was eaten the second night it was in the ground!

We also have a much smaller garden on the side of our house. This is where I am experimenting with things I have never grown before. I built a few elevated garden boxes and we are growing potatoes, onions, asparagus, and some corn. This is just an experiment and I thought I may have planted everything a little early but, the onions and potatoes seem to be thriving. I guess we’ll see if it was a success here in a few months. I will be posting more about the smaller garden and what I have learned from this experiment in the near future.

If you have any helpful thoughts or ideas, please comment and let us know!

The Beginning!

The Experimental Garden