I think I could incorporate some of your ideas. Shade is something I have never provided except for the portions of the yard where the trees provide it and allow me to keep a few things alive through the hot summer here in south Texas. I may try and set up some shade techniques for next season.
Your'e right, in Texas we have to start our fall garden while it's still hot. Sometimes we can have really hot temps all the way through September and into October.
We had fairly good gardening weather this fall/winter and this spring as well. I'm pretty pleased with our harvests. My biggest problem this year has been the squirrels. They stole every last pomegranate off of our three trees even though the fruit wasn't even remotely close to being ripe.
BTW, I was wondering if you have a problem with snakes in the hay bales?

All kidding aside, that looks great. Going to reread this a couple of times. Good stuff, Marilyn. Wasn't expecting the fruit trees, amazing.
You have thin topsoil like I do. Perfect remedy.
Thanks for a great essay. Looking forward to the updates. Especially interested in your fall season preparations.

done? What a great project. My pictures at the top of your post are having some trouble loading (terrible internet speeds) but I'm hoping to see them all.

We are finally getting what we think of as our last house, and we are not sure of the soils. But this is something for the files.

Is it your experience that the layering/spaghetti type soil-making is faster than the compost? I tend to just dump things and wait. But that can take years. Great stuff if there's room and time, not so great if a garden needs a real start, quickly.

Thanks for sharing.

What a dizzying array of crops!

Thanks for putting this together, Marilyn. As a city/suburban dweller all my life I don't have the first clue about any of this, but deeply appreciate and am fascinated with those who do.

We have a small community garden space that we haven't had time to do much of, aside from recently pulling up the weeds and clearing the bed a couple of weeks ago. Don't know how we'll be able to get anything under way at this rate and this late into the season.

On a related note, saw a very depressing story here or somewhere about farming in India almost completely having been reduced, due to aggro corporate domination, to just four crops, with two being soybeans and sugar cane (sugar?). As far as I'm concerned, along withe the Economic Terrorists of Wall St, global corporate monopolies are the biggest evil in the world, and are completely intertwined.

It's heartbreaking and angering to me how farmers have always seemed to be targeted by the banks and corporations. Capitalism in its relentless pursuit of profit is destroying the planet and humanity. I'd love to see a Farmer's Holiday Movement again, to rise up in solidarity across this country (and world) to stare down these bastards, like these guys did making up the many farmer's revolts throughout the Midwest in the 1930's.

"Rebellion In the Corn Belt: American Farmers Beat Their Plowshares into Swords,” by Mary Heaton Vorse, December 1932 issue of Harper’s Magazine.

The picketing had not been stopped when we arrived in Sioux City. We had come through Indiana and Illinois into Iowa. In two days we had not passed through wild land or woods, as we must have done in New England, Pennsylvania, or New York. The East is now much wilder than the Middle West. There is now no uncultivated land in these states. The countryside is spread out like a beautiful and tended park. This is the heart of America. It is more American today than is New England.

The farmhouses are ample, well set back from the road, as often as not on a little eminence. Shade trees surround them. There are nearly always shrubs and flowers. The great red barns and outhouses are flanked by brick silos. Fine cattle graze in the fields. There are droves of fat hogs; for Iowa makes its living from hogs and corn and dairy produce. The fine barns and the houses need paint. This is the first stage of decay and dilapidation. It is four years since the farmers have made costs of production.

It seems incredible that failure and bankruptcy should hang over these opulent farms. Never was there such rich, abundant country. The soil is so black it is purple. Sioux City is the only sprawling, down-at-the-heels place we have seen. It is a strange thing to realize that the owners of these peaceful farms have been out picketing the highways and illegally obstructing them.

In ordinary strikes there is a concrete organization to combat. The worker is fighting the owners of a certain mine or mill. The picketing farmers have no such definite enemy. It is almost as if they were picketing the Depression itself. They are organizing against ruinous prices, with foreclosure and bankruptcy as their enemies.

The strike around Sioux City soon ceased to be a local matter. It jumped the Missouri River and crossed the Big Sioux. Roads were picketed in South Dakota and Nebraska as well as in Iowa. Soon Minnesota followed suit, and her farmers picketed her roads. North Dakota organized. Down in Georgia farmers dumped milk on the highway. For a few days the milk supply of New York City was menaced. Farmers in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, organized, and potato farmers in Long Island raised the price of potatoes by a "holiday." This banding together of farmers for mutual protection is going on every- where, but the center of this disturb- ance is still Iowa and the neighboring States.

The Milk Producers' Association joined forces with the Farmers' Holi- day. All the roads leading to Sioux City were picketed. Trucks by hun- dreds were turned back. Farmers by hundreds lined the roads. They blockaded the roads with spiked tele- graph poles and logs. They took away a sheriff's badge and his gun and threw them in a cornfield. Gallons of milk ran down roadway ditches. Gal- lons of confiscated milk were distrib- uted free on the streets of Sioux City...

Guns were pointed. The farmers stood fast. Before an audience of bystanders the trucks were turned back. No shots were fired.

On another highway, farmers bared their breasts, daring the armed deputies to shoot. The deputies did not take the dare.

At Council Bluffs there were sixty arrests. A thousand farmers marched on the jail. The prisoners were hastily released on nominal bail.

Highway No. !W, leading to Sioux City, has been the scene of some of the sharpest clashes between deputies and farmers. It has won itself the proud name of "Bunker Hill 20." On the' night we visited No. 20 a score of men were sitting round a campfire. A boy was sprawled out on an automobile cushion asleep. Everyone was in over- alls. Their sunburned faces shone red in the firelight.

A lamp in a smaller tent glowed in the darkness. A trestle table stood near at hand. The Ladies' Aid bring substantial meals to the picketers. The irregular circle round the fire, the high moonlit poplar trees, the lighted tent were like a stage set for a play. There was an air of immense earnest- ness about the farmers. They had been swung completely out of their usual orbit, but they are absolutely sure of the righteousness of their cause. An old man with white mustache said:

"They say blockading the highway's illegal. I says, Seems to me there was a Tea-party in Boston that was illegal too. What about destroying property in Boston Harbor when our country was started?'" He sets the note of the evening.

"If we farmers go down bankrupt," says one of the younger men, "every- thing in this country goes down. If we get enough to live on, everybody's going to go to work again."

"When we can't buy," says another, "there can't be any prosperity. We ain't buying nothing, not for four years."

"My binder's fallen apart so, don't know how I'm going to get through this year." The conversation moves slowly from one man to another with quiet deliberation. There is a cry:

"Truck!"

They hurry out in the roadway. All of them carry heavy stakes, some made from axe handles. None of them is armed, though a young fellow pointed to a little mound of quarter bricks.

"Plenty of Irish confetti," he said cheerily. Beside the road, handy to use, are heavy spiked logs and planks bristling with spikes to throw in front of trucks. This truck is empty. There is a short conference. The truck passes on its way.

"Good-night, boys," calls the driver. "Good luck!" He is one of them, part of the movement that is just beginning to realize its power. We go back to the fire.

These stories charge me up. There's a spirit out there just the same that we have yet to uncover, I think...

Looking at your photos I keep wondering, how do you water all this (seems like a mammoth project, the whole thing)?

Impressive and hopeful. Thanks again.