We have made it all the way to our Bed 4 plans for this week’s closer look. Bed 4 is the raised bed where we are planting our Milpa Cover Crop blend of seed. We are working with the Sedgwick County Conservation District, and using the seed from Green Cover Seed.

Because we are planting in a raised bed, we can’t quite let it go full on “chaos garden” like if we were planting in a larger field or garden space. The biggest changes we are making are to thin out the vine crops once they germinate to make sure that the bed isn’t overloaded with more than the space can handle. We are also using our cattle panel trellises – on their sides – to provide a little bit more vertical growing space. We will also be adding some pole beans and the Green Striped Cushaw to our planting area. The pole beans are leftover seed from last year. The cushaw we have grown before (it makes amazing pumpkin pie!), and it is highly resistant to squash vine borer.

We also planted the first half of the milpa mix last week, since a number of the things growing are cool season plants. We may have to go back in and plug in some of the warm season things if we don’t get any germination. It has definitely been colder than it sometimes is at this point in the year!