Setting up a website for my new urban farm was a total GONG SHOW! Anyhow, here it is: Tiny Farm Duluth (UPDATE – I’ve now merged everything over here to eddygilmore.com, so this post is out of date). Right now we’ve got prints available for sale, some information, a blog, and a podcast! My podcast is pretty stinkin’ basic, and I reckon it will continue to be henceforth, but I hope to get better at it over time. This one is with my friend, Catherine Conover from Stone’s Throw Farm, and we’ll have one with Charlie Parr soon. We’re all about bringing in an abundant local harvest…
This is all part of our good-swift-KICK-in-the-pants-STARTER, so I hope many of you will join in on the fun. Whether or not you purchase a $20 print or donate, I’d be honored if you’d simply listen to the podcast and check back often for updates. I’ll have a separate blog over at tinyfarmduluth.com as well. I realize many of you live far away, but I think it could be inspiring for y’all to follow the progress wherever you live. I’ll be cutting out all this sod later today, as well as another 2,000 or so square feet that adjoins this. The plastic was endlessly frustrating, because of persistent gale force winds flying in off Lake Superior. See video below to get an idea of the struggle…
Ed's Big Adventure 
Dude, I don’t want to be a downer, but don’t cut out the sod. I’ve been there, done that. Last year I tried to start a garden late (as in, in the same calendar year I wanted to harvest) so I tried the plastic with little success, then rented a sodcutter. I rolled up the sod and moved it off the garden plot, but got tons of weeds nonetheless, and also got rid of tons of rich topsoil. It’s ungodly heavy too. I regret doing it, but I don’t regret the learning it gave me.
My suggestion, even though you didn’t ask for it? Have a tractor and plow come and turn it over for you. Then have them drag it. In a week and a half or two, have them disc itand drag it again. It’ll be fluffy and ready for seeding in two weeks.
Ha ha, yeah, I just figured that out over the weekend. IT’S HORRIBLE!!!! If I could do it over I’d just rent a huge tiller and turn it all right into the soil, and do it again in a couple weeks as you suggest. I’ve moved off half the rolls of sod, back-breaking work, and am heading back now to continue.
On the bright side, I wound up “only” removing it from 4,000 sq. feet. I’m placing the rolls on the other 2,000 feet, upside down, to smother the other beds as a kind of cover crop I suppose. I’ll cover those with plastic, and till all that in come August, perhaps, and hopefully plant a quick Fall crop. LOL, it is a total gong show, though. I’ve got a picture at the bottom of the about page on tinyfarmduluth.com that’ll make you wish you were up here helping, for sure! Life goes on, and I’ll never do that again…