One season, start to finish.
This is what a year looks like when I run your garden. The order matters: the soil work in fall is what makes the June garden easy.
1. The conversation
Fifteen minutes on the phone or at your kitchen table. What do you want to eat, and how much of it? How much space is there? Who waters when I'm not there? If you don't know yet, that's fine. Most people start with tomatoes and greens and find out.
2. The site visit
I walk the property with you: where the sun sits in June and again in September, how the water drains, what the soil is doing, where the deer come through. I sketch the beds on the spot. Within the week you get a written plan: bed layout, the crop list, the calendar, and one price for the season with what it covers.
3. Setup
Beds built from what's there where possible, or reclaimed if you already have them. A compost corner that can take everything the place produces. If the visit is in fall, a cover crop goes on right away so the soil is working over winter. Fencing where the deer make it necessary.
4. Starts under lights
From late February the season's plants start indoors from the seed library, on a ladder: the slow ones first (peppers, onions, the brassicas), tomatoes in mid-March, the tender things in April. They harden off in a protected pen and go out on their dates, which the weather sets, not the calendar.
5. The growing season
Regular visits, weekly at the peak. Sowing in succession so lettuce and radishes never run out. Transplanting on the frost-free days. Weeding, the watering checked, trellises up before the beans need them. Harvest goes in a basket by the door with a note: what's ready, what's coming, what to do with the extra chard.
6. Fall
Garlic in by mid-October. Cover crops on every empty bed. Leaves shredded and laid over the beds as a mat, compost turned and spread. The garden goes to bed fed.
7. The off-ramp
Every season you learn a little more of how it runs, because it's your garden. The contract has an exit, not a hook. If you want to take it over, I hand it to you with the plan and the seed list and stay on call.
What it costs
One number for the season, set after the site visit. The variables are how many beds, whether we build or reclaim, fencing, and how often I come. The number covers the plan, the starts, the seed, my hours, and the hand tools. You provide water at the garden and a spot for the compost.
Every garden gets its own page
What's planted where, what's coming, care notes for the trees and shrubs already on the property, photos as the season goes. It's how we keep track, and how you know what's happening when I'm not there.
The best time to start is the fall before: a cover crop in October means the beds are ready in April instead of being built in April.