Your 40 acres may or may not have a uniform soil type throughout. When I got maps of soil types of 40 acre site I own, I found it had several distinctly different soil types. Contact the county extension service or the USDA in that area. They will be happy to work with you to map your land and develop a plan for it. Unfortunately, that 40 acres is far from where I garden.

Having a piece of land that size will, among other things, simplify seed saving by allowing proper isolation distances. I don't know if this matters to your gardening, but it would to mine.

Jim

Gardeners learn by trial, sometimes success and sometimes error. Consider it all a learning experience and good exercise. :-) Jim's advice for contacting your local Agricultural Extension Office is a good one. Is your land in Arizona? Figure out what Zone your land is in by doing a search on Zones. That will help you in your quest to decide what you want to plant.

The agricultural division of the state univeristy might have good information on the Web. You will also need to learn about preserving foods, which the Agricultural Extension can help you with. You might want to keep a journal documenting various things you've done, such as soil amendments used, how they worked, varieties of plants tried, etc. What are you going to do about irrigation?

Lorna

I forgot to mention the problem with wild rabbits eating one's garden. You can plant wide strips of clover around your produce, so they will eat that instead of your garden. Or, you can use three foot tall chicken wire, partially dug into the soil so they can't dig under it or jump over it.

Lorna

You'll also want to find out from your local county extension office what the local planting dates are there. They will likely vary greatly from what you are used to and from those of us in other parts of the country. EX: while I may plant my tomatoes in April it may well be February or even September for you for best results. You should be able to grow just about everything there but it will be planted at very different times.

Another good source of local info is to find a local farmers market group and tap into them for local info. Lastly, be sure to check out the Gardening in Arizona forum here (linked below).

Good luck! ;)

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: AZ Gardening forum

40 acres is a lot. You may want to start small, otherwise you run the chance of being overwelmed and discouraged. I would start reading up on different gardening styles too, there are so many. I like perrenials in my garden, asperagus, grapes, blueberrys, strawberrys. Once established they are low maint.

You may even want to go over to the Square Foot forum. I'm sure are some real good ideas to get you started...small.

you may also want to learn about the different pest on disease you may be faced with

Here is a link that might be useful: gardening tips

Gardenweb is an invaluable resource! I daydream over the farming forum, the organic vegetable gardening forum, permaculuture, Arizona gardening, Four Season Vegetable gardening, Square foot gardening, citrus, tomatoes, beans....

After lots of dreaming and lots of experience, I have boiled my basic gardening advice down to two items:

First: Develop one bed at a time. And secondly: Just keep planting.

Pay attention to developing/enriching/irrigating one bed at a time. In your case you might be looking at one field at a time. Decide if it's ready to plant or needs to be amended. Nitrogen-fixing Cover crops are cheap ways to amend large areas.

Do your best to research recommendations for your zone before you plant, but don't feel like a failure at gardening if a crop fails. Get it out of there and get something else in. The faster you get through the things that won't grow well for you there, the faster you will get to the crops that are perfectly suited for the area.

Good luck,
Jan

Your growing conditions there will be pretty unusual. I would suggest that you find a local gardener who is doing what you would like to do. Ask them how they do it. Do what they are doing. That would be a good starting point. You can build your knowledge base from there.

I hope you've got a good water supply.

I'll apologize in advance for insulting anyone, but I had to laugh at the idea of square square foot gardening on a forty acre piece of land. A small farm tractor fitted out with a plow, harrow, cultivators, mowing machine and a wagon is more appropriate for that situation. This is what worked for me on a similar piece of land. And I'm not talking about farming the entire forty acres, or even half of it.

BTW, the services I mentioned earlier to owners of properties of that size go beyond providing generic information. They will design a plan specifically for your property, with input from you. They will help you with tree planting, pond construction and so on.

Enjoy your property. It's fun to have enough space to work with.

Jim

In my experience with desert gardening, organic matter and water are key. You are going to want to find a source for manure, leaves or forest litter and incorporate it into your topsoil. If you outplant your irrigation systems, you may end up hating your garden/farm as you slave to keep your thirsty plants alive. I can't imagine water being cheap or unlimited there.

You don't say if you want to grow organically, as that has another set of challenges associated with it. I prefer a modified Integrated Pest Management style, where you try and first put the right plant in the right place, use beneficals and organic techniques as much as possible, and turn to broader spectrum pesticides and hebicides only when absolutely necessary.

Your Sunset gardening guide zone is 2B, great for certain cultivars of sweet cherry, apples and certain stone fruits. Corn, squash, melons, peppers and many other crops will do well there, but you have to talk to your neighbors and your Ag dept about what does best and pest issues. Your growing season isn't exceptionally long by CA standards - probably around 160 days/year.

Good luck.

my husband's parents used to live near phoenix and they had a garden. most veggies like the sun and warmth. in your case, water will be the limiting factor for your lot, not the acreage.

also, do NOT underestimate the hunger of those wild rabbits! my mother-in-law tried in vain for years to get those bunnies to eat something else besides her veggies, and never ended up with much because of those pests. planting a strip of clover wasn't an option for her since she just had her suburban lot.

oh my ...zone 2b? I was going to stay out of this thread but I'm in zone 3a and have to be very careful about what I try to grow normally the last frost day is May 18 but this year it was the last few days of May (28th to be exact )and things like the bell peppers had to wait until after the first week of june then very low temps hit on august 26 .Sure the weather went back to growing season but it was over a two week spell which slowed everything down so much it could realisticly be considered the end of season 'thats less than 90 days'. Indigenous to your zoning as possible is important unless you are courageous and adventurous.

Invest in a Sunset Western Garden Book. My thirty year old copy doesn't differ much from the new ones -- try Amazon used books if there is no nearby library.

My experience in Arizona, Utah and Nevada is that the cost of water may be a limiting factor. In parts of Nevada now it is absolutely the limiting factor.