Garden Prep

Spring 2013 garden prep at the RTCO Demonstration Garden is complete!  Preparations included chicken tractoring, straw mulch, affordable compost, and sheet mulching with newspaper.

After the chickens had a chance to clear out most of the weeds, seeds, and bugs from one of our garden beds, I threw down some straw that we are using as mulch. It is good to get the straw in before the chickens have finished tractoring, as they do an excellent job picking out the weed seeds from the straw, and they spread the straw for you.

It took 3 hens about 3 weeks to peck one garden bed clean, however they only had limited access to the garden bed.  I brought my chickens with me to the garden 3 or 4 days out of each week, and they were on the bed for about 8 hours each day.  At home, my 5 hens and 1 rooster can clear a space of the same size in 1 or 2 days, with all-day access.  I think they may have a mob mentality when there are more of them, as they seem to work so much faster when more chickens are present.  This is what the RTCO garden bed looked like after the chickens finished their job:

In the bed that the chickens tractored, there is fencing bordering the bed.  So, I direct seeded lots of climbers in this bed - pole beans, vining squashes and flowers.  I also planted corn down the center of the bed, and I broadcast dill seed, to attract beneficial insects, and deter bad ones.

In the remaining beds we put down horse manure compost.  I found this on Craigslist for very cheap, and had it bucket-loaded into our truck. There are free sources of horse compost, as well, but you do have to load it into your vehicle yourself. We laid this compost on top of the soil from last year, as the nutrients will leach down into the soil over time as it rains.

On top of the compost, we put down newspaper, and then our straw mulch on top of that.  The newspaper and straw both act as a weed barrier, and also to retain moisture in the bed.  When we go to plant, we will punch holes directly into the newspaper, and put the seed or the plant in the hole.  For some beds, I broadcast seed with my hands, and then loosely laid straw on top (to retain moisture).  I did this with very small seeds that do not need to be deep in the dirt - strawberry and fine flower seeds.

Chickens at the Tool Library

Chicken tractors are a great way to prep your garden space before you plant, as well as clean up your bed after your plants are done. 

At the Tool Library, we have some visiting chickens, prepping our garden space for us.  The chickens eat all the weeds in the bed - especially chick weed - they LOVE chick weed (that's why its called chick weed).  They eat the bugs in the ground and other weed seeds.  The chickens also till the soil with their scratching at the soil to get bugs, and they poop on the bed, providing important nitrogen-rich fertilizer.

Once the chickens have picked this bed clean, we will throw down some straw that we plan to use as mulch, and let the chicks pick through that.  You don't even have to spread the straw, you can literally throw a whole bale in and the chickens will spread it for you.  They will eat every single weed seed that is in that straw, as well.

After the chickens have thoroughly scratched the straw, we will remove them completely from the bed.  Then, we will plant vegetables and flowers straight into the strawed bed.  The straw acts as a mulch, smothering other weeds from emerging, and also keeping the ground moist underneath. 

Next fall, after we have harvested everything we can from the plants in the bed, we will have the chickens tractor the bed again.  They will eat anything green that is leftover, and they will pick out all the bugs. 

The other benefit of chicken tractoring your garden is EGGS!  We get fresh laid eggs from our chickens every day.

Urban chickens are useful workers and their eggs are very nutritious.  Check your local zoning laws to see if you can implement a chicken tractor in your yard, as well!

I got Peas on my mind, but don't call me a Pea Head!

It's time to plant peas!  Finally!  

The first seeds that can go in the ground when it is still freezing off and on outside are peas.  Beets, carrots, and other root vegetables are usually hardy enough to take some frost when they are babies, as well. 

Peas are not only great for your belly, but also your garden.  They are legumes, which fix nitrogen in the soil.  Most vegetable plants can get most nutrients they need from the sun and soil, but nitrogen is one thing plants cannot get on their own.  Nitrogen is often the main ingredient in fertilizers for this reason.  Which is why peas are so great!  They fix nitrogen in their roots - you can actually see the round nitrogen nodules on legume roots!  They are nature's way of fertilizing your other plants without having to purchase chemicals.

Pea seeds germinate better when they are soaked overnight first.  Don't soak them longer than 24 hours or they will start to pop - in which case you can just eat pea sprouts in your next meal.  They will swell up with water, priming them for quick germination.

Peas do even better if they are planted with an inoculant.  Inoculants are bacteria that peas like.  They have a symbiotic relationship (like trees and mushrooms).  They provide each other nutrients that they can't make on their own.  However, if you do not have inoculant, it is not necessary to get the peas to grow - beneficial bacterias are often already in the soil.  If you've had trouble growing peas in the past, you may want to try inoculating your seeds before planting.

Plant lots of peas, beans, and other legumes this year in all your beds.  When they die, leave them there.  Especially the roots - don't remove the roots or you remove the nitrogen.  All the vegetable plants sharing that root space will love you for it!

Seed Library & Seed Saving

A book library in Colorado has adopted seeds into their collection!

Library members check out seeds during the planting season.  They use what they need, then after harvest let some of their strongest plants go to seed.  They collect the seed from the plant and return them to the library!  What a cool idea!  See the full story here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/02/02/170846948/how-to-save-a-public-library-make-it-a-seed-bank?sc=tw

Want to learn more about saving seeds?

Techniques for saving the seeds from a crop vary greatly.  Some plants are easy to keep seeds, other are more difficult.  Most common annuals are very easy to seed-save.  For example, arugula, lettuce, cilantro, dill, are very easy.  Plants flower, then produce seed heads.  Once they dry out, the seeds are ready for collecting and storing in a dry, temperature-controlled environment.

Other plants are more challenging.  Tomatoes require fermentation before the seeds are ready for saving. Pick your best-looking, most-delicious tomatoes.  Cut the fruit open, and put the guts into a bucket of water.  Let it sit for several days.  This fermentation process breaks the seeds apart from the membrane that holds them.  Bad seeds float to the top of the bucket, good seeds sink.  Skim everything out of the top of the bucket, and strain the remaining seeds from the bottom.  Rinse them several times.  Let the seeds dry, then store them in a dry, temperature-controlled environment.

To learn more about seed saving, check out this website: http://www.seedsave.org/issi/issi_904.html 

Also, the book Seed to Seed, by Suzanne Ashworth is an excellent resource! It explains in detail how to cross-pollinate and seed-save most common annual vegetable plants.

It is possible to become self-sufficient in seeds - meaning, you don't ever have to buy seeds again.  Seed saving also promotes the healthiest plants for your environment.  Each year you save seed, the next year's crop will be even more adapted to your particular microclimate.  Eventually, you can come up with new varieties of vegetables that fit your property perfectly!

No Watering, No Bending!

Hugelkultur!
Its a German word that refers to a technique of raised-bed gardening that does not require watering or irrigation.  I made a hugelkultur in my back yard a few weekends ago, and I'm expecting good things!

Basically, a hugelkultur is a raised bed of piled rotting wood in the center, and dirt on top of that.  You mulch the bed to keep the weeds down, and plant into it. 

The benefits are:

• No irrigation.  Wood absorbs and holds water very well.  When you have wood underneath your vegetables, it will hold enough water in the soil you do not have to water your garden.  It may take a few months or even an entire growing season before the wood has absorbed enough water that you do not have to irrigate anymore.  The timing depends on many factors - weather, soil, air moisture, etc.
• No bending.  It is not necessary to make a hugelkulur bed raised high, but you can! Wood piled high and soil piled on top of that means less bending over to plant and harvest your veggies.  I made my bed 4 feet high!  However, it also had to be at least 5-6 feet wide at the base.  Hugelkultur beds can be great for people with back problems, folks utilizing wheelchairs, and Seniors.
• No fertilizing. Over time, the wood you bury decomposes.  This creates a slow carbon release into the soil.  As long as you add nitrogen to your hugelkultur bed, then the plants will have everything they need!  No more fertilizers have to be added.  Nitrogen is in "green" compost - kitchen scraps, grass clippings.  It is also in human and animal urine.  Men always get a kick out of this one - urinating directly on the vegetable bed.  Nitrogen is also released by dead vegetable plants - so if you just pull and leave last season's crop exactly where it was to let it decompose in the bed, you will be providing nitrogen to your next crop of food.

 

People construct hugelkulturs in many ways depending on their space, physical abilities, and materials available.  They can be tall, short, round, curved, rectangular, keyhole-shaped.  As long as you have decomposing wood inside the base of the bed, you should get the results explained above. 

For more details and pictures on how to construct a hugelkultur bed, see this website: http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/

EASY No Dig Garden Prep

The EASIEST way to prepare a garden bed for planting into next Spring is to sheet mulch it now. 

                       
                                              

What is sheet mulching?  It is a technique used by gardeners to prepare garden beds without having to dig or till their soil first.  It involves smothering your grass, or whatever weeds you have, with cardboard or thick layers of newspaper, and then topping that off with compost or lawn clippings.  Over time, the cardboard breaks down into the soil, and the grass is effectively killed.

Step-by-step instructions:

1. Figure out where you want your garden space to be in the Spring
2. Lay down cardboard or several layers of newspaper on top of the new garden space. It is important that you overlap your pieces so that no grass or any plant material is sticking up.  You are utilizing the cardboard/newspaper to smother light out from any unwanted plants - so make sure there is no green sticking through.
3. You usually need to weigh down the cardboard/newspaper.  Some people use stones or pieces of wood. Other folks water the cardboard/newspaper heavily to keep pieces from flying away.
4. Next you layer something nutritious for your plants on top of the cardboard.  This is usually compost, but it can be uncomposted kitchen scraps, grass clippings, or any other kind of green material that is capable of decomposing quickly.  I have a friend who works at a sprout farm and he used partially-rotted sprouts for his layer - turned out great.  The green matter or compost that you lay down will provide nutrition for the soil and for your plants in the Spring.  This layer needs to be at least 3-4 inches thick.
5. Next you layer something "brown" on top. You can use straw, hay, wood chips, or any dead, dry material as a top dressing.  The purpose of this layer is to protect the bottom layers.  The top layer of mulch will trap moisture, keep soil from drying out and blowing away, and keep new weed seeds from landing on your bed and germinating. This layer needs to be 5-6 inches thick.

That's it!  To sum up: its a smothering layer (cardboard/newspaper), a green nutritious layer (compost/kitchen scraps), and a brown protective layer (straw/wood mulch).  Some people put the green nutritious layer below the smothering layer.  Other folks add lots of amendments and soils in with the green nutritious layer.  There are many ways to do it, depending on your soil conditions and preferences.

You just leave your bed sit over the Winter.  When Spring arrives, your cardboard/newspaper layer and your green layer will be almost completely composted and ready for Spring plants.  You just plant directly into the top brown layer.
                                         

Here is a video of one lady sheet mulching in her yard:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2K_uZnjRKk

Here is a video of Permaculture founder Bill Mollison sheet mulching to plant potatoes (the sound quality is bad):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pOF0kPAKfM

Giant Sweet Potato Harvest!

RTCO’s resident gardener Alec Sutliff has stumbled upon a method for growing giant sweet potatoes!  This is our harvest from RTCO’s garden – dug up yesterday.

 

 

 

Sweet Potatoes are heat lovers, and this summer we had a hot one!  Alec says loose soil, heat, and regular watering must be the key to growing these giant roots.  Near the beginning of Summer, Alec put loose bagged soil into a raised bed.  He started the sweet potato slips in his own basement.  He planted the slips in the raised bed, watered them about every three days all summer, and yesterday he pulled these monsters out of the ground.  Below is a picture of the raised bed they were dug out of.  As you can see, the box is raised higher than the rest of the bed – the bed is 6 inches from the ground, the sweet potato box is 18 inches from the ground.  Alec’s speculation on the unusual size of the potatoes is the extra foot of height allowed the soil to temperature in the box to raise and retain extra heat throughout the summer.  Loose hot soil results in large potatoes!

 

 

 

The sweet potatoes we see in the grocery store are usually grown in southern climates that have very hot growing seasons and sandy soils – such as North Carolina and Mississippi.  Many people mistake sweet potatoes for yams, but they are actually not in the same family as yams.  They are not even in the same family as potatoes.  Sweet potato plants are in the same family as morning glories (their flowers look like morning glory flowers).  They are grown all over the world, and they clearly do fine in Ohio’s hot summers.