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.

Cool Weather Crops

What edible crops can you grow during the Fall and Winter seasons?  There are so many, and its still not too late to plant.

 

Root Vegetables: Radishes, Beets, Turnips, Carrots, Parsnips

All love the cool, wet weather of Fall.  You can plant these vegetables from seed now and let them get well-established before there are many hard freezes.  Root veggies will hold up during mild freezes.  You can cover them with straw or other mulch after they are established to protect them from hard freezes.  Some varieties even stand up to hard freezes all Winter long.  I love having root veggies in my garden because I can harvest them throughout the Winter when I want them - the ground soil will preserve them for you.  Also, all the root veggies listed above have edible leaves, as well, except Carrots.  They are delicious in salads and stir-fries.

  

Leafy Greens: Kale, Brussels Sprouts, Collards, Cabbage, Chard, Lettuces, Spinach, Chicories, Mache (aka Corn Salad)

Hardy greens usually stand up the best to hard Winters.  You can straw mulch these guys, as well, if you want to pick on them even during the coldest months.  Many varieties of Kale and Mache, especially, stay vibrant green when everything else around is dead and frozen.  Lettuces, Spinach, and other tender leaves are much less likely to withstand hard freezes, but they are fast growers in the Fall and you can eat on them up until multiple hard freezes kill them back.  Keep your vitamin intake up during the Winter by planting all these leafy greens now.

Scallions are a great Fall crop - they grow fast, love the cool Fall weather, and taste great in so many dishes.

  

Garlic is a crop that is harvest in the middle of Summer, but it is planting now.  If you want to grow delicious, strong flavored garlic, plant cloves now.  Many people even plant cloves they've bought from the grocery store.  Give them about 6 inches of space and plant them in a location that you can ignore between now and next July (when its time to harvest).  Many people mulch their garlic now to keep it from sprouting too much before hard Winter freezes kill the sprouts back.  Then in the Spring, they pull the mulch back and allow the garlic sprouts to pop up and grow tall. 

Eat All Winter - Build a Cold Frame!

Many people think when there is snow and ice all around, there are no green things to eat from the garden. Not true if you build a cold frame! Cold frames are like miniature greenhouses that keep cool weather vegetables alive throughout the winter. They can be as simple or as complicated as you want to build, and design possibilities are endless.

 

                                                  
Cold frames can be used to get an early start on Spring vegetables, or to extend Fall vegetables into the Winter. When temperatures drop very low, most crops stop growing. However, if you have Fall crops already established in a cold frame, then you can harvest off of them all Winter. They keep frost from settling on leafy greens and root vegetables. When temperatures start to warm up again, cold frames add a few degrees, allowing plants to start growing inside the frame when it is still too cold for growth outside the frame. 
Cold frame designs can be as simple as a sealed box with a removable glass or plastic top, and as complicated as a heated, hinged box that props open with a thermostat inside! They can be small, large, even in multiples segments. You can use scrap material you have laying around or found in the dumpster, or you can buy all new materials from the store if you like. Whatever you do, make sure your cold frame faces South - so your crops will get as much sunlight as possible.
     Whichever design you choose, the Tool Library has everything you need for tools - hammers, drills, levels, table saws, circular saws, we even have an air-pressured brad nailer!  Cold frames usually only take a couple hours to build, even the complicated designs.  Eat healthy this Winter!

 

Improve Your Soil Naturally

Winter cover crops are a great way to improve your soil without using chemical fertilizers.  Cover cropping can be very easy, and your Spring plants will love you for it. This is the time to plant them.  Fertilizers that you buy at the store, even the Organic certified ones, can runoff into the groundwater and add to the phosphorus imbalance in natural streams and waterways that destroy creatures big and small living in the water.  In fact, phosphorus runoff from large farms has been scientifically linked to recent outbreaks of toxic algea blooms across Ohio.

Cover crops are plants that you seed in order to improve your soil.  It is especially important to fix nitrogen to your soil, as vegetable plants have no other way of getting nitrogen (other nutrients they are able to pull from the air, rain, sunlight, etc).  Many cover plants fix nitrogen in the soil, and beautify your garden landscape in the meantime.

What to Plant:

The BEST COVER CROP is a MIXTURE of as many different cover seeds as you can get your hands on.  Below are suggestions, but at least one nitrogen fixing crop is important.

Turnips and Radishes make excellent cover crops. They improve the soil, their flowers are attractive, they provide green color in your garden all winter, and their leaves (and roots) are completely edible!  

                     

Hairy Vetch fixes nitrogen in the soil, is green ALL winter, and produces purple flowers.

Winter Rye provides a healthy green cover to your soil all Winter, flowering in the Spring.

Crimson Clover fixes nitrogen in the soil AND produces a beautiful red flower.  These are some of the first bloomers in the Spring, which honeybees love!

Winter Peas also fix nitrogen, and they can be a wintertime snack if you like peas!

Where to Plant:

Plant cover crops where your Summer crops grew this season, and/or where you will plant your Spring crops next season.  Your soil is likely exhausted of its nutrients from your Summer crops and now needs to be rejuvenated.  Cover cropping will add those nutrients back in preparation for next season, and you won't have to fertilize in the Spring!

You don't really ever want to leave any soil in your garden bare.  Bare soil is an opportunity for weed seeds to germinate at any moment.  Even if you do not cover crop, you should put mulch down on bare soil.

How to Plant:

Whichever method you use, be sure to seed your cover crop as THICK as you can!  The less room between your plants, the less chance of weeds growing through.

The easiest way to plant cover crops is a no-till, no-fuss method.  Simply sprinkle your seed mix as evenly as you can in the area of your garden you want to cover.  Don't do anything else. Your Summer crops will die off as we go into Winter.  They will act as a mulch to keep weeds down that you don't want.  Fall rains will germinate the seeds of your cover crop, and it should come up on its own and provide a good groundcover all winter. 

Some people do not like no-till methods.  Your garden will appear less-well-kept, as it is impossible to keep ALL weeds out. If you use no-till methods you will likely be growing a mixture of plants - both your chosen cover crops and some weeds mixed in. 

If you prefer a spotless-looking garden with no weeds at all, you can plant your cover crops using a tiller and a garden rake.  Once your summer crops have stopped producing, but before freezing temperatures set in, you first till the ground where you summer crops are located.  Second, broadcast your seed mix as evenly as you can.  Third, use a garden rake to rake the seeds into the ground.  Fourth, make sure your seeds get plenty of water (if it isn't raining much) so that they will beat the weed seeds out of the ground.  That's it!

In the Spring

Once danger of frost has passed and you are ready to put your Spring crops in the ground, your Winter cover crops will have done their job.  Prepare your garden as usual.  If you cover crop regularly, you will never need to buy fertilizer again.

Preserving Your Harvest - No Canning Required

Fall is almost here.  The garden is slowing down.  I personally do not enjoy canning, but luckily preserving some of those last summer fruits is easier than you think - easier than cooking!!  All it takes is time and some counter space...

Fruit Scraps turned into Vinegar



Fruit scaps can be left set out for a few weeks with sugar and a cloth to keep the flies off, and it turns into vinegar! This is one of my favorite ways to use every part of apples, pears, pineapple, and other fruits.  It is so easy.  I use the vinegar for cooking and pickling.  Especially when I have scraps leftover from baking with apples I picked from the tree myself - I don't want ANY of those scraps to go to waste!  Click here:
http://thenourishingcook.com/how-to-make-fruit-scrap-vinegar/



What to do with Green Tomatoes



This website has lots of great ideas for cooking and preserving green tomatoes - roasting, pickling, making chutney: http://www.yougrowgirl.com/2011/10/17/preserving-green-tomatoes/


Easy Pickling



Cucumbers are so easy to pickle. Just throw them together with some vinegar and whatever flavorings you like, let them sit in the fridge for a bit, and they are ready to munch:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alexandra-guarnaschelli/quick-and-easy-pickles-recipe/index.html


Don't forget the Sauerkraut!

No food preservation would be complete without sauerkraut!  This is the easiest no-worry way to make sauerkraut that I've ever tried.  You just mix cabbage with salt and let it sit around.  The book Wild Fermentation has all kinds of wonderful ideas that don't involve a canner or a refrigerator.  I highly recommend the book:  http://www.wildfermentation.com/making-sauerkraut-2/

First Rain Barrel Installed!!

Stoddart Avenue Community Garden receives the first rain barrel from a Grant funded by the city and managed by the Tool Library!



RTCO's Tool Library has joined forces with the City of Columbus, Community Garden Partners, and Rain Brothers to offer free rain barrel and connecting irrigation supplies for Land Bank Community Gardens across Columbus!

Stoddart Avenue was the first community garden to receive a 300-gallon rain barrel tank, solar pump, hoses, and first-time water fill-up - all installed by Rain Brothers free to the garden.  When winter comes, the community garden will collect any weather-sensitive items together and store them at the Tool Library until next spring. They will receive free training on the proper use, maintenance, and winterization of the materials.  If they ever have technical difficulties with their rain catching system, Rain Brothers will be available to trouble-shoot.  The 2012 growing season has been so dry, no one can deny the benefit of rain catching irrigation systems in community gardens across the city!

Any land bank community garden interested in receiving a free rain barrel system, please contact the Tool Library: Tool.Library@rtcentralohio.org, 614-258-6392.  Another benefit of this program is that you automatically become a member of the Tool Library.  You do not need to be a 501(c)3.

Requirements to receive the 300 or 550 gallon irrigation system include:

• Community Gardens must be in their second year of good standing with the City Land Bank
• A copy of the lease between the garden partner and the City
• Proof of ID for three garden members who will also be allowed to check out tools

To read more about the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden, click here: http://stoddartgarden.blogspot.com/2012/08/sacg-welcomes-second-rain-tank-and.html

Squash Bugs

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As mentioned in the previous post, we have been dealing with these mean guys in our zucchini plants. They are called Squash Bugs and they are generally attracted to the different Cucurbits, such as yellow squash, zucchini, and cucumbers. They are a terrible pest to have in your garden, as they suck the sap out of those plants.