Good Morning! It’s a beautiful day here, sunny and bright, sunrise was wonderful to see this morning. I thought I’d make up for the prolonged lack of blogging with some photos. Warning: big pics, so this will likely load slowly for you dial up folks.
First thing: I am not a farmer. Not yet, anyway. That honored profession belongs to those who can actually feed others, raise animals, save the environment, and that sort of thing. But I thought that perhaps some folks would enjoy coming along with me on my journey towards self-sufficiency. We had a real farmer blogging with us for a while, and you can read about his political views and find links to some of his farming work at the Olde MCB. Trust him as he knows of what he speaks.
On the other hand, I am sort of an intense person, and when I “get into” something, I throw myself into it with reckless abandon. I spent a lot of time over the past winter, and much before that over the last couple of years, researching and reading and chatting up those professionals who can teach me how to better make my lands productive. Perhaps you can learn from some of my mistakes, and share with me things you know that I don’t. That’s the general idea with this series: Learn and Grow, and Overthrow military-industrial-racist-warmongering-pseudofascist hegemony destroying our planet. Heh.
So the first thing I didn’t learn, like so often in my life, is also the most important thing for a farmer or grower: Know Your Soil. It seems obvious, but I think a lot of people like me make a common mistake; I sure did my first year at this.
Just because something is already growing in the dirt you’d like to cultivate, doesn’t mean the plant you want to grow will do well there. Again, it’s just common sense, but there’s a reason why they call them “native” and “wild” plants, and why they do better than imported and foreign cultivars. So look past the happy weed you’re about to dig up, and get down and jiggy with your loam/clay/sand.
I’ve linked to it before, but there’s a great chapter in John Seymour’s Self-Sufficiency guide, as well as the old verson I have.
A spadeful of soil may look a very simple, innocuous substance. But it is, in fact, of such enormous complexity that it is doubtful mankind will ever fully understand it. …If it is good soil, it is full of life.When he says “life,” he means not only worms and bacteria, but also decaying life- leaves and decomposing organic matter that feeds the plants and animals that live in and under the soil. One of the reasons we organic people get so Crazy about poisons and pesticides is that they destroy that life, and upset the delicate and important balance needed to in order to be a successful grower and cultivator. Same deal with petro-based fertilizers; when you add that crap to your soil, you upset those elements that would provide you the same benefits of the artificial stuff, for free. I’m going to harp on that a lot, because the way most people seem to treat their land and soil is ass-backwards, costly, wasteful, and frankly, stupid. But I don’t blame folks; our consumerist/corporate society has warped pretty much everything to maximize their profits; land managment is no exception.
We’ve had a dangerously dry spring here, after a winter of heavy snow, and the above pic is of a section of soil that is “unimproved.” That is, it’s the dirt as the developer left it: hardpacked in dry times, lacking lots of recent/decomposing organic matter, and very difficult for plants to push thru. It’s “alive,” in the sense that when I turn it over, there are worms and other lifeforms working hard to make it better soil. But in dry times like these, it’s just a crappy growing medium. You can probably see that it’s sandy, and under that sandtop is hard, hard clay.
Plants are just like us; they move and require food to have the energy to move. If a plant’s roots have to expend huge amounts of energy to break up the soil with its roots, it has less to push up the ‘plant part’ that we people want to see/enjoy/consume. So the most important thing one can do to help plants grow more vigourously is loosen and enrich (“improve”) the soil.
If you’re broke/environmentally correct/a tightwad with your purse, there’s a really easy way to do this. 
Grass clippings. The Experts at Mother Earth have a long and beautiful list of free and cheap resources you probably already have to use to improve your soil. I’m now getting all the grass clippings on my block from my neighbors. I go pick it up after they mow and bag; I save myself money b/c I don’t have to buy fertilizer, and I save them money b/c they don’t have to pay the waste removal folks for removal. Win win for everyone. Of course, as people figure out they’re throwing away money, they’ll stop giving it to me for free, but we won’t tell them just yet, m’kay?
The simplest way to describe what you’re looking at there is a “raised bed” or “deep bed.” It’s a lot of work to make, and there are some who say ‘don’t bother there’s an easier way;’ I’ll get to that later. But if you’re the old-fashioned type, you’ll remember this method of prepping your growing area.
1. Dig/till a hole 1-2ft deep, 1-3x the size of the plant when full grown going in it.
2. Fill that hole with organic matter, composted if possible, but also with plenty of ‘recently alive’ stuff like freshly cut grass clippings and leaves. Pile the organic matter up 1-2ft above the pre-hole ground level.
3. Break apart the soil you’ve dug with your hands if necessary, and make it “fluffy.” Gently return that soil back on top of the organic matter you’ve piled up in the hole. Do not walk or press down on this pile, it needs to stay “fluffy” and “loose.” Never walk on your beds directly; always leave foot traffic space on the sides of your beds so you don’t.
From there, it’s actually pretty easy. Depending on who you believe, you can stuff a whole mess of plants into these beds, defying convention and labeling on commercially grown big-box store veggie sets. You don’t really need to leave “6-12 inches” between your growing plants. This may seem counterintuitive, but go walk in a healthy forest sometime, or just look at your own weed patch or other naturally growing area.
Mo Nature doesn’t grow things in neat, artificial rows and spaces, and you don’t have to either. Also- if the plants of your choice are close together, as they come up they will choke out weeds and competitors, who won’t be able to get a foothold.
It’s also the theory of us Deep Bed people that if your bed contains lots of decaying organic matter, that matter is rich in N-P-K and micronutrients, and can easily “feed” a large number of plants. I’ll say that theory is proving true in my case and I don’t have the need for expensive fertilizers very often.
That’s probably enough for one day, it’s time to get to work and I’m curious to hear what successful methods you’ve tried. Let’s end on a high note:
The colors on these Dutch Bulbs are farking fantastic, so satisfying I can hardly describe the joy they give me. And easy! I put them in last year, covered them with organic matter so the squirrels/demons of the trees wouldn’t find them, and voila! Glory.
Front page
It's a miracle, isn't it?
The plants actually come back after the winter and start growing again. This year, when the winter was so long, this seems especially amazing.
I like the non-row, forget about 6-12 inches thing, since, yes, it seems plants don’t grow that way in nature. What’s all the open space for? Reaching in with the sprays? Then again, is productivity affected?
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
no, productivity is *increased* greatly, via this method
that’s the counterinutive part. hang on lemme find a link…tomatoes love carrots and other secrets of deep bed/interplanting technique. you probably know that peas and beans are N-fixers, right? similar idea in DB/I technique: work with nature, let her do the hard work for you.
close interplanting saves time, effort, money, and is just logical, now that i’m getting the results i can perceive that better. as you say, a larger growing area with spread out plants helps…the “garden center” industry! b/c you have to spend more on weed prevention, fertilizer, buying extra plants to replace the ones that don’t make it, soil to replenish/improve your own…you get the drift. but in the DB/I method, your plants help each other with those things.
i’ll post on interplanting and “lasagna” method gardening later. but for now: yes, put those tomatoes really close together! as they come up, mulch the shit out of those beds, mulching keeps roots moist and prevents weeds and feeds the soil with N-P-K and micronutrients. you’re in maine, i know you’ve got leaves aplenty in those parts. tomatoes growing on top of, in, and under decomposing organic matter will be much more productive and tasty than those spread out over a mass of unimproved soil. tomatoes are “heavy feeders” and need to be pampered, so it’s good practice to learn to DB them; other plants will be easier.
Loveliness
Try that in North Texas red clay sometime.
beautiful, Chidyke.
Ruth
I haven't planted yet, so this is great data
And it makes a lot of sense. For example, tomatoes, it seems to me, want to grow together to support each other, as vines, en masse. Which the whole concept of keeping them apart and staking them goes against
And I’ve gotten great results with tomatoes without doing a lot of work on the soil.
You mean I can just dump grass in the garden as is? That to is a good result.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
dump away!
like in the vegan theory of “fresh, uncooked food has more vitamins and is healthier for your than canned, leeched of their nutrient food” the gardening principle is about the same. life feeds off of other life, grass that was recently alive, according to Mother Earth News and other sources i’ve researched, is an excellent source of N and it releases that N to plants at just the right rate.
you know how in the big box stores they always see that “time release” petrofertilizer? well, that’s what grass does, as it decays. at the natural, no effort or money on your part, rate. John S recommends 50% organic matter in a bed, Tracy says 30%, this year I’m going to try Paula’s method and hit about a 2:1 or 3:1 organic matter:soil ratio for my beds. i think it’s going to work very well.
First good laugh I've had in days
“Timed release fertilizer…” is the corporate name for rotting grass! I love it!
The other good news is that all my perennials came up, and my sunflowers reseeded themselves, sometimes in unexpected places.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
ruth: is TX red clay like ours up here?
MI and the great lakes region in general is clay, clay clay! ours is grey/lt brown. i’m lucky; this property got some better quality soil dumped on it by the developer. the only reason i have to work it so hard right now is b/c the previous occupants did nothing, nada, zip gardening and i’m undoing ~15 years of neglect and improper chem-treatment. but i’m telling you, so far it’s really looking good. my leek/carrot/beet bed is about 50% organic matter and 50% clay + “topsoil,” and it is retaining its moisture like a mutha, i am very happy about that as it cuts down on watering. that’s another advantage to adding organic material, as well as mulching once the plants are up: less watering. for those without their own well, that makes gardening much, much less expensive and within reach. also, don’t do what i did and spend an entire month in august watering, watering, watering…nope, that won’t happen this year.
Friday Morning
The wonder of nature. Truly beautiful.
More Red State boys........
CD, you can make up for any deficits you may be “suffering” in the religion department by viewing what the Red State Boys have to say about the Creation Museum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR8MGAsid… I dare say that one’s religious instruction would not be complete without this.
Great Post CD
I used to have a big garden at my place in NJ. Indians used to plant their corn, beans and peppers together because they compliment each other’s growing cycles and nutrient needs. Rotate your crops, if you plant the same stuff in the same place year after year you’ll get diminished returns
from depleted soil.
ON WHYY, Philly’s NPR station they run a radio show called “You Bet Your Garden” hosted by Mike McGrath, former editor of Organic Gardening. He’s a funny guy who is very serious and incredibly knowledgeable about growing all things organic. It’s a great resource. You can read and listen here:
http://www.whyy.org/91FM/ybyg/index.html
Compost is the key. In simple terms you need green and brown stuff. Neighbors’ grass clippings are good green, as long as they don’t poison it with chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. In the fall leaves make perfect brown, but you should shred them if you want your compost to be ready by spring. Keep a lidded container in the kitchen for all your fruit and vege kitchen scraps. No animal scraps as it attracts ants to your heap. Rinsed egg shells will add great calcium to the soil.
When you cut the ends off peppers, lettuce, apple cores, banana peels, it all goes in the container. I use to use a plastic 1 gallon ice cream bucket. You can buy a 5 gallon paint bucket with a lid at the hardware store if you want. When you have enough in it or it starts to smell take it out, dump it on the pile and shovel or pitchfork it in pile a few times to mix it up. A well made compost heap will start cooking, it actually gets warm as the bacteria and all those good little micro-oragnisms transform the pile into compost. Done right it shouldn’t smell.
Organic compost has all the nutrients your plants will need, it makes your soil “friable”, nice and crumbly. It also helps protects them from disease.
If things keep going the way they are we’re all going to have start growing at least some of our own food. Everything at the store comes in trucks.
Trucks run on glorified No 2 oil, diesel.
A Saudi said not so long ago “my grandfather rode a
camel, I drive a Mercedes, when the oil runs out my grandson will ride a camel”. Well for most of us, our grandparents or great grandparents were farmers, at the turn of the 20th century 90% of this country still lived down on the farm. If beef grown in Nebraska and fed on petrochemical fertilized corn grown in IA and strawberries grown in CA are too expensive, we’ll have to make do locally. Republicans will cry when cheetohs are $20
a bag, poor babies.
A Couple of Caveats
Be careful about using too many fresh grass clippings. An excess of nitrogen on tomatoes and peppers will result in lots of leaves and fewer fruits. Balance is the key. And of course, don’t use uncomposted grass clippings that are cut when dandelions are going to seed.
There are good reasons for keeping your tomatoes a couple of feet apart. Air circulation keeps leaves drier, supressing molds and mildews; plants too close together will partially shade each other, tomatoes need as much sun as possible; and plants that touch can transfer disease from one to another.
And by staking or caging your tomatoes you keep the plant off the ground. As many tomato diseases are soil borne I even trim off any leaves that touch the ground, and my tomatoes resist disease far longer than others in my area.
That said, I’m pleased to see what you’re up to, CD. I’ll have more gardening posts of my own up soon.
Compost
Should always be aged until it’s actually turned into compost. If you put grass clipping down as mulch they’ll suck nutrients out of the ground that would otherwise go to your plants.
Compost piles are too much work
and unless you build a drainage system many to most of the nutrients will leach out into the soil under the mulch pile instead of feeding your plants. I maintained a mulch pile for several years until I moved to a house in Utah with sandy loam that needed organic NOW. Gathered up all the neighbor’s grass clippings and leaves over a couple of weeks and tilled them directly into the soil, worked like a charm. No more mulch pile for me, not for decades now.
Don’t like putting fresh organic matter in a mass at the bottom of a hole; it often won’t break down properly and can serve as a focus for fungus. Fine if you want mushrooms but no good for your plants. I tried that too, big load of grass and leaves at the bottom of a two-foot hole for a hibiscus. Two years later I decided the shrub was in the wrong place; when I dug it up there was all the plant material in a soggy mat, not broken down and reeking of anaerobic.
When I’m putting in a bed I just till in the raw organic with the soil or, if I need to dig down and clear out rocks or break up clay, throw some organic and dirt back in the hole in layers and turn it over with a pitchfork to mix. During the growing season I use the grass and leaves as a top mulch, keeps down the weeds. Come fall, in the beds that I’m going to turn over I do just exactly that, pitchfork or shovel, and let the soil break down the organic over the winter. More leaves and grass for a top coat to keep out the weeds, and those get turned into the soil come spring.
Around permanent plantings I lightly turn over the top couple of inches with a hand tool and call it good. Never had a problem with “sucking out” nutrients; a live soil will break down the fresh organic in a real hurry, matter of a few days. Kitchen scraps I simply turn into some small neglected patch of dirt in an obscure corner, there’s always somewhere that needs improving.
Plant as densely as you can manage; space between the desirable plants is only an invitation for weeds. Root vegetables, assuming you start pulling them when they’re small, need only 2” between rows. Upright crops like staked beans and peas can go right in the middle of rows of carrots or beets and just get clipped off when they’re finished producing. Tomatoes need to have some air circulating between them to check spread of disease and staking them up keeps the soil critters from eating the fruit; my experience, yours may vary.
Happy springtime, CD.
thank you! everyone! see, this is the power of blogging.
don’t listen to me, listen to the voices of experience and think about what works for your area/region.
crap. i’m tired and need to sleep so i’ll stop now. but thank you, BIO (i’m not in any way mad at you, ever) and Feral (post more, silly!) there’s a discussion to be had here as vibrant as any we’ve had about politics and perhaps much more important.
If things keep going the way they are we’re all going to have start growing at least some of our own food. Everything at the store comes in trucks.
Trucks run on glorified No 2 oil, diesel.
i can’t say it any more plainly. here’s what i think will happen: when oil, power, water and food are scarce, people like Us will be forced to go without.
what are you preparing to do about that? if you think it won’t happen, talk to your/my/some grandmother. the Depression was Hard. most americans don’t understand that, my non-white and also recently immgrtd “white” family did, and does, and taught me that. to quote a fav author, “think about it. is there a time, ever, in history, in which a society has gone more than ~75 years without serious upheaval and discomfort? No.”
I think as a general rule, it’s true and we right now, are way overdue. more about this later…