Early Garden

I want to document my garden /gardening this year.  I have a lot of people who ask me what I do for my garden.  They usually ask when it is in full-swing and then I can't even remember what I did and why.  Also, there is always some issue every year and if it recurs I like to know what I did about it in previous years!  So that's another good reason to document.  Be warned,  I don't do things necessarily the way most people do.

I started some seeds in early March (it is still early March).  I did take some pictures, but that camera is currently battery-dead so I will have to download and explain that in a later post.

Today is a glorious day, so I went out and turned over one garden and planted lettuce.  That is a "cold" crop, meaning it can handle a frost and is okay with cold (although I may put plastic or a fishtank over them to help germinate if this weather doesn't hold out.)  There are other cold crops - peas, spinach, cauliflower. etc. (mostly veggies my family won't eat.)  Check the back of the seed packet and it tells you whether you can plant in early spring before the last frost.

This is the garden that I have NOT turned over yet.

I cleaned out my goat shed this weekend and just plopped the piles in the planting areas of my garden.  The blue tarp is in the walkway.  This is how I compost.  I just stick the poo/hay/leaves/whatever organic material on my garden and ignore it.  I have some older piles from the fall clean out that have been breaking down all winter.

Below is the garden I turned over today.  It looked similar to the above, but the piles had decomposed almost completely into compost.   I turned over what was composted into the soil beneath and then raked the uncomposted material back into 2-3 piles.   Mostly hay that is still mucky.  This is similar to turning a compost pile.  It introduces air into pile and assists the composting process.  Those piles will most likely stay there and then be worked into the soil later, maybe even next growing season.   The piles in my above garden will breakdown quite a bit in the next 2-3 months and I will turn over those and rake up any uncomposted material in that garden in mid-May.

My reasons for composting this way are: 
a) The soil under the compost pile is always the best  and most productive soil.
b) I don't have to build any special structure to hold / maintain the compost.
c) I have so much organic material that I don't have to be selective about where I put it.
d) Turning over the compost is easier because you don't have to reach underneath it. You can just rake it to another area, leaving behind rich soil. 

Garden Map

Well, every year before I plant my garden, I make a map. It is not to scale or anything. It's just to show me roughly where I am going to plant everything. A friend asked me to post my map and so I am, but I think it needs some explanation....

I listed the veggies that I plan to plant. The spinach and lettuce are already in and growing, albeit slowly.

The area behind the shed (marked pumpkins and cukes, squash and zucchini) is almost all new. We took down a fence and extended it just this spring.

As you can see, I have two compost piles. I just combined about 10 of them scattered all over the garden. The one in the back is HUGE...almost all goat manure and hay waste. Instead of rotating compost, I let it pile up in one or several areas of the garden, and by the next season it is perfect soil and I spread it out. I had one pile in the back left corner and one at the edge of the current onion patch from last year, that I spread out for this spring.

The little "x"s are places where there are plants coming up volunteer. I think they are almost all pumpkins, although last year, some were cantelopes and they did really well. I will leave them where they are if they don't interfere too much (like the ones in the compost pile), others I will transplant probably to the pumpkin patch.....as that is usually what they are.

The "tomato garden" is actually a newer plot that I started last year. It's actual position is to the left of the larger garden, with a grass walkway about 8 feet wide, between the two gardens. I started that garden because there is a tomato wilt that is permanently in the soil of my shed garden (larger lower rectangle), although a few tomatoes that I stuck in there last year did fine. I was very meticulous about tending my tomatoes in both plots last year - I mulched around them (with goat hay) and bottom watered them, and that really helped to keep any wilty-type activity at bay. I did plant WAY too many plants though, and I couldn't even walk in there. The plants got way to big. So this year I will only plant around the edges and leave the middle completely clear. (Although, my gardening is generally crowded. All walkways are basically gone mid-July.)

Lasagna Gardening

I read somewhere about "lasagna" gardening and so I started one in March. I didn't follow all of the specific layering that is outlined in the book, but just used the general principles.

In lasagna gardening, a layer of newspaper or cardboard is laid down directly on top of the sod. I used chicken feed bags (don't use goat feed bags, they have a layer of plastic - which doesn't decompose as quickly and may be hard for plants to get through.) The bags/cardboard/newspaper kill the sod, removing the necessity to turn over a new plot by digging through thick grass.

On top of the feed bags I put any and all compost that I could find in my yard. In my case, I have really good stuff readily available. I mucked out the goat shed and put that on there. I found the place where my daughter dumped her chicken house manure and put that on there. I hauled over piles of leaves from my grandmother's yard. Rabbit poo from under the hutch. I guess I was supposed to add peat moss and maybe some soil, but I figured there was plenty of regular dirt under the bags and that the plants would reach it eventually. I refuse to pay money for dirt and poo! That being said, manure sure makes the difference in plant growth and production, so if you have to buy it, so be it.

So, I took a picture of another lasagna garden I am starting next to my old garden. It doesn't look like much and that is kind of my point. It's real ugly, so if you are planning some shindig or something, make sure you put it somewhere discreet.

See, it's just a pile of lumpy hay, poo mess. I wish I had taken a picture of the first one I did. Below is the finished one complete with my lovely tomatoes (and my daughter for scale). It was just a lumpy rectangle in the middle of my yard. Then we decided to host my in-laws 50th anniversary party......it was planted and fenced in one weekend.

Ideally the lasagna garden should be started in Fall, giving it time to all compost down for the next growing season. I started this one in March and it was significantly-composted down by the end of May. I did turn it over and made a smaller compost pile within the garden with the stuff that wasn't quite ready yet (hardened chicken poo). None of my composting components are extremely acidic so that they would burn my plants. This is the best I have ever seen my tomatoes and it was the easiest garden to start.