First Attempts at Cover Crops

So this year is really about building up and enriching my soil. I'll be totally thrilled if my plants do well too. As part of my research, I've come across what are called cover crops and sometimes they are referred to as green manure. The terminology just refers to the ways you intend to use the crop. After reading lots and lots I decided on a couple of crops to try out this year:

• Field Peas
• Buckwheat
• Crimson Clover
• Hairy Vetch

The main purposes of a cover crop are:

1. Cover empty ground
2. Prevent erosion
3. Prevent washing away of nutrients
4. Break up compacted soils
5. Return nutrients and organic matter back to the soil.

Typically cover crops are used on large farms, but what works in large scale, usually works well in small scale too. I didn't find a ton of information about using cover crops specifically in a raised garden, suburban setting so I think I've got a lot of learning and figuring out to do this year.

Legumes such as Field Peas, Crimson Clover and Hairy Vetch are Nitrogen fixing plants. That means they convert nitrogen into the air into nodules on their root systems that can be used by roots of plants. The key to getting the benefits is to kill the plant before it uses the nitrogen it has stored into bearing the fruits...or seeds. While field peas are edible if left to seed, I lose the benefit of nitrogen fixation if I let them go that far. I intend to use all of these crops as green manures this year.

I chose buckwheat because it is VERY fast growing, loves the heat and produces an abundance of biomass. In our area of Texas we can get two warm seasons of productive growth: March-Juneish and August-Decemberish. When many of my plants are spent but before it is on the downswing of summer where I can start a fall crop, I tend to have barren soils for a month or two. During this time the sun just bakes and dries out the poor earth and it is hard and terribly deficient by the time fall plantings come around. This is where Buckwheat will come into play. I have just enough window of time to grow a season of buckwheat and cut down before fall planting adding lots of organic matter for the fall crops to consume. I hope it works out as well as I imagine it will.

Field Peas will be my companion crop for the corn this year. Something I didn't know about corn is that is is a nitrogen hog. That explains why my second crop of corn never did well or did anything, the first crop consumed all the nitrogen that was in the soil and the second crop got nothing. My corn so far has sprouted to about 4 inches. I still have it covered in bird netting because the birds and squirrels will still dig it up at this point. I removed the cover, mounded the rows of corn for extra stability as they continue to grow and then broadcast my field peas between the rows in all the rest of the available spaces. I raked it in lightly and then watered the whole bed very well and replaced the bird netting. Unfortunately, while I meant to inoculate my seeds, I didn't...so while they won't fix the maximum nitrogen, they still should do pretty well on their own. To inoculate the seeds means that you coat them with a specific strain of powdered bacteria. This particular bacteria helps the plant to fix the nitrogen from the air. It's some kind of symbiotic relationship. I don't know a whole lot about it other than you are supposed to do it. My other legume seeds I bought have already been inoculated.

I will let the field peas grow until they flower and about a week after flowering, I'll cut the plants down which should kill the plants and any nitrogen in their roots will be released into the soil and the worms and other organisms in the soil will feed on the plant matter which will also provide cover to the soil to help with erosion and compaction from the rain and sun. That's the plan anyway. All the directions I've found for killing cover crops speaks of "mowing" them down. Well that doesn't work so well with a raised bed, not to mention it would take me a week to dig out the mower from the shed since we pay someone to cut our grass. I plan to just use my manual hedge shears to hack away at the plants from top to bottom. I hope that'll work alright.

The Crimson Clover and Hairy Vetch will be my cover crop from Nov/Dec-Feb/March. I've read lots of good things about planting tomatoes into Hairy Vetch after it is cut down. Works great as mulch and fixes the nitrogen that the tomatoes need. The Clover is exceptionally good at creating biomass and is pretty to boot. I may not do a fall garden at all this year except maybe some collard greens, a few broccoli, and carrots, that's all I ever end up using anyway. 

I think keeping my beds covered and fed in this way over the downtime will really make a difference in my soil. I'm hoping it'll lower my physical labor requirements as well since I won't have to do so much breaking and turning of the dirt, the plants and worms should keep everything conditioned well enough all I'll need to do is plant right into the mass.

The Birth of a Garden

My favorite part of gardening is the week after the seeds are planted and the tiny new lives are pushing their way through the soil. I'm always amazed and so excited to see my little seedlings beginning their growth cycle. I see and imagine all their potential to become these beautiful plants bearing fruit for me and my family.

Sunflower (Kong Hybrid)

Cucumbers (Sweet Slice Hybrid)

Corn (Bodacious Hybrid) 

Notice the bird netting. It's the only way I can keep the squirrels and birds from digging up the seeds/seedlings. I'll remove it when the spouts are about 6-8 inches.

Asparagus - 1 year old plant. (Martha Washington I think)

Some plants are eager to please. Asparagus is harvested early in the spring. I just cut back all the old ferns that grew last year about a week ago and now you can see the new spouts are eager to begin. We'll harvest for 6-8 weeks and then let shoots grow into ferns at that point to nourish the crowns underground for the next season.

DS enjoys the first asparagus shoot of the season. After devouring raw he asked for more, unfortunately I had to tell him he would have to wait a day or two for the next one to be ready. You gotta catch these things fast because they grow very quickly, the difference in just 12 hours could be waiting too long.

Journey to the Worm Towers

If you live in this area, you know our dirt is already pretty sad. They call it Black Gumbo...but I don't get that because Gumbo is rich and delicious and the clay soil is more tannish gray with rusty lookin spots than black so I don't see how the name fits, but whatever. In any case, it's basically pure clay. Since my neighborhood, Eagle Springs, is fairly new, we have a layer of sand sitting on top of the clay. I think that's the builder's feeble attempt to get the sod to not just instantly die when they install it.

The point being, the dirt is pretty poor and worms don't like it much. The best chance for gardening is to build raised beds over the native atrocity called soil. The first 4 years, I have pretty much neglected the fact that soil is really important in the growing of vegetables. I just assumed, put it in dirt and it'll be fine. I was so wrong. I gradually saw my garden yields get worse and worse and the plants themselves just not thriving. I've turned my attention away from using chemical fertilizers to sustain my plants (the reality is I'm way too lazy to drag myself out in the intense heat of the summer to spray fertilizer as much as is required when relying on it as the sole nutrient source for the plants...it's way more often than you realize).

This year I'm taking a turn to more organic gardening. I started composting about a year ago with two barrel rotating bins. It's been working fine...ish. My lawn is way too manicured to have enough carbon addition. I tried using newspaper torn into strips as the carbon, but what this amounted to is big matted balls of newspaper. I'd have to use a fine shredder for it to work better. It was hard enough just getting myself out there to throw kitchen scraps in it because of the HUGE swarm of fruit flies that attacks me as soon as I open the lid. I know that can be remedied with adding enough carbon on top of the new additions, but that takes me back to I know the newspaper strips don't work that well and shredding is too much effort. Yes, I'm THAT lazy. So all my composting has actually turned into a very wet sludge like muck full of fruit flies, palmetto bugs, and soldier fly larvae. Don't get me started on actually rotating the bins. It's more difficult than I expected and the slime leaches out onto the bin and gets on your hands. gross. After a year, I'm pretty sure my ways aren't changing.

So I didn't want to give up composting because I am still in love with the idea of recycling kitchen scraps back into my garden and feeding it. In my searches to figure out how to improve soil naturally, attracting worms was a big deal. Worms like lots of organic matter. This year I trucked in 3 yards of manure compost and humus compost from New Earth Soils and Compost in Conroe. Just in case you are interested in ordering, it's $150 delivery charge! I guess since they have to drive an hour to get here I suppose that's reasonable. I couldn't find anywhere closer (just searching online) that sold the quality of compost that I wanted. They all seemed to have extra mineral fillers (like topsoil or sand) and I just wanted the pure organic matter. I was very happy with the actual quality of the compost when it got here. The pile was hot, dark, rich, and in the humus compost I found lots of fruit stickers...while they aren't biodegradable it's a good sign of excellent ingredients in the compost. So I think the $200 I spent was worth it.

In years past, I've trucked in dirt but I haven't given back to the soil in any way and that's why over time it depleted and became so poor. This year I am determined not to let that happen and to keep my investment healthy. So back to the worms. I needed more worms. To make room for all the compost I actually shoveled out several wheelbarrow loads from the boxes and spread the bad dirt in low spots in my yard, in the process I found 1 tiny worm and a handful of grubs. Not a good sign. I've read that healthy soil has at least 10 worms per cubic foot. While researching how to get more worms in my soil (now that I had plenty of compost to support them) I came across what is known as a Worm Tower. It's basically a pipe with holes in the bottom half buried enough to cover the holes, then you fill with organic matter for the worms and they come in to eat at your cafe and go out to poop (called castings in vermiculture) in your garden and feed your plants. Whaaaat?! All I have to do is chuck my kitchen scraps and the occasional handful of leaves into a hole and the rest of the work is done for me!? Sign me up!

I sent DH to the hardware store where he purchased two 10 foot 6" diameter PVC pipes and 8 garden pots.  This cost about $150. You can save a lot by going down to 4" diameter pipe, but I wanted bigger to fit more scraps. The next day he set to work cutting them into 2.5' lengths and drilling holes in the bottom 18-22" He started using a 1/2" spade bit, but according to him was taking FOR-EV-ER so he switched to a 3/4" spade bit and was much happier. I don't think the size of the hole matters that much, just enough for the worms to get in and out. Also FYI, do this on a calm day or somewhere the wind can be blocked because the resulting PVC shavings are a MESS and they get EVERYWHERE and there are a TON of them. I think the wind probably spread a pound of them around the neighborhood :-/ Not so environment friendly...

Size comparison to a small 3-year-old

A worm tower

So now you have to dig holes deep enough for this. Do not attempt to do this will a shovel, you will go mad, purchase or borrow a PHD...that's Post Hole Digger. The heavier the better because the tool will do most of the work for you. I'm 5'2" and 105 lbs and I dug all the holes myself through the thick clay. The worst part is having to scrape the clay off after every scoop. Make sure after you reach the clay to start dumping it in a wheelbarrow to "dispose" of elsewhere. I did what I always do with yard stuff I don't want to deal with..throw it behind the shed or electrical box...lots of branches, spent plants, and clay back there...haha.

The last step is to cover the pipe to keep critters and bugs out. The pots that DH bought would not be my first choice, but I figure I'll give them a try before searching for something a little more snug. In all the tutorials I read, people usually use a straight sided pot (like you get from buying a tree from a nursery) and a piece of mesh material or screen for dissuading bugs. I did without the screen because the pots don't fit well. If bugs become a problem I'll have to figure out a new cap.

So there you have it, a worm tower. Just fill with organic materials that worms like to eat. I "primed" my towers with a bed of leaves/pine needles and a shovel full or two of the almost done compost from my bins and then added fresh scraps on top. Almost every tutorial mentioned adding Red Wigglers (a composting worm) to keep the process fast. I read they are finicky about temperature and they will likely cook in the Texas heat. So I'm building these on the premise of "If You Build it, They Will Come" hoping to attract native worms...which are the burrowing type that will eat the material, poop in the garden, and till the earth. While they're slower at this process, worms multiply the more resources are available. I hope this will work out just great for me. I sunk 8 towers evenly spaced across my 256 sq foot garden so the worms shouldn't have to go far to find a feast.

Another plus is that the kids are totally excited to "feed the worms." So when I have a bowl of kitchen scraps I let them take the bowl out and they can feed the worms all by themselves. This is another reason I decided to put the towers at the edge of the garden beds instead of in the center, ease of access.

I'm excited to get these wriggly workhorses working for me!

Seriously? My garden needs its own blog?

Ok, I certainly don't profess to be some amazingly awesome gardener or anything. Quite the contrary I am still in my infancy of learning about gardening. When I reference gardening here, I am mostly talking about Fruit and Vegetable annual gardening. I'm not very good at flowers and stuff like that, not that I've really tried much but for now I'm content just to grow food and revel in my awesomeness to feed my family off our suburban plot of land.

This will be my 5th year of growing fruits and vegetables. To catch up on what I've learned so far, visit my family blog gardening tag: The Masten Effect : Gardening

I seem to refrain from posting TOO much about my garden on the family blog and that's why I've created this one, so I can just ramble all day long about my garden. I probably won't ramble all day long but when I learn something new I will talk about it, a lot.

So there you have it, if you live in Humble Texas and want to share your gardening secrets for this area, I'd love to hear about it!