The Start of Garden Season 6.0

I've gotten quite a late start on my garden this year. Probably has something to do with the unrelenting cold wet weather and the fact I'm 30 weeks pregnant. Kinda puts a damper on things when you move at the pace of a snail and have the range of motion of an unjointed stick. So slowly over the last 4 weeks or so I've been cleaning out the remnants of the fall garden and pulling weeds. Due to the added mulch last year, I didn't have a lot of weeds to deal with except in the corn bed since that one only got an inch of mulch. It produced quite a flourish of weeds. They were so bad I actually was able to just pull and roll them up like a carpet.

I'm doing no till/lasagna/back to eden/deep mulch/Ruth Stout types of organic gardening. I started this last year and I was happy with the results so I will continue on in the hopes that it continues to just get better. I was really happy I didn't have to get out there and shovel up and turn all the dirt like I usually do, it's my most hated task. Despite that, I still had a lot that needed to be done.

First I sprinkled a healthy dose of organic poultry litter based organic fertilizer on my garden. In my 256 sq ft garden I spread about 30 lbs of the stuff. Maybe it was overkill but I wanted a good nitrogen layer to help break down the old mulch layer and seep down into the dirt below. Because it's organic, slow release and processed to pellet form, I'm not worried about burning any plants.

I didn't start any plants indoors this year, it's been hard enough keeping my household going while being pregnant as it is, I never got the motivation to start seedlings. I picked up a few things from the Mercer Arboretum March Mart plant sale. Usually it's at the end of March but this year it was earlier, which is great. I got the rest of my seedling stock from Lowes. They had a decent selection of tomatoes and peppers. I really wanted to plant some Ichiban eggplant but I couldn't find any. I guess I'll have to start my own next year. I did pick up an interesting looking white eggplant though, just for kicks and giggles.

One day I transplanted all the plants, the next day I sewed seeds, and then over the course of three days I put in the mulch. This year I was fortunate enough to get some free mulch from some family members. The kind that specifically reference by the Back to Eden film as whole tree chippings. The pile I got had been composting for at least 6 months so it was a very favorable mulch to put in, better than the stuff I had last year. Better still I have some leftover I stockpiled in the back yard that I'll use to mound up my potatoes and spread as needed to support the corn stalks and use for suppressing weeds should they pop up.

A view of the garden facing West. I moved around almost everything I usually plant. I thought it may be beneficial to move stuff around since different plants have different demands on the soil. It was really hard for me to do this because I'm a real creature of habit and don't like change much, but we'll see how it goes.

This first bed was strawberries, potatoes, and peppers last year. Okra later in the summer. This year it is all tomatoes. yep 100% tomatoes. i'm hoping for several more pints of spaghetti sauce this year. I have Cherokee Chocolate, Boxcar Willie, Celebrity, Early Girl, and Better Boys in here. I'm using large cages for those I'll let have 3-4 growth points, small cages for those that will have 2 or 3 growth points, and stakes for single growth point tomatoes. Just mixing it up and seeing how the results vary. I believe there are 12 tomato plants in here. I usually only have 4 tomato plants in half a bed. I planted extra heavy this year in some of my boxes as an experiment to see how much I can really support in each box with these new methods. I expect if the dirt is healthier and I use better organic fertilizers I can support more plant in a smaller space. It's the theory anyway.

This bed has always housed corn. Due the the mass of weeds, I first put down a layer of newspapers 4 or so papers thick and then piled on the mulch at 3-4 inches deep. Bye Bye weeds. Here I have Sweet peppers (3 varieties), one Jalapeno plant (strictly for bacon wrapped stuffed jalapenos - YUM!) , a leftover Early Girl tomato plant, and a mini eggplant plant. On the opposite side is one Sunflower (Kong Hybrid) in the middle, cantaloupe and watermelon. i usually do three sunflowers but I opted for only one this year since the seeds we get have really yet to be much for eating. I mostly plant them as a stink bug distraction and a jab at the HOA (because the plants get so tall they tower over the fence) I think I'll plant a few more in DD's garden bed along the back fence just for pretty pretty. Corn has been relocated to the other 8x8 bed. I did 5 rows much more sparsely planted than in years past. I've been really bad about giving each corn plant enough room to really grow to it's potential so my goal is to space them really well this year and see how that improves production and fullness of the ears.

This is the only bed I didn't really mix it up too much. Here I have planted Green Beans (bush variety topcrop), lima beans, two eggplants (Black Beauty and White eggplant), and I did two planting of cucumbers in the middle. I purchased a new trellis to see how that works out, I'm skeptical, it seems flimsy. I just have yet to really work out a good trellis system for my cukes. I planted Straight Eight's this year under the direction of my massively green thumbed grandfather. I hope they do well, last year was such a bust it depressed me and the kids LOVE cucumbers. This is my most densely planted bed, we'll see how it does.

This bed is where I used to always do tomatoes and cucumbers. I pulled out and relocated the garlic chives from last year and here I planted one sweet potato (it was sprouted in the pantry so I thought why not give it a try), 3 lbs of seed russet potatoes, two zucchini, and one yellow squash. I only mulched around the squashes. I'm going to wait for the potatoes to make their way up and then mulch around the emerged plants. I planted quite densely here, so we'll see what happens.

The perennial/herb bed. The only major difference here is that I've moved any surviving strawberries into this bed and planted some new ones. I don't know what my deal is, but I cannot for the life of me grow strawberries. I think I need to do some more research. I culled back my oregano (that stuff likes to just take over) and trimmed back the thyme some. Added some sweet basil and dill on the other side. The parsley is still going strong at the far left, I thought that stuff was supposed to be annual but it just barely makes it through the summers and comes back full force in the fall. I did cut it back some. There's an open space here I'm going to plant some more cucumbers in a tomato cage and see how well that works out. I'd love to find some more Stevia and plant it in here.

View of the garden facing East, you can see my stockpile of mulch in the corner. There's more stuff I need to mulch around the yard so some of that is spoken for but the rest will go to the potatoes when they come up and garden as needed. I think I'm probably going to try and sell my rotating compost bins, I just don't use them anymore since I added in the worm towers, which I like much better for composting.

The fig tree is most promising this year. It has some real height to it and has already started putting out leaves and some baby figs. I desperately just want to sit down with a giant bowl of figs and eat my heart out. I hope this is the year.

The most successful asparagus has come back with some nice thick stalks. I don't get a lot at once, maybe 2 or three stalks per day but there's perfect for snapping and grazing on as I do my rounds around the yard. They're so tender and sweet right off the plant. When it starts heating up I'll let them grow up to ferns and feed the roots for next year. I might plant some more next year if I actually want a harvest, until then, I just like grazing. I put a few yellow onion bulbs in just to the right there just kinda to see what happens.

Orange tree. I'm conflicted on what to do, I have yet to get anything from this tree and it still doesn't look great. I kind of want to dig it out and try a new tree after I prepare the dirt better, but on the other hand I keep holding out hope that it will make it and start producing. I highly doubt I'll get anything from it this year again. If it doesn't look amazingly green next year, it's getting the ax.

This is my shame bed, that started out with some great thornless blackberries that did great for a few years and then just died. It's been barren for a year or two. I wanted to plant some blueberries here but I haven't been able to find any plants decently priced so I decided to let this be DD's garden. She has some marigolds (which I also put all around my garden, great pest repellent and they're pretty too), a purple bluebell, she also planted some onions, green beans, corn, some wildflower seeds, and 4 o'clocks. She also "planted" some of the old stuff I ripped out of my garden, like that bolted collard plant, lol. She waters fervently every day. I'll put a thin layer of mulch here as well just for good measure. I went back and planted a row of onions myself and I'll probably put a giant sunflower or two here also if none of her flowers/plants come up.

So that's the garden this year. It wasn't really that much work but I am totally spent. It's hard to garden for a pregnant lady but the effort will be worth it when I have a newborn (Late May/Early June) and lots of fresh produce in my back yard. Check back in a week or two to see seed sprouts!

Do Worm Towers Work?

As a second installment from my original post where I began my journey to improve my garden soil. I took a leap of faith in building some worm towers into my garden. It's been one year since I've put them in and here's what I have to say about it.

Short Answer: Yes.

Long Answer: For the purpose of composting, worm towers do work, all year long I've been able to throw in kitchen scraps into my towers and it composts away. The majority of the time however it may have only been a small percentage of worms actually were doing the eating, most of the time it was Black Soldier Fly larvae. I'm ok with that because they make quick work of it in the summer and they're inert bugs that don't have ill effect on my garden and I don't have to stay on top of carbon addition to the towers. Which means I can be lazy and still enjoy good results.

I did not "prime" my towers with any species of worms hoping they'd multiply and inhabit the dirt. I built on the premise of If-you-build-it-they-will-come. While planting my spring garden this past week, it became a common sight to shovel a spade or two full of dirt and have 1 to 3 worms in the dirt I removed. Two observations: populations were larger near the towers, most of the worms were small babies or juveniles. I didn't find many large adults, but they did show up occasionally. the fact that there were babies, the adult had to be around somewhere.

See, worms!

Was the new populations a direct result of the worm towers? I would say they helped, but they were not the sole reason worms came. Last year I had also trucked in and added about 3 inches of humus and manure composts to each bed. Then a few weeks later I added another 2-3 inches of wood mulch. I think all things combined provided for my success in creating habitable environment for native earth worms. Many eggs may have come to me in the compost to begin with that could have jump started my populations. In any case, they are here now and I am totally thrilled. The overall texture of my dirt is much improved from last year, it is moist and at least 50% more loamy than last year. Some beds are still a little dense, but I think they'll only continue to improve. All critter activity (meaning I found plenty of other bug and larvae types in the dirt in addition to the worms) is also up quite a bit from last year. I hope many of the others aren't pests, but they're sightings were only a 1/4 or less of those of the worms, so they're a minority.

To keep my populations happy, I did not till or turn my dirt this year. I've decided to add a nice layer of organic fertilizer and then another layer of mulch, about 3 inches. Last year's mulch and compost had decomposed and sunk down to the level of my beds, as I expected.

So that's how it has worked out for me. I plan to keep all my towers. Next year when I'm not 7 months pregnant, I'll probably move the towers to the corners of the beds instead of centered on the ends, I feel like there's wasted space trying to plant around them. The kids still love "feeding the worms"