Everything is growing so fast

The gardens this year are coming along so well I'm sort of stunned. It seems like for the last few years we've been thwarted from having the garden of our dreams (year 1: extremely time-consuming employment, year 2: wedding and honeymoon, year 3: international travel during the summer) and now we are in year four: new baby. But I have not let it stop me! Don't get me wrong - the baby does seriously alter my time usage. But I was back in the garden within 10 days of giving birth, and the gardening has been awesome.

We planted potatoes late this year (May 30th instead of May 1st), but the potatoes did not get the memo on that, and they are thriving.

Tater holes and soaker hoses in place, May 30th

Taters getting big and shrubby, peas climbing the fence in the back left, July 30

I attribute some of our potato success this year to sifting our soil. You can see in the first picture that the holes are vastly bigger than what you'd guess for planting a single spud. Well, the soil there has been compacted in past years, so this year we made a giant sifter with 1/4 x 1/4 inch woven wire mesh, a few fence staples, and some old boards. All the dirt we pulled out of these holes was shoveled onto the sifter and then raked across it. We then were able to refill all the tater holes with finely sifted, uncompacted, de-rocked earth and voila! Excellent potato growth.

The established xeriscape in the front yard, which I gaze out at from my home office, has taken off. With some nice fir mulch and a wet spring, it is gorgeous out there and getting nicer all the time.

Sometime in early June, just after mulching

Late July, flowers are blooming!

I'm happy to say that the xeriscape thrives on its own, now that the perennials are well rooted. Mulch, occasional thorough watering, and a few weeds pulled now and again are all this garden requires. That is the joy of using native plants, and drought-tolerant plants, in our climate. No muss, no fuss!

Last but not least, my baby is growing like a weed. He spends a lot of time in the shade of our sweet peas and dill, which create a nice cool baby micro-habitat.

Isn't he cute?

My sweet peas and dill were planted at the same time, and the dill grew faster than the peas, so they acted like each other's best friends. The peas are making healthy soil, and the dill creates a trellis for the peas to climb. It's pretty great.

From lawn to melon patch

A big project I had planned for this spring was to expand our vegetable garden possibilities by building a new, smaller bed next to our existing vegetable plot. This new bed will hopefully give us room to grow cantaloupes, small watermelons, and with any luck a pumpkin or two. We got started on the new bed this past weekend. Our method of starting a new bed is quite similar to the method Gardenaut Joshua McNichols described last week.

Here's how our process worked for getting this new bed started.

We created a border out of pine logs from trees that had fallen in one of the forested sections of our property. Fortunately this section is slightly uphill from the garden site so I was able to enlist gravity to get these logs to the site. Once they were close enough I just had to do some nudging to get them into position.

The next step was to mow the grass inside the bed with the mower on the lowest setting.

With the grass mowed it was time to lay down a layer of newspaper to help kill the grass and control weeds. My mom came over as we were working on this and brought us three bags of grass clippings from her yard. We typically wet the newspaper whenever we're building a new bed to keep it from blowing all over, but in this case I thought the grass clippings would do the job and add more organic matter to the bed as a bonus.

Once the newspaper and grass clippings were down it was time for the secret ingredient: Composted horse manure. It's no secret that this stuff makes things grow. I picked up about two cubic yards of it for $10. In the past I have found it for free, but had to drive three times as far to get it. My current source is only about 10 miles from my house so the $10 charge is worth it. I recommend craigslist if you'd like to find a source for this stuff close to you.

I'm glad I don't do this for a living.

To finish things off I added a layer of topsoil. A few years back I had about 10 yards of topsoil delivered that I thought I was going to use to fix up parts of my patchy and lumpy lawn. That hasn't happened, but the pile of topsoil is still sitting there.

The guy who sold it to me told me it came out of an old cornfield. The pile hasn't been covered so weeds have sprung from it to the point that my mother-in-law refers to it as "Mount Weed." With shovels and wheelbarrow we dug into Mount Weed for the bed's final layer.

Getting the topsoil in was fairly hard work. Mixing it in together with the horse manure wasn't any easier. The picture below shows about where we are with the bed now.

I really liked Joshua's method of sowing a cover crop in a new bed - particularly the use of the Daikon radishes since our subsoil is hard, red clay. I'm hoping the taproots from the radishes will be able to penetrate that layer and give the roots of future plantings a path to follow. I'll keep you posted on the progress of this bed and what level of production we're able to get this first year.

The beginning of another year's garden

It doesn't look like much now but my 2008 vegetable garden is officially underway. Eighteen bell pepper transplants are in (Red Beauty), as are 18 tomato plants (Roma, German Johnson, and Beefmaster). I picked these up at our local farmer's market, which is only about 2 miles from my house. I'd love to grow my own seedlings but I actually don't have a great spot to do that in the house - maybe a small greenhouse is in our future?

We picked up seedlings of the crazy tomato varieties I described in my first post but they're still pretty tiny and will likely need to be grown out a bit before planting. But that's ok. One thing I've noticed with tomatoes in our area is that even plants that are supposed to be indeterminate tend to wither and fade out by mid-to-late August. September and October are still prime growing months in our area of NC so if a few plants get in the ground a little later it may just mean an extended harvest - that works for me.

In addition to transplants we've also done some direct sowing of cucumbers (two varieties, but I can't remember the names), beans, and some peas. It's probably way too late for the peas to do much but that's ok. If they work out, great; if not, so be it. We'll learn something either way.

One of the most satisfying things about putting in this year's garden is seeing how much our soil has improved over the years. After four years of dumping as much organic material as we could get our hands on into the garden we're starting to see a terrific payoff. Our garden soil is dark and easily workable, it seems to hold water just right - it stays moist but is never soggy. The best thing we ever did for our garden soil was to put in about 4-5 cubic yards of composted horse manure. Wow, this stuff is really fantastic - and cheap!

Still to do in the garden is plant zucchini and basil and run soaker hoses up and down each row of plants. Once the hoses are in by the tomatoes I'll set a tomato cage around each plant. I use farmer's wire field fencing to make cages. I had a big roll of the stuff left over from a fencing project and decided it would be perfect for cages. I cut the bottom-most horizontal strand of wire off each cage and that leaves 6 or 7 vertical pieces of wire to serve as stakes to keep the cages anchored in heavy winds. The cages were cheap to make and are effective and durable - this will be our third season using them. Wire from the same field fencing also makes great stakes for holding soaker hoses in place. Using these stakes allows me to keep the hose right on the ground and right next to my plants.

One of my favorite things about gardening, and something I look forward to every season, is the daily ritual of coming home from work and checking on my plants. I check on everyone's progress and note who's thriving and who needs some attention. I usually don't see much change from day to day but over a season's worth of daily tending I've witnessed the growth of another year's garden.

Build a healthy garden over your lawn without breaking your back

After years of trial and error, I've finally developed a method for turning lawn into a lush garden with minimal effort. I only exert calories when it will truly benefit my plants. And I'm willing to wait an extra season for the soil to mature, rather than doing something radical like replacing all the dirt. But at the same time, I'm not willing to compromise the health of my soil. My methods are developed for the Pacific Northwest. In other areas, your soil type or climate might require some variations on this method. But if I moved somewhere else, I'd try this first, then tweak it as required.

1. Build a border. Do it right on top of your lawn, using galvanized Simpson framing straps to tie the corners together. I recommend using untreated 2x6 (or 4x6) lumber and just replacing it every decade or so. 2x8 is even better, as it allows you to add more topsoil. In a later post I'll explain the drawbacks associated with different kinds of treated lumber. You can, of course, garden without a wood border. But if you do, you need to scrape up the grass along the outer 12 inches of the perimeter. Bury the removed grass upside down under your newspaper - it's valuable organic material.
2. Apply a double helping of complete organic fertilizer. That's right - apply it at 2x the rate recommended on package. This is an expensive and important item. If you live in a rainy area, add agricultural lime too (from a garden store, not a construction center).
3. Lay down a couple layers of newspaper or cardboard. This step is optional but helps kill the grass more quickly.
4. Add at least four inches of a good topsoil mix. Never accept free soil - unless you know it's rich loamy stuff scraped off the few inches of a beautiful prairie right before the cul-de-sac went in. I always use my garden center's "premium three-way topsoil mix," a mixture of sand, compost, and loam. Sand contributes drainage, compost binds and slowly releases nutrients, and loam contributes minerals and sometimes drought tolerance, depending on content.
5. Grow a full season of cover crop. I include a variety of seeds in the mix. I like using alfalfa, some kind of vetch, fava beans, and fodder radish (fodder as in food for livestock). Vetches and fava beans are legumes, so they "fix" nitrogen in the soil. Books have been written on this process. But basically symbiotic bacteria living in colonies on legume roots pull nitrogen out of the air and bind it up in the plant. What the bacteria get out of the deal I don't know. Fodder radishes - big daikon radishes will work too - are quick to germinate and grow a huge taproot. Later, you chop them off at the top, allowing the taproots to remain in place. Alfalfa produces tons of green matter.
6. Harvest your crop, and return it to the soil. After the radishes have grown say three feet high, you're ready for your first harvest. But this time around, all your harvest goes back into the garden. If you don't have a compost bin, bury the green material in ditches in the garden, letting the roots rot in place. Some will resprout. The more you chop them up the less resprouting later.
7. Two weeks later, you're ready to plant. Letting the bed lie fallow for two weeks gives the greens time to decompose a little.

A new garden populated with cover crops and a few ornamental shrubs.

Here's the science behind the method:

• Other layered garden systems (such as the "lasagna method") typically suffer the first few years before the different layers have "mixed." Roots from tomato plants, for example, thrive in the fluffy stuff on top but can't penetrate the harder soil below your old lawn. Therefore, these gardens suffer from the slightest drought during the first year or two. That problem is reduced using my method. Cover crops send roots deep into the subsoil, breaking down the barriers between layers. Fibrous roots rich in nitrogen from the legumes, fleshy taproots from the radishes. When the roots rot, they form food sources and transportation corridors for worms. After the worms digest them, your tomatoes will send their own roots down these rich veins of worm doo-doo and on into the subsoil, where water hides during summer droughts. The taproots also pull up deep minerals from your subsoil, bringing them to the surface.
• Nitrogen-rich leaves buried in garden ditches will give their accumulated nitrogen back to the soil - and to your future garden plants.
• The fertilizer not only enriches the subsoil with minerals; it also provides fuel for microbes that help break down the grass and newspaper.

One of the biggest drawbacks of this method is that not everyone thinks cover crops are beautiful. If your intended product is a flower garden, many people will think they look weedy during the cover crop phase. But these crops have their own beauty when you look closely:

A blooming fodder radish.

Is your climate different? Here are some ways my climate impacts this process: Frequent spring rain speeds decomposition of buried greens, clay subsoil binds and keeps nutrients nearby when rain leaches them from the topsoil. If your soil is very sandy, you need to be extra careful never to leave your garden uncovered - beds should have garden plants, cover crops, mulch, or synthetic row cover at all times - or the nutrients will just wash down the drain.

Using this method, you'll find your soil rich with worms and the biological activity necessary for your plants to thrive. Other methods will allow you to garden immediately, but you'll do more work and your plants will need more frequent attention. I sneak cover crops in the bare nooks and crannies in my garden because I've come to love their inconspicuous flowers, disease resistance, and biological value.

Happy gardening!