Mulch For the Garden

  I've been concerned about the soil in my garden this year. I added a fresh a couple of inches of compost to most of raised beds this spring.

A couple of the beds had something growing in them, so I couldn't dig the compost into the existing soil there.

 

And it turns out that a couple of inches of compost on top of good soil isn't actually a good thing. Seeds wouldn't germinate in those beds. I planted some starts, sometimes the same variety as the failed seeds, and they grew just great. It's Not unusual for me to keep things growing all winter long in three or four of the beds.

 

So that got me thinking of other ways to improve my soil.

 

A secondary issue was with the top of the soil drying out, while the soil underneath stayed nice and moist. So some beds were getting over watered, while shallow-rooted plants would dry out.

 

The third issue is the common enemy of gardens. Weeds. I wanted to try to minimize the number of weeds that got started.

So I am mulching with wood chips. I put down a layer of pretty fine mulch: a mix of sawdust, sand, grass clippings, and a little compost, maybe half an inch.

 

Then I am adding wood chips over the top. It seems important that these are what I call full range wood chips, not all one size, but the full branch or the full tree, chipped up. There is a place in town where I can get a lot of these chips, if I'm willing to haul them myself. So I did.

 

In several of the beds with larger plants, Tomatoes, squashes, garlic etc, I added three or four inches of wood chips.

The idea is that over time, the wood chips on the bottom will compost, adding to the quality of the soil, keeping it loose for the plants. 

 

The top of the chips, being in the sun and weather, will compost much more slowly, giving stray weed seeds no room to germinate. 

 

When I plant seeds and starts next spring, I will dig down to the top of the actual soil, and plant them there. I have already planted several tomato starts (these were weeds that grew up throughout the gardens) in the chips on one of the beds. Seems to work pretty well.

 

So I have added the chips to about half of the beds. This winter, I will add chips to the rest of the beds. But I wanted to give them a head start on composting.

 

I have one compost bin full of chips, with the idea that it would break down a little over the next few months. I decided I needed to help the process some.

 

So I mixed those chips with fresh compost. That compost is about 1/3 grass clippings, 1/3 used pine chips from the chicken coop, and 1/3 soil from the top of the chicken yard. It's pretty rich.

 

So I've mixed all that together, and it's going to compost for the rest of the summer, and the fall. I'm expecting that it will do pretty nicely for garden beds mulch.

 

And just to be thorough, I added a couple of scoops of red worms from the worm bin. I'm not sure they will survive, but if they do, they will expedite the breakdown of these chips.

 

In future years, all I should need to do is add another inch or two of chips on the top of the beds. We'll see how well that works.

2020 Hanging Baskets

I'm trying some new things with some of the hanging baskets this year.

* I'm mixing varieties of plants in some of them.

* I'm making more hanging flower pots.

* I'm trying some new plants in hanging pots, that I have never put in hanging pots before.

Cucumbers, basil, beans. The beans at nitrogen to the soil, which makes the Cucumbers happy. In theory.

Tomatoes, cucumbers, basil.

Tomatoes, cucumbers, marigolds, basil.

Tomatoes, basil, ground cherries. I guess ground cherries are related to tomatoes some way.

Gutters for Peas

The idea is that we start peas in the configuration that we will grow them in the garden with. A rew of peas. Slide them out of the gutter like an ice core, into their final home in the garden.

Quarantine Gardening

So everybody needs to stay at home. But it's spring. And I have a garden. So let's make use of that. Here's what went in this weekend.

Romaine lettuce on the left. Black nebula carrots on the right. They're really dark purple carrots, and I've never grown them before, and they look really cool in the package. I thought I would give them a try.

I'm trying something new with the radishes. I'm having trouble, year after year, with slugs eating the seedlings.

But I have noticed that the slugs don't like kale. So I have planted this bit full of radishes, with kale planted around the perimeter. 

I don't know that I'll keep the kale. I have a pint Jar full of kale seeds, collected from last year.

The wire frame in the middle of this is for cucumbers, which won't get planted for at least a month. They will, theoretically, climb up this trellis to the archway overhead.

This will be the Brassica bed. The far-right are seedlings of Swiss chard, various colors. Then the red cups are protecting the kale, except that half The kale is outside the cups and the slugs aren't even touching it. Aha! 

Behind the compost bin, between the compost and the fence, is what would otherwise be wasted space. We can't have wasted space. So I spread some flower seeds, a variety of sunflowers and a variety of nasturtiums. We'll see what happens with that. These two varieties are generally pretty maintenance-free.

Update: this is a month later. 

Starting Carrots

This spring, I got a package of carrot seeds from Germany. Exciting!

So it seems that all the carrot seedlings got stuck in one place. 

The instructions said to soak the seeds in wet sand through four or five days first. 

I've never heard of that, but it clearly helped them germinate well! But the sand also helped them stick together. That's probably not best. 

So today I transplanted 100 carrot seedlings or so. I'm told that you can't transplant carrots. Seemed to work OK.

Update: the transplants did well.

Grape Arbor

I've had a couple of grape starts rooting in the greenhouse all fall and winter. This spring, they'll be ready for the Great Outdoors. So of course they'll need something to climb on.

Here it is under construction, and after installation in the chicken yard. I figure that the chickens can fertilize it, and if there are some grapes that fall to the ground, I'll bet they can clean them up.

It's Daylight Savings. Must Garden!

Planted Swiss Chard this weekend.

Package said, "Plant January through March."

















Had some kale starts. Set them out. Probably too early for these, not because of the calendar, but because they're too little. We'll see.
















Planted some peas. Sugar snaps.


















Set out some lettuce starts. Some Romaine, some Butter Crunch.

















Didn't do anything to the rhubarb, but it's coming up.