Know Your Mulch

It has been an unusually busy spring, with multiple last minute trips to Seattle, above average rain fall, and above average weeds.

We mulched our garlic with oat straw to keep the weeds down, and it worked really well.  We hardly have any weeds growing in our garlic field.  We do however have tons of oats growing in our garlic field.  In some places the oats are so thick you can hardly see the garlic.  It's sickening to look at.  Lesson learned, buy cleaner straw mulch.  Actually, I'm thinking we may go with leaf mulch next time or if we continue growing garlic and get a new bedder, getting a plastic mulch attachment.  I know I've been against laying down plastic to keep weeds out, but this season might just put me over the edge.

We got our new garden beds built and planted.  It took 51 landscaping ties per bed.  The long sides are easy, three 8 footers with every other row starting with 4 footers to offset the seams.  The short sides however took pieces that were 52 inches long in order to get the 4 feet of space in the middle.  The corners overlap and I drilled through with a 2 foot long 1/2 inch arbor bit, then drove a 2 foot piece of rebar through the corner to hold them together.

There are 3 cross pieces you can see in the picture below to hold the sides from bowing out.  I also drilled through this part and drove a piece of rebar to hold them together.  With 192 cubic feet of soil inside these beds, the cross members are necessary to keep them from falling over with the pressure.

The spacing between the boxes is 5 feet, enough to fit our lawn mower.  The beds are 2 feet high and weeding is SO much easier now.  I think we actually weed more because we don't have to kneel and bend over to do it.

We wound up with extra space this year because of the lack of hot peppers that sprouted, not planting onions, and not planting corn.  So we decided to put in 2x the number of carrots, 32 sq ft or 512 plants.  And we decided to try something new, growing watermelon.  I'm excited to eat our own watermelon, and judging by how well our past crops have all done, we will likely have enough to make some watermelon wine.

We didn't plant the 1/2 acre of corn like we talked about and we didn't put in a pumpkin patch.  We really just ran out of time.  Between me traveling, remodeling our house, and raining 4 out of 5 days, we barely got our garden in.  But therein lies the beauty of doing things yourself, no corn but we have a new bathroom; no pumpkin patch, but we have new raised beds.  And those ideas of corn, corn mazes, pumpkins, fall pig roasts, etc. can all be put up for the next season.

Evening looking across our field

Spring Beginnings

It's been a busy week on our homestead.  With the warmer temperatures and lots of rain, our garlic really popped up. 

Garlic growing

We were really excited to see the garlic coming up through the straw mulch we put down.  And now we just can't wait to see how well it does at keeping the weeds down.  Because we plant in raised beds, we put the straw down really thick in between the beds and about 1 inch thick on top of the beds.  Next year, we want to mulch in the fall instead of the spring.

Today we got our new egg laying chickens, 8 red sex links.  We can't wait to have fresh, organic eggs again.  Since our chickens stopped laying in December, we've probably eaten 3-4 dozen eggs total in 4 months, compared to 2-3 dozen a week. 

New chickens

Now on to the chores and to-do list.  Fences to take down, fences to put up, new electricity in the barn, new raised garden beds, and the list goes on and on.

Starting Seeds

Last year we bought a Burpee XL Ultimate Growing System and it worked very well.
http://www.burpee.com/seed-starting/grow-kits/xl-ultimate-growing-system-prod002628.html

However, it used those expanding peat moss biscuits that were enclosed in a mesh, which I didn't care for.  The watering system though was fabulous.  We could go up to 7 days without watering and we had excellent plants; by far my best seedlings ever.  The cover doesn't exactly fit the tray and is fragile.  I cracked it trying to get it down on the one corner, but it still works well.

This year I decided to use the peat pots with the self watering mat and tray.  We are also trying Jiffy Natural & Organic Seed Starting Mix.  In the past I have used my own compost, but this year it's under 2 feet of snow and frozen solid.

Our seed starting setup

We've grown our vegetables from seed for years now with several different setups but all basically the same.  Hanging above the bench is a $20 shop light from Home Depot with daylight T-8 bulbs.  Then it's one or two flats of cells and a little plastic dome that goes over them (the dome seems to be very important until the plants get pretty big).  Under the trays is a heating pad.  The cells I like to use are the larger ones where you get 36 cells per tray.  With these Jiffy Strips, we get 50 cells per tray.

I will review the starting mix and the Jiffy Strips in the upcoming weeks.

New Garden Design

After gardening with a square foot garden made of 2x6 for several years, and complaining about things each year, I've decided to try use a different approach going forward.

I want to keep with the intensive planting that Square Foot Gardening introduced me to, but improve upon a couple of things.  First is to build my beds about knee high, so roughly 2 feet high.  The hope is to save our backs a little, make mowing easier, and provide more nutrient rich soil to the vegetables. 

With a bed this high, we are planning on using landscaping timbers stacked up and connected with long nails.  We'll see how that goes.  Otherwise we'll connect them with 1/2 in bores and rebar.  But with beds this high and using landscaping ties, we are also planning on making our beds 20 feet long.  This will actually make the foot print of our garden smaller.  Right now we have 4 feet between each box on each side.  So with this set up, we will only need 2 long beds to get the same space as our 9 beds AND our four 1x4 beds!!

Another advantage that going from 13 beds to 2 beds is that an automated irrigation system becomes a lot more manageable and cheaper.  Even without an automated system, watering will definitely be easier.  Our final improvement with the beds is to put hardware netting on the bottom of them to keep the moles out of the beds.  We've lost too many crops to moles/voles over the years.

Our spacing between our beds will allow us to mow in-between the beds.  So maintenance between the beds will now consist of one pass with the lawn mower.

We will continue planting in our intensive, "square foot" way, but will have to think more carefully about where we plant things.  We will also have to get a lot more soil into the beds.

So as I get my seeds started this weekend, I'll be spending plenty of time thinking about the logistics of where things will be planted, how much space they take, etc.