What's your gardening style and/or process?

[SBT]

Many Subaru owners, my family included, grow food for themselves, and for their communities.

 

I'd like this to be an info-sharing and best-practices thread, where members can share whatever you're doing, what's working, what's not and what your next plans are.

 

We just recently started development of a 10-acre community garden in addition to our home garden. Lots of lessons learned, but the main take-away, is that low-water, organically grown vegetables, fruits, nuts, all grown and harvested from un-turned soil, along with organic eggs and honey is doable on a micro and macro-scale. And the flavor is unbelievably full and rich.

 

 

 

Jump in and tell us what you're doing and how it's going.

[dark_rex]

My family does quite a bit of gardening. Everyone has their own plots at their homes, and a few of us have taken over my grandfathers plot where we do a lot of larger scale work.

 

We just finished our late season work out there, planted and mulched about 120 heads of garlic, and harvested the last of our carrots which we left in until after the first frost. Because of the extra couple weeks we waited, we were rewarded with gigantic product.

 

 

Flavor is great too. The old addage I always heard, was waiting to harvest the root veggies until a frost makes them sweeter. I'm not sure if that's why they taste great, but they do!

 

dR

[SBT]

Those are really good looking carrots. Could see halving them, coating them in some light olive oil and seasonings and grilling those over a low charcoal fire with some Ichiban eggplant, Vidalia onion layers, sweet potato and potato wedges and some bay shrimp, all similarly seasoned. Couple that with a good Chardonnay and voila; amazingly delightful meal. But just pulling them and eating them raw sounds pretty appealing too.

[dark_rex]

Love grilling/roasting them! Temps maybe low, but my grill/pit is always hot.

 

We've got a lot, so pickles, salads etc. will all get their share. It's also soup/stew season, and my brother's already laid claim to a bunch of them for that.

[SBT]

Some background on our gardening efforts past and present.

I’ve been gardening for as long as I can remember, and we as a family, hunted, fished, and gardened to produce nearly all of our food. We preserved it and stored everything that we didn’t need for immediate consumption. Add to that fresh, homemade bread, and the only thing we bought was milk, butter, sugar – things my parents called “staples”.

 

My own family has grown and developed, and I’ve passed these self-support skills on to them. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve also come to realize that growing food is both a gift and a dying art. And, it deeply troubles me that there are people who do not have access to fresh foods, who get all of their “sustenance” from an over-processed box of dead food, or are too old, disabled, or disadvantaged to produce it for themselves.

 

When we found a 10-acre piece of property that had been lying fallow for a long while, we asked and were granted rights to turn it into a community garden to produce food for those who couldn’t produce it for themselves, or would otherwise have no access to fresh food. This food would be available for whoever needed it at no charge to them.

 

We’ve just started this year and the results have been consistent and encouraging. The quantity of food produced from this 6000 SF proof-of-concept plot is staggering. The flavor, density, and quality of the produce has been equally amazing.

Here’s some of our lessons learned – some may surprise you. I know we’ve learned some unexpected things as we pursue development of this community garden.

 

Starting conditions

We've found, both with our own garden and now with the community garden, that the deeper and looser your soil is, the better your plants will grow, especially your root vegetables and tubers, and the better it will be for all of your in-ground and above-ground plant's root systems and their resultant nutrient uptake. But that cannot be at the expense of opening or turning the soil.

There's too much downside to conventional tilling and turning. Namely, when you kill off the naturally-occurring micro-organisms and the beneficials, you have to add something unnatural back into the equation to recover and increase fertility (but this is only temporarily). An even larger downside is that what you typically add, further reduces your soils micro-culture, further reducing productivity, soil structure and fertility. Work with the soil to increase its depth, structure and fertility naturally, and you'll reap great reward.

If your soil is hard or compacted (ball your dry soil up in your hand, does it sticks together in a clump?) then that would typically indicate some level of clay content. All of the typical soil around here starts with ~1-3" of top soil with one to several feet or more of red clay under it. The community garden plot started with ~1½” of soil and 2+ feet of red clay. Not a great starting point for a productive garden.

 

So, rather than turning and mixing that clay, and to ensure we didn't expose and compromise the microbial activity and those beneficials already in the soil layer to drying winds, freezing temps and UV light, which all kill or drastically reduce their numbers and reduce their productivity, we just started layering on top of the ground.

 

We did this with organic composted horse manure, and mulching above that with wood chips for water retention and long-term nutrient contribution. By layering, the microbial activity has gone into hyper drive and worms, and other beneficials are multiplying rapidly, and, as a result, soil structure and fertility are increasing daily. Note: This could not happen in high-nitrogen soil conditions…that’s actually harmful. (more on all of this below)

 

Process

To start, we cleared all of the grasses and removed whatever pernicious weeds and saplings that we could find, put down a boundary layer of 100 lb paper (7' wide rolls) and for our starting layer, we put down a 2-3" layer of composted manure on top of the paper, and then put a 3-4" blanket of fresh chips directly on top of the manure.

 

We started with a small amount of rich soil, which had been fallow for ~10 years, and added ~ 5-7” of compost and mulch on top of that. That 5-7” is now ~1-2”. There is already 4” of growing medium before you reach the start of the former clay level, which itself is starting to benefit from the care and feeding above it.

 

Immediate benefits:

 

1. Weeds and grasses were snuffed-out by the paper layer
   
2. As the composted manure and fresh chips decomposed, they broke down the paper layer and started feeding the microbial activity in the soil layer below
   
3. With just your hand you can dig-down ~4-5” to the clay which doesn’t look much like clay anymore – it’s being transformed as well
   
4. There are worms everywhere in the soil, foraging on the organic matter and leaving behind wonderful worm castings and tons of worm cocoons signaling even more worm activity.
   

Fresh Chip Mulch

Fresh wood chips, particularly from hard woods, are best. By "fresh", I mean live, growing tree trunk and large limb chips, and their shredded twigs and leaves. Fresh chips are easily sourced, for free, from your local tree service folks, i.e., Ashplundh. They are always looking for places to off-load their tree-removal by-products. They've probably delivered 300-500 CY of fresh chips and we're expecting likely that much more in dry chips this winter (more on dry chips below)

Here's the thing about wood chips and what makes them such a great mulch layer. When there is water available, i.e. rain or irrigation, the chips uptake the water and hold it. As the air around the chips causes the surface to dry out, the chips release the water, which migrates downward, washing decomposed nutrients into the soil layers below and nourishing the plantings.

 

But isn’t there a danger that adding wood chips to your soil creates a nitrogen sink which robs your soil of fertility and decreases productivity?

 

What we've learned about using wood chips for mulch, is that when you bury fresh wood chips (leaves, twigs, branches and trunk wood) and uncomposted manures, in the soil, they, indeed, do become a nitrogen sink.

 

But, when left to decompose on top of the soil, they breakdown and cumulatively add nitrogen and minerals to the soil at a slower, absorbable, usable rate. Hence why we layer, and don't mix. In a couple of years, these will be fully broken down and part of the soil structure, adding additional aeration and trace amounts of organic nitrogen and minerals. The soil has already gained fertility and health and the clay layer underneath is being naturally amended and converted… you have to see this to believe it.

 

When our tree service delivers the fresh chips, it’s typically all hardwoods. Sometimes, it will be a mix of soft and hard woods, i.e., pine, cedars, larches, oak, hickory, maple, walnut, pecan and assorted shrubbery.

 

We know from studying these trees, that they have varying Ph growing requirements and tend to have varying Ph levels inherent in their structure as a result.

But doesn’t mixing these types of trees influence the soil Ph values when you add them as mulch chips to your soil?

 

Here's another interesting thing we've noted about fresh, mixed and unmixed chips.

 

When these "combined" chips break down, and I don’t chemically know how this is possible, they have a resulting Ph that is neither acidic nor alkali, and it supports whatever the Ph requirement of any plant planted in/with this mulch. It has to be something in the breakdown process that turns a potential liability into a benefit.

 

For Example: If I want to plant blueberry’s or sweet potatoes, or radishes, which typically love “acidic soil”, or I want to plant lettuce and corn, beans and peas, which love an “alkali soil”, I plant them all in soil mulched with mixed chips. And they thrive. And the soil tests out beautifully. We also know that an azalea which loves highly acidic soil, will grow comfortably and well in soil that also supports an adjacent oak tree which wants a more alkali soil. Nature does this day-in and day-out and never worries a thing about the soil’s Ph.

Seasonal Prep

For over-wintering, we plan to layer, 3-4" of composted horse manure, with 6" of fresh wood chips, and just cover the whole of the garden with it. We put this right over the other, earlier, layers and it all continues to break down, feed and protect the beneficials below, and enrich the soil as a result.

 

One Asplundh truck load of fresh chips is approximately 30 CYs, and that will decompose to about ½ that amount in the first year. The faster you put those fresh chips on your garden, the sooner the rain and gravity can carry those nutrients into your garden soil.

 

Dry Chips

During the winter we also source just dry chips. These come from trees that have been harvested and chipped up, but don't have any fresh leaves incorporated into the mix – so not a lot of active nitrogen and a lot of carbon and residual minerals, which are really beneficial to soil. These we put down in 8-10" boundary layers everywhere around the periphery of the garden, and where we're going to start beds in the future.

 

They break down slower, and enrich the soil by providing both a boundary and moisture retaining layer. Additional benefit is that the better our periphery layers are, the less we deal with weed incursions into the garden, through migration or wind-blown plantings. Weed seeds won't propagate on dry wood chips, and if they do, you can just rake over the top layer and the weeds come right out. No fuss, no muss. And, if weeds do get started around your plants, you can just pluck them out with your fingers due to the loose soil structure. That is both difficult and frustrating in hard or tight soil.

 

Working Layer

During the growing season, we've got a 5-7" working layer of light, non-compacting growing medium that is becoming richer and deeper with each iteration. And we haven't turned one ounce of the underlying soil. You can ball this up in your fist, or drive over it repeatedly, which we don't do, but you could, and it would still be crumbly. And the clay base, which previously compacted and dried-out like flint, is now being converted to rich, moist, black soil, much to our amazement.

We use no commercial fertilizers except OMRI-approved blood-meal and micronized Azomite (1 TBS and 1/3 cup respectively) into each transplant hole) and the same application for each 12-18" of seed-line planting. Blood meal for the initial nitrogen boost to kickstart plant shoot development, and Azomite for the primary mineral and rare-earth elementals uptake that adds so much flavor to the produce. What the plants don’t uptake, remains in the soil which is also getting the rest of the sustainment minerals and nutrients from the layers above.

When we plant, we dig down through the mulch/compost layer, and plant in the soil base. When we seed-line plant, we use a rake or a hoe to pull back the chip layer, and then pull a line through the soil at whatever depth the seeds need to be, add the blood meal and Azomite, pull the soil back over, wait until the seeds germinate and have put out their 2nd set or shoots and then pull the mulch layer back around the shoots.

Next Steps

Our plan is to double the size to 12,000 SF during this winter and prep it for spring planting. We are definitely planning to add organic eggs and honey to the mix next year. Double benefit, the chickens will get all of the plant remains they can ever want, and will turn that into organic gold manure, and rich, organic eggs. The garden at large will have all of the pollinating it needs, and the bees will have access to all of the pollen and nectar harvesting they need.

 

There are already pecan and black walnut trees on the property and we plan to add an orchard and a vineyard to introduce organic apple, pear, peache, plum, apricot, and fig trees and plant several varieties of grapes by the end of next year as they all need to be sourced and planted during next winter.

 

At some point, I hope we can introduce hoop sheltered growing to keep production going year round. I also envision, at about the 3-5 year point, this will have a market garden component to it as well where the community, retailers and restaurants can purchase food and the whole operation becomes self-sustaining. But we’ll always keep our eye focused on our primary goal, to feed those who don’t have what they need.

Thoughts and comments welcomed

[SBT]

Love grilling/roasting them! Temps maybe low, but my grill/pit is always hot.

 

We've got a lot, so pickles, salads etc. will all get their share. It's also soup/stew season, and my brother's already laid claim to a bunch of them for that.

 

We grill year-round as well. I'll even fire up the volcano stove for some stacked cast iron cooking in the middle of the winter with snow on the ground. Pull-out some stored potatoes, rutabaga, parsnips, carrots, corn, beans, and tomatoes and add-in some stew meat to the main course layer, and just let that percolate with the biscuits or cornbread in the second layer and a cake or crumble for dessert in the third layer.

 

 

 

My wife makes an awesome mulligatawny soup, all from scratch and adding fresh from the garden veggies to it makes it that much more scintilating from a flavor structure.

 

BTW - the cukes, squash and melons from our garden this year were some of the best we've ever grown. We only grow from heirloom seeds from organic providers (check out Seed Savers for heirloom open pollinated seeds).

 

The honeydew melons were all in the 6-8 lb range, and the watermelons all topped out over 45 lbs, one was 53.8 lbs. The honeydew skins were so thin, less than 3/16" and the melon meat was sweet, intense minerally flavor, and dense and succulent all the way to the skin layer. Similar results with the watermelons. Cukes and squashes I could not keep up with and they were a burst of flavor and rich denseness in every bite. I've never grown or even tasted anything that comes close to how good these were.

 

I attribute it all to the layering improvement to the soil and adding-in the Azomite. First year for using it.