Waiting to Garden...

Spring is in the air, the Vernal Equinox is in only 2 weeks (March 20, 2011) but the weather is still very winter-y. I have been itching to get out in the garden.


A confirmed Plant-a-holic, I have houseplants to keep me occupied in the winter months, but there is nothing like getting out and digging in the dirt. We have had a large organic vegetable garden for the past 42 years and expect to have one until I die. But I have to admit, gardening our sloping mountain terrain was getting to be more work every year.

So we have been working on making our garden easier to work so we can be happy playing in the dirt as long into our future as is possible. This is a multi year project, of which 2011 is year 3.

Our garden is about 1/8 of an acre. In 2009 we built a retaining wall and leveled out the top 2/3 of our garden area. This had a downhill slope of 6' from top to bottom, not to mention the differences side to side. We built a 4' tall wall and dug down 3' at the top. This required moving a LOT of dirt!

The Skid Steer moving dirt!

Moving this much dirt is more than a shovel job, luckily we were able to get a Skid Steer to use. We carefully pushed all the top garden dirt with years of mulch & amendments to one side as we dug down into the thick clay that makes up most of the land here.

The area where the wall went needed to be level, with a big enough area to put in drainage behind the wall. Then we could begin to assemble the retaining wall block by block. The wall is of landscaping blocks that lock together, and requires no mortar.
Once the wall was built up we backfilled it with the dirt we had set aside and some topsoil we had trucked in from elsewhere. We left a wide sloping  path up one side to run wheelbarrows up to the top of the garden.

Garden steps and beds with mulch

There was still some steep slope beyond what we had planned on with the wall, so we put large rocks and made stairs for access to this part of the garden.

By now we were itching to get our plants in the soil, and the first part of our plan was actually accomplished! I cannot tell you how much easier it is to work level ground than the free form terraces with the endless raking they needed.

Finished wall with garden & dedicated flower row

In 2010 we did phase two of our plan. This required making three broad terraced areas out of the remaining bottom third of the garden and starting to install raised beds. We purchased raised bed kits from Naturalyards, as we wanted to take advantage of those who had a lot of experience. This was far too important a project for us to reinvent the wheel, and we learned a lot. We really wanted to make these beds gopher proof (see our earlier blog on Gophers - not for the faint of heart...), and try to keep out the noxious bindweed that plagues us here, as well.

Attaching hardware cloth to the bottom of the bed.

Our plan was to attach weedcloth, and then 1/2" galvanized hardware cloth, to the bottom of the beds before installing and filling them. This won't last forever, but it will last a long, long, time. We have a hardware cloth lined bed in our greenhouse that we installed in the 1990's and is still intact.

Assembled bed showing the cross braces

One of the important things we learned about raised beds is, if they are longer than 6 feet, you need to have cross bracing to keep them from bowing out when they are filled with dirt. These beds are assembled with aluminum rods (aluminum won't rust) that are driven down through pre-drilled boards. Where there is a joint between two boards of a long bed you insert a metal strap and run the rod through that as well, to hold it in place.

Another thing we discovered is how much better it is to have a top trim on the bed so you have a place to sit or place tools or harvest baskets.

We use drip irrigation (from DripWorks) in the beds and T-tape, another form of  drip irrigation, to the beds in the terrace for ease of irrigation and conservation of water.

These changes have been a complete success. We raised onions, greens, cabbages, beets, broccoli, and the most perfect gopher-free carrots we have ever grown, in these beds last year. Currently we have fall-planted garlic and cabbage, as well as this years onions and beets in the ground. The terrace behind the retaining wall has proved easy to work and had a fabulous harvest of corn, tomatoes, squash, beans and other larger crops. On top of that, it was easier than it has ever been to keep our garden going

If all goes as planned, we hope to build 2 to 4 more beds this year. In every way these changes have met or exceeded our expectations, and I see wonderful fresh vegetables and flowers in our future.

Balance...

My haiku for 2/8 - Tai chi mirrors life/ Expanding and contracting/ Around our center.

It has been a wild year so far. On the one hand, it has been the warmest year to date ever recorded worldwide, yet here it has been snowing on and off on the 21st & 22 of May! By now most of our garden is usually planted. Not this year.

From volcanoes to floods, earthquakes to tornadoes and other windstorms, nature has been wild much of the time. Our man made events, especially the massive oil rig collapse and resulting leak and slick in the Gulf of Mexico, are just as dramatic.
On top of that we focus on other less dramatic, but still incredibly important on other scales, affairs of politics, community, personal life. It's a wonder that any of us is able to maintain any cheerfulness at all. But it is the nature of living things to move toward the future with hopefulness and to seek balance and joy in their lives.

I have some favorite quotes to share:

"To the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hoping are optimistic." -Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (1875-1965)

How can you work for change and to better your life without optimism?

"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; and absurdities crept in; Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense." -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

How can we move forward if we are ever buried under the baggage of the fear of what we did wrong in the past?

"I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. and behold, service was joy." -Rabindranath Tagore, philosopher, author, songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel laureate (1861-1941)

How can you live life with joy until you recognize the acts you perform in life are joyous?

What is in the world, good and bad, is what is. With this knowledge you can go forth and do the best you can. It should not impede you from doing good for yourself, your family, your community and the world. Rather it should empower you to know that anything you can achieve counts. Everything counts. And every positive accomplishment, no matter how small, is an important move forward. It is our response to life that balances what happens.

Today is not the day I can plant my garden. It is freezing and too wet. The garden will go in very late, the fruit trees will bear little. But the soil is refreshed and the water table is restored after many dry years. The garden will catch up the way it does when the conditions warm to its liking.
And I am learning to be patient.

Sun Worship - of the Culinary Kind

Patience... must have patience. It is April 16 and it's cloudy again after only 1 day of sun (yesterday) in what seems like forever! It snowed on Easter and several times since, when it wasn't raining instead. I appreciate the good this is doing for the water table, but I WANT SUN!

I shouldn't complain too much. Despite a full work day, we took full advantage of the sunny day we were given, and I hear there is hope for the near future.
I had been hoarding large laundry items such as towels and the dog blanket for the car, and we were able to get these washed and dried outside on the line. In wet weather we have a retractable clothesline and a wooden drying rack upstairs that works great for most stuff.

We also got the solar oven set up and managed to get the two most common (for us) solar dishes cooked before the sky became covered with the high clouds of today's dreariness. First was rice.
By far the easiest way to get perfect brown rice is to bake it, and the solar oven is perfect. We try to use covered glass casseroles for most of our solar cooking, and this is no exception. In a 2 1/2 Qt. casserole place 2 cups of rice and 4 cups of water. Cover and place in preheated solar oven and cook until all the water has disappeared. Voila` Perfect rice! See the wonderful Spanish Rice recipe from Morning Hill Cookbook on an earlier blog post (in the comments section).

Once the rice was done, we immediately replaced it with Banana Cake. Our family has never been big fans of banana bread (which would also bake fabulously in the solar oven), we prefer a cake to use up those bananas that have gotten softer than we like to eat fresh. We bake it in an 8" square pan and serve it without frosting, although you could fancy it up that way if you like.

Simmonsville Solar Banana Cake:
Mix together and set aside:
2 1/2 cups flour (we use whole wheat)
1/2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

In mixing bowl,
cream 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
Add 1-1/2 cups brown sugar (you can use 3/4 cup honey instead) and beat until light.
Beat in 2 eggs, one at a time
Stir in 1/2 tsp cinnamon
(Optional - add 1/4 tsp cardamom)

In a 2 cup measure mash 1 cup bananas (3 bananas is perfect)
Add 1 tsp vanilla and 1/4 cup yogurt or buttermilk

Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in about 3 parts, alternating with the banana mixture, blending until smooth after each addition.
Stir in:
1/2 cup chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans) and/or dried cranberries, dried blueberries or whatever inspires you!
Bake in greasecd 8x8 inch or 9x13 inch pan (thinner, but just as good) in preheated solar oven until done . It will be brown on top and, when tested with a toothpick or broomstraw - should come out dry.
In conventional oven, bake at 350 degrees for about 1/2 hour.

Enjoy!
P.S. I am happy to finally get to post this on a SUNNY day 9 days later...

We've got worms!

Fortunately not the icky internal kind, but those great little wrigglers who till and enrich the soil.

A couple of years ago a friend gifted me a book, "The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms" by local author Amy Stewart. A wonderful treatise on the wonders of small subterranean creatures, it inspired me to add earthworms back into our tended livestock - but indoors this time. I cannot begin to tell all the amazing things earthworms do, read the book or check out this info.) but suffice it to say, they work diligently to their own end, which conveniently helps make the planet habitable for us all.

Back when we had a lot of critters (goats, sheep, pigs, rabbits, etc.) and before we had a business, we kept a worm bin beneath our rabbit cages. One of the great symbiotic relationships of all time, of immeasurable benefit to gardeners, rabbit manure is one of the very best in the garden and one of worm's favorite habitats. The redworms we inoculated that pile with ultimately migrated on their own throughout much of our farm, and we personally introduced them to our vegetable garden where they could do the heavy work of moving nutrients and aerating the soil for us.

But that was a long time ago now, and I miss the wonderful abundance of worm castings and manure for vegetables, flowers, and houseplants. Our garden compost pile has become a happy worm habitat, and provides enough for us to use when transplanting and topdressing the garden, but I can always use more, and pure worm castings for houseplants and outdoor container plants is the best.

After looking into the many plans for home made and pre-manufactured worm bins and ultimately settled on the "Can O' Worms" recommended by Amy in her book.
We have had it going on our back porch over a year now, and we are hooked (you can get one at Abundant Earth). The basic idea in most of these is: worms move up in their world, looking for new food as they eat the old food, and leave behind nutrient-rich castings (yup, worm poo).
Worm bins are multi level condos, and as the worms move to the top level you can remove the bottom one and empty the finished castings onto your plants, moving the empty tray to the top to continue the process. Simple.

Things we discovered...
• You can overfeed them. If you do, what you end up with is a proliferation of fruit flies (vinegar flies). Prevent this by feeding less and/or covering the scraps you feed them with a thin layer of dirt or newspaper.
(An effective fruit fly trap: place a small amount of wine, red or white, in a small jar or bowl. Cover with plastic file or? and poke a few holes in it. The holes need to be slightly bigger than you may think, say 1/16" or so. this will catch a lot of flies pronto and they die hapopily intoxicated, I think!)
• Tea bags disappear faster than anything!
• Keep them moist. The worm casting "tea" you can drain off (see spigot on Can O' Worms) is great, if smelly, fertilizer.

There are a lot of preparations concocted by we humans for the benefit of plants. The nursery carries a zillion natural and synthetic things I can buy - but the worms do this job for me providing a soil conditioner and fertilizer that cannot be beat.
---

And how to clean up after getting dirty playing with your worms? Use Simmons Soap of course!

Summer's arrival...

in actuality, if not weather.

42 degrees this morning and all day cool, foggy, & gray. Even some drizzle.

Our spring has been unseasonably dreary and cool. From earlier thunderstorms to recent days of coastal fog (but we are NOT on the coast!), it sure doesn't feel like tomorrow is Summer Solstice.

On the one hand we yearn for sun and warmth and all that can be done outside on these long days. On the other it is making it a little less painful as we wait to complete a garden retaining wall to plant the bulk of our vegetable garden. But even with only 1/3 of the garden in production we have been harvesting quite a bit of food.

Last night we ate the first of the artichokes from the plants we planted in March. We have lots of kale and Swiss chard and radishes are now in every salad. We are on our third planting of lettuce and arugula, and the garlic is close to harvest. We have picked broccoli, the cauliflower is ready, and cabbages are heading up (already time to start seed for the fall cole!).

To get us a bit ahead, both of the wall project and the cooler weather, we have been planting our greenhouses with peppers, basil, cucumbers, and squash, as well as a few tomatoes. I am sure we will end up with more than we need (that is, plenty to share) as we usually do (despite the fact that the gophers ate 99% of the onions). Gardens are like that. Not to mention an addiction of the best sort.

If you have followed the news, you will know that 73 pounds of lettuce & 12 pounds of peas were picked this past week from the White House garden. The little organic garden Michelle Obama started at the White House has been feeding them for some time.

What a great example for the country. How to eat well, get exercise, and save money at the same time. Here's to an addiction that actually improves your health!!