Days of Mulch and Sunflowers

Gardening has slowed a little this year. Days are warm (after being hot for a week or so), but the nights are still cool, so cool that we had frost warnings night before last.

So the tomato seedlings (Better Boy, Mr. Stripey, Sweet 100, Red Oxheart and a new one: Viva Italia) are still inside the greenhouse, along with the green, sweet red and cayenne peppers,the Sweet Italian basil, the thyme, the chives, the parsley, and the sweet marjoram.

I may continue to coddle them until next weekend, just in case.

Meanwhile, this afternoon was spent spreading a trailerload of mulch on the former hollyhock flowerbed. It use to be impossible to kill hollyhocks, but somehow the thick bed I've had for years has thinned out. A few hollyhocks come up along the edges, but none in the middle, so today I tossed in a lot of sunflower seeds -the big 12 foot mammoth ones - and then covered them with mulch.

After that, two 5 gallon buckets of strawberry plants were installed in between the blueberry bushes, covered with pine straw and watered with the drip hose. Blueberries and strawberries both love acidity in their soil. The pine straw mulch not only keeps the pH of the soil acidic, but it also keeps the water from evaporating and keeps the weeding to a minimum.

Also planted today: 1/2 each of a set of red onions and a set of white onions (these went in with the roses - roses LOVE onions), a flat of basil seed, and another flat of oregano seed.

I also broke down and thinned the peas. I hate thinning plants. It seems so cruel to plant the seed, water it, nurture it and then pull it up for no other reason except it has too many siblings.

This weekend plans include *finally* connecting the remaining water barrels, putting up trellis for the peas, adding fertilizer to the straw bales, and planting beans.

Unless it snows, freezes, or we have another frost.

The First Full Day of Gardening

.....And the exhaustion that follows. This time of year I've been busy laying out the spring garden plan - a few new crops are being added, and some of last year's crops have to be rotated. I've also been making long lists of various outdoor housekeeping chores that will get the garden up to speed.



Once all that planning is done, there's that first long warm day in the garden. That happened this weekend. Never mind there's going to be three nights this week with temps at the freezing mark. We've started!



Yesterday was the first mulch run out to my folks farm. They have pine tree forests where I can rake up all the pine straw I need (blueberries are notoriously fond of pine straw), and the local tree-trimmers grind and dump their load of trimmings there as well, providing excellent mulch.



Raking pine straw is easy. We carry pitchforks and giant, contractor plastic bags to hold the pine straw (and they are re-used many, many times). This is one of those times I wish I had a pickup truck.

With a rake and a pitchfork, we can fill two bags in under 15 minutes. Each bag holds the same amount as 1.5 bales of pine straw if you purchased it at Lowe's.

Right after the pine straw we move the van over to the oldest pile of mulch, procured for free from the tree-trimmers. They love having a free place to dump because it means they don't have to drive to the landfill and pay to tip the truck. And we can use all the mulch we can get, in addition to sharing it with family and friends.


The van holds six large bags, in this case 2 bags of pine straw, and 4 bags of mulch. If I had remembered the string or twist ties, we could stack the bags longways, and fit 8 in the van.


Today the bagged straw and mulch was spread: pine straw on the blueberries and newly planted peas, and mulch on the new potato and tomato beds.

This is the blueberry patch - the little buds and a very few leaves are just starting to show, so the sixteen plants are hard to see. Before the pine straw was spread, we first added three bags of hardwood sawdust (only untreated wood is usable). Blueberries need a lot -a *LOT*- of water, and the sawdust will soak up rain and hold it for days, especially when covered with the pine straw.

The two rows of fencing on the left are going to be sugar snap peas this year, and the row to the right will eventually be green peppers. Further to the right will be various herbs.

The grassy area in the foreground was originally going have a canopy over it, with potted herbs, so I'd have some shade to work under. We have the canopy (actually 2), but it seems everytime we are ready to put it out, the wind picks up, and I can see us having to constantly take it down and put it up.

The eventual idea now is to make a wood pergola, and possibly a pea gravel floor. To prepare for that, this summer we'll lay down thick layers of newspaper, thoroughly wet them down, then lay wooden pallets on top. Some gaps between the pallet boards will be filled in with top soil, and then, probably in early May, gourd seeds will be planted. I love the smell of gourd leaves (like baking bread), plus their roots will help breakdown the grass, and the gourds themselves will sit on top of the pallets and stay dry and clean. After the growing season, we'll pull up the pallets, and the ground will be grass-free and ready for pea gravel, and hopefully our wallets will be ready to add the pergola.

This is a grassy patch from last year that was prepared for planting with a trailer-load of horse manure, and leaves. Today it was planted with garlic bulbs.

Before we quit today, with aching backs and faint sunburn, we also:

Planted four buckets of forsythia starts to form a live hedge (that hopefully will break the sight lines of our barking schnauzers)

Planted one bucket of rose campion up under the locust tree, as an addition to the flowerbed of purple irises.

Spread fertilizer, lime and manure on three beds that needed it.

Planted a 12x12 ft raised bed of potatoes. This bed has been lasagna gardened for years, with the latest layer being straw. All my daughter did was cut seed potatoes in half (makng sure each half has at least one eye), randomly sprinkled them on top of the straw, and then added a layer of mulch. No digging. We all hate digging here. It's probably genetic.

The middle of the potato bed has a circular wire bin, about 4 feet tall, that serves as a compost bin.

I just keep adding organic material to it: grass clippings, leaves, kitchen waste (except meat or dairy), coffee grounds, sawdust, non-diseased plants, anything organic. It decomposes, and feeds the entire bed. Last year, I planted cukes on the outside of it and tomatoes all around it. No need to fertilize this bed at all - the compost bin does it all (and no need to move the bin contents or turn it).

There's plenty more to do, but we got at least 80% of today's list done.

This week's weather is calling for lots of rain, and at least three nights of freezing weather, so all the additives and planting we did today will take nicely.

After the last freeze is over, we can start on ponds, rain barrels, gearing up tomato seedlings, and deciding whether or not to plant sweet corn this year.

Meanwhile I'm making more lists.

Calorie Free Lasagna Gardening For People Who HATE to Dig

It's about that time again. Almost spring, and I need to start thinking about how to put in the gardens, whether to enlarge, condense or maintain.

By now the memories of the August Tomato Avalanches have faded (the ones where all my tomato plants came in at once, and I had that glimpse of sanity when I realized I must have been crazy to plant all those tomato plants, and that it's entirely my own fault that I am surrounded by bowls and bowls of tomatos, with no one to palm them off on).

That doesn't ring a bell with you?

Hmm. Okay let me help you reach my state (of insanity). The easy way.

Cause I love my garden, but I HATE digging. Never mind my back can't take it, but we also live on a solid vein of clay.

The solution is lasagna gardening. Love it. Piece of cake. No digging, all organic, and it enrichs the soil, versus tilling, which damages the soil by disturbing it and killing the microbs needed for healthy soil. Plus, lasagna gardening is a huge attraction for earthworms - you can actually get them to do the "tilling" for you. (It's really not that hard, but if you want a book with all the gritty details, try Lasagna Gardening by Patricia Lanza. I set it over on the shelf for you.)

Like I said , our backyard is literally solid red clay - perfectly suited for making pottery or bricks but terrible for gardening. Thanks to lasagna gardening, my earthworms couldn't be happier helping me break it down.

Let's begin.

(The neighbors hate us because we don't mow twice a week, and we don't allow a lawn maintenance company to fertilize our grass, plus we live uphill from them, so their chemicals don't flow into our gardens).

Your first decision will be where to place your new garden, or if you want to enlarge an existing garden. Once you pick a spot, carry out a pile of newspapers, and your water hose. Lay out sections of newspaper, 4-5 sheets thick, right on top of the grass/weeds/dust. Don't use the comics, or the slick magazines or ads - just the black and white newsprint paper.

Use your hose to soak the newspaper. (If you decide to do this on a windy day, it will require at least 2 kids to help -1 to hold down the paper while you wet it, and 1 to lay more paper and/or chase it across the yard, while you run the hose, and laugh at them.) Cardboard can also be substituted for newspaper (did this last year for the blueberry patch).

The next layers are basically a big compost/mulch pile so you want an even mix of alternating layers of brown and green organic matter.

Brown organic matter could include: raked up leaves, pine straw, shredded newspaper, manure, peat, ground up peanut shells -use your imagination and your location for ideas. My husband's a woodworker, so I use large amounts of sawdust (but never from treated wood).

Green organic matter could include: Straw, grass clippings, trimmed plants from the garden, vegetable scraps from the kitchen, coffee grounds, and even seaweed if you live close to a source.

If you've started your garden in the fall, walk away at this point and let the layers settle over the winter. Come spring, you'll just need to push aside a bit of the top material, and set your plants right in. Then continue to add more organic matter as it becomes available.

BUT - if it's spring, add a thin layer (or two) of topsoil between the top couple layers of organic matter. If you don't have a free source, you can get the cheapest sort at Walmart or Lowe's. Your organic matter will supply all the nutrients your plants could ever want.

Then plant.

This is last year's tomato patch before planting, complete with fencing. I've toyed with tomato cages and find them inefficient and irritating. So now I just string fencing in rows, and alternate the tomatoes on either side, while running the soaker hose along the base line. The lasagna layers get pulled up along the fence, and scrap carpeting (turned upside-down) is laid between as pathways. The carpeting will last 3-4 years before being discarded. (Yard sales are a great resource for this, or your backyard neighbor who's decided to replace her carpeting-just offer to haul the torn-out carpet).

Under all those organic layers (and the carpets), the newspapers/cardboard will kill the grass, and slowly decompose. As this happens, the earthworms will come up and slowly break up the soil (YES EVEN CLAY), turning it into a rich dark loamy soil. And then come July, your garden will look just like mine - a mass of green thick healthy plants, in this case potatoes, tomatoes, and mint.

Another plus with lasagna gardening - keep a bale or two of straw around, and use it to top the potato beds in midsummer and again in November. In July-August it will keep the potatoes from sunburning, and in November, it will keep the winter harvest from freezing. Pulling up potatoes grown this way is almost effortless.

I also use my leftover layers to mulch the flower beds. These irises love the pine needles.

And not a moment of digging. It works. Really, I promise.