Winter gardening

So I've already started working out in the yard. A few weeks ago I started planning the garden in my handy new garden journal. I have been meaning to get organized for some time, especially since most of my gardening/planting is very spur of the moment and if I don't write down what I did, I forget, which makes things very difficult when I want to replicate what I did or check on germination times later on.

We are also getting ready to place our seed order for this year, a task I do not hate. I think I've spent at least 25 hours going over different catalogs, online and paper, to find the varieties I'm looking for. We are incorporating more perennials into our vegetable garden this year, as well as around the rest of the yard. Perennials can work wonders in an annual garden bed, stabilizing the soil, providing a permanent home for all kinds of wildlife and micro-organisms while using their taproots to bring up deep nutrients and ground water. Plus I was able to find a bunch of cool perennial vegetable seeds here and here that I will be ordering very soon.

Which leads to why I've already started working outside. Here in Denver the winter is a bit sporadic. Yes, it can get pretty cold, 10-15*F, and stay there for awhile, but then we'll get a week long streak of 40-50* or even 60*, which really kicks my brain into full gear.

Since we live in a rental we really don't want to invest too much money into this property but as we also feel a duty to assist in regenerative living, we are making a few minor adjustments. On the NW corner of our house there is a tree stump that sent up shoots all last year, I'm guessing it was cut down about 4 or 5 years ago and the person who did so figured the stump would just rot away on it's own. Then they placed a lovely wire fence and simply bent the ends to go over the top of the stump, which left sharp rusty metal poking out in the corner of the garden.

Instead of the mostly waste of space that this fiasco causes I decided to create a little height and growing space in the garden with a hugelkultur. I just used what I had on hand, some kitchen waste, a bag of compost, some branches that fell in a storm a few weeks ago, a few bags of leaf mulch and some dirt from my yard. Oh ya, and since I needed the speed up the decomposing process on the stump I dumped some old juice concentrate on top of the stump after making a few chops to make sure the bacteria could get in there and start decomposing.

I started by laying the excess wood pieces around the stump, trying to pile them up as much as possible, then I just filled in with the other stuff I had, kitchen waste, compost and mulch, and layers of dirt as well. I tried to water as much as I could, if it's not wet enough we should be getting snow here pretty soon so that should help take care of it. Plus since it's right next to the downspout on that side of the house any moisture coming off the roof will go directly to it.

My last layer, as of now, was just a loose sprinkling of some bagged compost mixed in with leaves. I didn't have enough topsoil to finish it off, but I should be getting some soon, and when I do I will be able to put a good few inches on top of the entire mound. Then I'll just sit and plan what to plant on it while it cures and gets ready for spring, maybe some of my winter sown perennials? hmmmm

I'll be making another hugelkultur  on the opposite side of the yard in the next few weeks using some wood from an evergreen we trimmed in the front yard. I'm curious to see what happens with the two slightly different plantings this year. At least this year I'll be able to keep track of what I've done.

Hooray for sheet mulching!

Well after taking a hiatus from writing for a bit, I found that I really did miss it, so I thought I would come back and continue to share all the things that I love about permaculture and working in the yard. I have to admit that my gardening practices are a bit unorthodox. I love to read and learn about permaculture and natural gardening practices, which are wonderful tools, but when it comes down to it, I like to listen to what the garden has to say. I have confidence that my tools can help me achieve what the natural world is asking of me, of us all.

Permaculture ideas will allow you to recognize the patterns found all around us in order to optimize the energy of the space, what is optimal, however, is where guidance is important. I think it's terribly important to remind ourselves that techniques are simply basic templates upon which to build our own model, you will have to figure out what works for you and your garden, don't be afraid to change a sheet mulching "recipe" to suit your needs.

That being said, let's get on with the sheet mulching shall we! Sheet mulching the yard this year was a few week process. There are two main areas of the graden that I want to make sure got a lot of love and soil building help, one of them is about 10x12' and the other is 3x13'. I started with the 10x12' plot a few weeks ago. The SE corner of the plot houses the compost pile, which was almost ready, but since it wasn't quite right yet was left in place to cook a little more. I did a lot of planting in this bed this year, squash, beans, beets, radishes, carrots, okra, tons of greens, but I left most of it in the ground. (I have no idea what has been done to this soil in previous years and I wanted to give the soil a chance to remediate itself before I did any testing, plus I really just wanted more organic matter in the soil.)


I took a couple of large cardboard boxes and laid them down over the garden bed, on top of any and all existing plant growth. For our yard the most important thing is to get as much organic matter into the soil as possible to leaving all the plants in the ground was vital. After I watered the cardboard (good sheet mulch is pretty wet, like a wrung out sponge) I tossed a layer of fallen leaves* down, I didn't mulch them but instead just walked around for a bit, then a placed a thin layer of soil on top of it all. I then took a hand aerator and walked over the entire area pushing the tongs into the ground to break up the cardboard a bit and break down the leaves even more. Then I watered, and watered a lot. It's amazing how much water sheet mulch will soak up.  *my leaves also include pine needles, some cones and pencil sized twigs

I placed three layers of leaves, each heavily watered and with a tiny bit of soil in between each layer. To finish it off I tossed a little more soil on top. Now as of this point I could have covered it with more cardboard but I knew it was going to snow in a few days and I wanted to capture that moisture. I waited until after the snow then went out and placed a tarp over the entire area and secured it in place with a few rocks from the garden. The tarp will help keep the moisture in while raising the temperature and aiding in the decomposition. It's only been a few days but I can tell the mycelium are already pretty happy, starting the process of soil making.

Sheet mulching can be very useful for soil building as well as weed management. For now I'm just focusing on the soil, I'll worry about uninvited plants another time.

Bees wonderful bees

The past few days I have been spending a lot of time just sitting in the garden observing all the wildlife coming and going. A few months ago you would have been hard pressed to find anything other than some spider mites, earwigs and mosquitos. Now there are tons of bees, butterflies, beetles and more, just cruising around, enjoying the lovely late summer flowers. The woodpeckers have also been very busy discovering all the anthills in the yard. I actually find it very comforting to find their holes in the ground every morning, I guess it just feels like the universe is responding to our very conscious decisions in the garden.

This is a picture os one of my favorite bee species in the area. I'm not quite sure of the exact name but I do know that it's native to Colorado and is a stingless bee. I just love how beautiful it is, the iridescent head and thorax are pretty breathtaking. The cosmo is a bit on the large side, about 4" or so across, so as you may be able to imagine the bees are quite small. We are thinking about putting out some bundles or old logs for them to nest in, the more support we can offer the pollinators the better! There are also tons of honey bees and bumble bees flying around but they just aren't quite as interesting as these little green bees, at least not to me right now anyway.

I also finally read "One straw revolution" by Masanobu Fukuoka, which is quite a wonderful book. I have to say that my favorite part was that the natural farming methods he uses were very similar to what we decided to do in our yard, mainly because it seemed like that's how the plants would be happiest growing. I took a few shots of our fledgling winter garden. I planted just about a month ago but the ground is so hard and has such a high percentage of clay the plants find it difficult to grow, so most of them are rather small and a few just germinated though they have been in the ground for weeks.

Yay for broccoli! I am super excited about this coming up. It was so hot after I planted I was afraid I fried all of the heat sensitive seedlings but luckily all of the grass and cheeseweed growing in the garden area provided just enough ground cover and shade to allow seeds to sprout. I am really looking forward to some homegrown broccoli. If you look closely you may be able to see the chard and kale sprouts that are coming up just to the left of the broccoli.

You can see our lovely winter squash slowly creeping it's way over the rows of winter greens. Notice the lower right has lots of grass, cheese weed and most importantly baby romaine. In the background against the brick wall are some of our beautiful sunflowers, eagerly soaking up the fall rays. We don't worry about grasses or weeds in any of the beds. They are bringing much needed life to the soil and create lots of leaf litter and shade for the other plants. If it seems as if the grass is too long and it's going to suffocate the sprouts I gently pull off the top few inches of grass blades, leaving the root system and soil intact. This contributes to a happy garden with plenty of organic matter in the soil and lots of plants to distract possible predatory insects.

 I almost forgot to mention what all those odd looking branches are, just resting on the soil. When I seeded the bed I cut down a bunch of the lamb's quarters from the other side of our yard and used them as fresh mulch. The soft leaves break down quickly and the branchy stalks keep the neighborhood cats from pooping in the garden. The leaves help to shade the soil, keeping water longer, and add much needed nutrients. Once all the leaves are gone and the stalks are dried out I usually remove them and add them to the compost, this year though I may try to build a berry mound and place them inside. I have also found they make great garden stakes. If they weren't so woody I would just leave them out but in order to properly decompose they really should have full contact with the soil.

Well that's about all for now. I'm heading to the Colorado Permaculture Convergence this weekend which looks to be very very interesting. I will do my best to take notes to give you all a proper write up of the state of permaculture in Colorado. Hope you all are out there creating a more diverse eco-system! Happy Fall!

Everyday Nature day 1

So we started a new activity in our household yesterday and we're calling it everyday nature. In order to get us more into the spirit of things, and get us even more used to working with the elements, we have decided that we must do something, anything, oriented toward the natural world every day. Doesn't have to be much, but it has to be something that will further our understanding of the earth.

I started with a bang yesterday. There has been this clump of iris in the back, just on the outside of the fence by the garage, in a tiny space of maybe 2x2'. How long they had been there is a mystery to me but I don't think they had ever been divided, which really wouldn't be such a problem if they had room to grow somewhere. Since they were so compacted and overgrown they could not bloom anymore and there was just a big sloppy mess. Now I have never had to divide iris before but being rhizomatous I figured it would be pretty easy to work with them. I had no idea what I was in for.

Honestly the entire space was one giant rhizome. Seriously. I have never seen anything like this before. There were three layers of rhizome laying on top of one another, roots growing every which way, and feet upon feet of spent bulbs. It took me almost two hours to dig it all out, then another hour to sort it all and snag the useful bulbs. The entire time I worked all I would think about was how sad it was to let a plant suffer like that for so long. This poor yard has just been abandoned for so many years that all the existing plants are suffering and in decline. There is a huge difference between natural gardening and torturing your plants, hopefully we'll be able to rehab this yard enough so that it can maintain itself through neglect and become more of a natural garden when we no longer occupy this space.

What's on the agenda for today? Just a little thinning of the radishes in the planter out front and a little experimentation with using the native clay soil for seed bombs. I am really excited about both actually, I am super happy radishes came up, thanks to mulching, and I can't wait to spread some seed love with native plants and soil. Woohoo! What are you going to do today that's nature related? How are you bringing yourself closer to the natural rhythm of things?

Planting seeds..

I planted so many seeds this morning it was quite incredible. Four packets of radishes, three packets of carrots, two packets of beets and one packet of some lovely bunching onions. I had to get his done while watching two toddlers, who were much more interested in making holes than planting anything in them and luckily my love rescued me by taking our son away to entertain somewhere else. One toddler in the garden is much easier to manage and so we were quickly able to plant the last few packets in the random bare spots in the yard and get on with the rest of our day.

I originally had only planned to plant a few seeds from each pack but when the kids were helping me water this morning, somehow they all got wet... wet seeds need to be planted, so that's what we did. In the madness of planting I completely forgot about writing down what I planted where I planted it. Plus I also over seeded many of the crops which will either take care of itself with the help of a few insects or is going to take me a bunch of time in thinning, especially since they are all root crops and need plenty of growing space in the soil. I'm actually more bummed about this than I am about not knowing where all the food is growing. As soon as those seeds come up I'll have a nice little game to play called "name that seedling," not only does it cause me to pay more attention to minute details, it also helps me to learn the exact names of plants and gives me more insight into plant geneology.

To be honest I have only very loose drawings of the garden areas with plant names written down in barely legible scrawl. My partner told me he couldn't figure them out at all, so it's probably for the best that I didn't go back through them and change a few of the pages, adding even more jibberish to what already lay there. I'm also not very upset at the fact that most of the seeds got sprinkled and thrown about a bit so all my plantings are interspersed. Yay for polyculture in the garden, especially multiple varietals from a few different plant families! Since we are rebuilding the soil we want to have different plants, and plant families contributing wonderful organic matter to the soil. They all have different nutritional needs, soil bacterium and insect populations that will contribute to the vitality of the fledgling eco-system. Most of the root crops are going to be left in the soil, remember that we are planning on sheet mulching everything at the end of the season anyway, and all that wonderful plant matter is going to compost in place, leaving all the colonies of micro-organisms intact. Just thinking about all that soil life makes me so excited! Add to that the excitement of mystery seedlings and I am dancing in the clouds. I'm sure a few of you out there are cringing at the idea of letting seeds fall where they may, overplanting, not labeling and not really caring about the soil conditions, to you I ask, when was the last time you felt free in the garden? When was the last time your garden was about the earth?