Simple Tips for Better Garden Soil

Here is a great article from Mother Earth News to help with making great soil to grow great plants.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/Better-Garden-Soil.aspx#axzz2RenwehnJ

The advantage of using vermicompost and vermicompost tea is the diversity of microorganisms that are present in it consistently.  The worms bins develop a balanced community of the necessary organisms that can be added to your soil food web to help it become all that it should be.

Gardener's Day at Zwingli Church

Just a reminder that I will be at the Gardener's Day at Zwingli Church in Souderton on Sat., April 27.  Here is the link -

http://www.zwingli.org/gday.php

April in the Garden

The weather is still on the cool side.  We had 33 degrees this morning.  I have still been using the row covers on cold nights but I will leave it off if the temp. stays in the upper 40s. 










I am anxiously waiting to cut some fresh lettuce.
This was Bibb lettuce that I started in Jan. and
transplanted in the garden in March.  I have one
short section that I planted in black plastic to
help warm up the soil.  I hope that I will be able to enjoy some fresh lettuce this week.  I have been spraying the garden with compost tea every 2 weeks.  I didn't start spraying last year until June.  I want to see if there will be any difference.  The lettuce is beautiful and filling out nicely.












Spinach

Swiss chard

Onions




Broccoli with carrots from last fall

Here are some other crops that are in the garden



.



What does a groundhog know anyway?

Six weeks ago Punxsutawney Phil made his prediction - an early spring.











 Here we are six weeks later and this is what my garden looked like this morning.










It has been challenging this year to get an early start in the garden.  I have planted my kale seedlings under the row cover and they are alive but not growing.  I looked at the 10 day forecast and they haven't predicted any days that will be in the 50's.  This is the middle of March.  We should be experiencing some exhilarating spring warmth.  There isn't any logical reason to plant peas or spinach directly in the ground, so I have not. 

I have trays of lettuce ready to go in the ground. I have been hardening them off every day outside for the past week. I have put black plastic on the ground and covered the row. I just can't make myself plant them when the forecast calls for snow. So I have been harvesting the leaves and enjoying fresh salad greens.

 

 

Carrots pulled last week from under the row cover
that were planted in September

And since it is St. Patrick's Day here is part of an Irish blessing -

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
... and rains fall soft upon your fields.

Winter Dreams

Anyone who thinks that gardening begins in the spring and ends in the fall is missing the best part of the whole year. For gardening begins in January with the dream. ~Josephine Nuese

Garden plans for this year are slowly taking shape.  The first seeds have been sown and glimmers of new life are always the reality of the dream.

Kale and lettuce sown Jan 17. sprouted Jan 21

 

 I am still picking spinach, lettuce, kale and carrots from under my row cover in the garden.  We are anticipating the coldest temperatures of the winter this week.  I am not doing anything extra to keep the plants under the cover from freezing.  Time will reveal how hardy they are.







(This was written in January and I failed to publish it, oops!)

New Year

Here is a good article from The New York Times.  I met Jack Chambers, Rhonda Sherman and Norm Aracon at a seminar at NC State.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/science/worms-produce-another-kind-of-gold-for-farmers.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130101&_r=0

Hugelkultur

Wooden debris will decompose faster,
(and be transformed into a resource)
when hugelkultur techniques are
employed.

If you have trees that were taken down from Sandy, this is a great way to make something good out of the destruction.

Used for centuries in Eastern Europe and Germany, hugelkultur (in German hugelkultur translates roughly as “mound culture”) is a gardening and farming technique whereby woody debris (fallen branches and/or logs) are used as a resource.
Often employed in permaculture systems, hugelkultur allows gardeners and farmers to mimic the nutrient cycling found in a natural woodland to realize several benefits. Woody debris (and other detritus) that falls to the forest floor can readily become sponge like, soaking up rainfall and releasing it slowly into the surrounding soil, thus making this moisture available to nearby plants.
Hugelkultur garden beds (and hugelkultur ditches and swales) using the same principle to:

• Help retain moisture on site
• Build soil fertility
• Improve drainage
• Use woody debris that is unsuitable for other use

Applicable on a variety of sites, hugelkultur is particularly well suited for areas that present a challenge to gardeners. Urban lots with compacted soils, areas with poor drainage, limited moisture, etc., can be significantly improved using a hugelkultur technique, as hugelkultur beds are, essentially, large, layered compost piles covered with a growing medium into which a garden is planted.
Creating a hugelkultur garden bed is a relatively simple process:
1. Select an area with approximately these dimensions: 6 feet by 3 feet
2. Gather materials for the project:

• Fallen logs, branches, twigs, fallen leaves (the “under utilized” biomass from the site). Avoid using cedar, walnut or other tree species deemed allelopathic.
• Nitrogen rich material (manure or kitchen waste work well and will help to maintain a proper carbon to nitrogen ratio in the decomposing mass within the hugelkulter bed).
• Top soil (enough to cover the other layers of the bed with a depth of 1 – 2”) and some mulching material (straw works well).

3. Lay the logs (the largest of the biomass debris) down as the first layer of the hugelkulter bed. Next, add a layer of branches, then a layer of small sticks and twigs. Hugelkultur beds work best when they are roughly 3 feet high (though this method is forgiving, and there is no fixed rule as to the size of the bed. That is where the “art” comes in!)
4. Water these layers well
5. Begin filling in spaces between the logs, twigs and branches with leaf litter and manure of kitchen scraps.
6. Finally, top off the bed with 1 – 2” of top soil and a layer of mulch.
The hugelkulter bed will benefit from “curing” a bit, so it is best to prepare the bed several months prior to planting time (prepare the bed in the fall for a spring planting, for example, in temperate northern climates), but hugelkultur beds can be planted immediately. Plant seeds or transplants into the hugelkulter bed as you would any other garden bed. Happy hugelkulturing!