Tilling

Posted on February 12, 2012 by leo

I’m looking out front at the 38′ x 16′ plot of “sidewalk”.  I plan to plant a garden in it this spring which has me thinking about soil preparation. The planting area looks something like this ->

(The arrows point to the planned corners of the tilled and planted area)

For a little extra perspective, here is the same space (albeit a few years ago) from above (thank you google)

Ideally I should have tilled it last fall and seeded it with a good cover crop –a legume of some sort or possibly oats or rye.  However, I don’t have a tiller and I was timid about messing with the land so I’m looking at a piece of land which still has last summer’s weeds right now.

My plan is evolving though, as I really hope to get some vegetables to grow there this season.  The first day the weather is nice enough I plan to mow it.  Then I plan to drag my home cobbled tow-plow over the area to till it.  If that is successful, I’ll take a trip out to the Allegany County, Maryland yard waste recycling location to pickup a big load of compost in my trailer.  I’ll spread it on the newly tilled and  mowed area.

More on the home cobbled pull behind plow in a forthcoming post.

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Garden planning – 2012

Posted on January 29, 2012 by leo

I’ve been listening to Greenhorn Gardening and Damon (host) has been keeping me on track for planning our garden for this spring; Thanks Damon!  I don’t have a lot to offer yet but here’s my thinking:

  1. Measure my spaces (14′x5′ in my front north facing planting area and 38′ x16′ across the street from my house in a spot that no one seems to tend :)
  2. Draw them on some graph paper
  3. Write down my planed crops and their depth and spacing requirement
  4. Go into my thinking place and consider the placement of these seeds this spring (Really, we went to a playground in the cold and appreciated the beauty that is Dan’s mountain in January)
  5. With divine inspiration in place, sketch in the placement of the various selected plants.
  6. Buy the seeds (yet to come.  Dollar Genearal has most of the seeds I need for 3 packs for $1.00)

Here’s my garden planning sketch from today:

Yup, that’s the big space across the street.  See the funny pattern at the top?  That’s my second pass at native american planting of squash, beans, and corn.  This year I’m doing it across the street where there is much more sun.  Time will tell how well this works.

This is the north planting area in our side yard.

 

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Getting Japanese knotweed to pay its dues

Posted on November 14, 2011 by leo

Japanese knotweed is taking over stream and river banks in the eastern part of the US.  At least, I know it is near me in Western Maryland.  Along most streams or the north branch of the potomac river you can see thick stands of the knotweed.  It is displacing, seemingly, everything else that grew along the banks.  This isn’t good for local species of plants nor animals.  However, we’ve got to make the most of it.

I found a small stand of it along a stream in Frostburg, MD at a playground with my youngest son over the weekend.  We were drawn to the multiplicity of uniform bamboo-like shoots reaching 6+ feet tall.

Here my youngest is cutting it at it’s segment boundaries

child cutting japanese knotweed

Here’s me testing its resonant frequency… er, I mean pitch

lips pitch testing a segment of japanese knotweed

And, we finished it as a pan flute!

Finished pan flute made from japanese knotweed

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Landscaping With Local Materials

Posted on August 24, 2011 by leo

Our house is in a very steep hill and when it rains the water runs down the hill beside and behind our house like a small stream.  When you want to build retaining walls to direct the water away from your house you’ll need heavy stackable material to hold the dirt back.  This is most commonly manufactured concrete block for landscaping.  God knows how many miles it travels to get to your local Lowes or Home Depot.  I know I don’t.  It also costs between $1.50/block and $4.00/block.  So as I see it there are two good reasons to use what is local to your homesite.

In 1960 this would be all about using adobe in the southwest, stone in the northeast, sod in the prarie.  However, with the excess of materials laying all around us from the extensive human activity near our cities the last hundred year I’ve decided to think about what is local differently.

For example, a terraces sequence of short cinder block, brick, and rock walls to hold back rich planting soil for my currants and elderberries.

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Here is a pair of walls which work together to shed the water traveling down the hill away from the house.  The upper wall is made of cinder blocks that were laying around the property.  The lower wall is a little more traditional.  I did a lot of digging to change the slant of the dirt and this revealed enough large stones to build a dry stacked retaining wall for the newly minted drainage swale.

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Here is a look across my newest terraced swale.  It is build behind the house to encourage water coming down the hill behind the house to run off to the right.  These short, cinder block walls also work to retain added soil for growing some fruit bush varieties.

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This is a picture of what remains of the rubble pile I quarried much of these materials from.

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What’s laying around your yard that you can turn into a useful object?

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Reading:Nature’s Garden, by Samuel Thayer

Posted on August 18, 2011 by leo

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I found this book at my local library and didn’t expect too much from it since I just stumbled upon it.   However, I’m loving it!   It is my favorite wild edible plants book yet!

I just read a bit that pushed me to tell you about it.  Page 429, in the “wild lettuce”  chapter:

So do not shy away from details; and don’t resent Nature for being so replete with complexity.  That is its glory, not its downfall.  We owe our very intelligence to this miraculous complexity.  It is not the burden of the naturalist to learn this complexity;  it is the awesome reality.  More than anything else, which of these attitudes you choose will determine your success as a naturalist.  So learn your details with joy, remember them with pride, and experience them with gratitude.  Let the details excite you — for there are enough of them to excite you for the rest of your life.

That is moving.  Thank you Samuel.

Also of note is the style of the book is both engaging with humoros tales of the author’s introduction to some of the plants as well as a focus on ensuring you understand how to find each plant.

Did I mention the chapter on acorns and oaks?  Think about how plentiful acorns are and then you’ll want to read the chapter too.  This book is definitely one to read and re-read.

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Two inches of rain in 24 hours!

Posted on August 15, 2011 by leo

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I’m excited to see how it effects the tomatoes.   More to come.

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.25″ of rain

Posted on August 6, 2011 by leo

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We had about a quarter inch of rain today.  Weather bug says it was only 0.12″  either way I’m  looking forward the the amazing things that happen in a garden after rain.

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Confession Time

Posted on August 5, 2011 by leo

Here’s the situation, remembering a picture is worth 1,000 words

What I’m showing you is my BEST performing corn (three stalks to a mound) and beans (I forget what variety I planted in this mound).  The corn is not thriving and the beans are nearly dead.  Here’s another mound

This mound of beans and corn is worse off.  The others don’t look good either.

So my attempt at gardening native american style has been very educational if not fruitful.  I’d like to say I’ve learned a lot.  I probably have, just watching the corn sprout, seeing its young leaves develop, waiting for it to reach about 4 inches high to plant the beans in the mound, and watching the beans sprout and develop.   There is so much that you learn by checking in on it.

As far as I know the only thing that is really wrong with my american style – companion planted garden is the lack of full sun.  When I picked the spot to place this garden it was winter.  The house and this yard were new to me.  The fact that this spot would be shaded 8 out of 10 hours each day was not obvious to me when the leaves were all gone in the winter.

Should you run in fear and never plant a garden until you know if there is enough sun in your chosen spot?  NEVER!  This failure has been very educational.  I know what to look for in my next garden spot and I know what to expect with the early growth of the corn and beans.

Here’s the spot I’m eying up for next year’s garden and this year’s cool season garden

Picture of Upcoming guerilla garden

Don’t wait for the perfect spot.  Make an educated guess, start digging, and plant today!

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Separated Elderberries — So far, so good

Posted on July 24, 2011 by leo

In this video for 5inacape.com I take you on a tour of the elderberrys I seperated in my previous video and an earlier blog post.

Long story short?  They’re looking pretty good.  I lost about 1 out of 20 plants.  I’m happy with those results.  What’s better?  The ones which I managed to get in the ground about a week before this video are really growing.  I attribute this growth to a steady soil temperature and moisture.

Take a look at these elderberry rooted elderberry cuttings that have been separated after a lot of rooting.

Grow well!

 

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Fungal disease and plants

Posted on July 22, 2011 by leo

I have persimmon seedlings with fungus near the top of the plants, a gooseberry with stems with a similar white feathery fungus, and worst of all (I think) tomatoes with a silvery-grey mold on their leaves and stems. I believe the tomato fungus is early blight and is usually fatal. I’ve been having a time of it. This is my first year gardening and everything looks like a problem. I’m hanging on though.

The infected tomato plant is isolated from the others by a road so I’m trying my hand at reigning in the disease instead of destroying the plant. I’ve read milk and cornmeal make good teas for applying to the soil around a plant to prevent fungus and maybe fight it. We’ll see.

Last weekend I showed my kids how to apply a 2 cups of whole milk to 1gal of water milk tea to all the garden plants with our $10 sprayer from lowes.  Additionally, I had them sprinkle cornmeal at the base of all the plants. Then we brewed a cornmeal tea to apply to the dirt around the plants. 1 cup of cornmeal to 1 gal water and let it stand for a couple of days until it ferments and stinks. Well, I checked today and it definitely was stinky. So I loaded my watering can and applied it to the bases of all the tomatoes.

The worst off tomato plant looks significantly better. The mold has faded and the leaves are more open and green looking. I’m thinking we have a chance of eating a couple of garden fresh tomatoes this year.

Next year I plan to have some form of drip irrigation in place. I read a post at http://www.thisgardenisillegal.com/2011/06/post-nozzle-drip-irrigation.html and it pushed me over the edge to try out drip irrigation.

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