* Our first spring review of the backyard garden, from planning where to dig the new beds, a primer on biointensive double-dug raised beds, some of the varieties of veggies, flowers, & herbs we’ve planted so far, a recipe for how to make special compost tea to boost ailing plants, and the innards of our compost piles. *
THE HOT POTATO
Serving Up a Weekly Helping of
Sustainable & Organic Gardening, Food, Health, and Community
by Adam Brockman & Aireen Joven, May 2007, # 18
THIS WEEK’S DISH:
If You Plant It, They Will Grow - A Diary Of Two Beginning Gardeners
“When I go into my garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The miracles of nature do not seem miracles because they are so common. If no one had ever seen a flower, even a dandelion would be the most startling event in the world.” - Author Unknown
“An optimistic gardener is one who believes that whatever goes down must come up.” - Leslie Hall
WE BROKE GROUND on the new backyard gardening plot in mid-April, just after returning from a life changing month-long trip to California, Oregon, Northern Idaho, and Montana. But first, we had to ask: “Where should the new garden beds be?” With more than one cook in nature’s kitchen, we all had to agree on an aesthetically ideal spot while taking into consideration the arc of the sun, close proximity to the house and water source but not too close to be in the shade of the house, the reach of the mulberry tree, the shade from the many trees lining the yard, and the slope of the land. It all came together after reminding my mom that she’ll want the garden close to the house (where the best sun is) instead of in the far back of the yard, because when we eventually move out, it will be easier for her to haul the harvest if it’s as close to the house as possible! Working together, the G-Team (garden team) chose the perfect location: about 10 feet from the house, at least eight hours of full sun, and right next to the back patio, so you can sit and admire the beautiful plants while conversing with family and friends or having breakfast at the table.
A SIGN OF NUTRIENT DEFICIENCY. The leaves of young purple mustard greens turning white show signs of lacking proper nitrogen and nutrients in the garden soil.
CAN YOU DIG IT?
Our final garden plan calls for four 3.5 x 16 foot biointensive double-dug, hexagonally-planted raised beds with 15 inch paths in between the beds, which are on a north-south orientation. In these main beds, we will have about 224 square feet to grow many pounds of delicious, nutritious, beautiful, and medicinal veggies, fruit, flowers, and herbs. Since we are using no machinery, there is a little bit of extra muscle involved in removing the lawn and building the beds, but the personal rewards and benefits to the soil are exponential. “Food Not Lawns” is the motto, but we do appreciate the lawn for its nitrogen-rich grass clippings for the compost piles, and we’ve been able to save the squares of grass we removed to use as sod for patching up other areas of the lawn.
Our growing area has fairly heavy clay soil, and we learned early on that such soil requires proper aeration and, like sandy soil, a lot of organic matter in the form of compost to make healthy soil for healthy plants. Clay soil holds water and nutrients better than sandy soil, but water is absorbed slower and roots have a harder time accessing nutrients. Gentle double-digging, as pioneered in the classic book How To Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons, deeply aerates the soil with minimal exertion – if performed with smooth, ergonomic movements and a clear, zen-like state of mind. A well-crafted flat digging shovel and garden fork help a lot too! In some places, we’ve been able to loosen as much as sixteen inches deep. This takes the stress off of plants and improves both plant health and yield by making it easier for their roots to penetrate and gain access to needed nutrients.
Double-digging can also improve microbial life in the soil by loosening compacted areas, providing a more aerobic environment for beneficial lifeforms to thrive. D-digging also allows you to get in touch with your soil by noticing what kind of soil structure you have, how deep your topsoil is, and how much your soil is improving year-after-year. The goal of double digging and integrating it with the entire 8 Step Grow Biointensive Method is to improve soil structure, grow topsoil, and eventually reach the point where you no longer have to dig your garden beds because they are so healthy with many seasons of care. And there are extra perks we discovered. After carefully double-digging and thoroughly watering the second bed, we knew it had been well-aerated because we could actually hear the water trickling down to the bottom of the bed. The water sounded like a small creek happily percolating through meandering rivulets!
SPRING TONIC. Adam cuts up spring dandelion leaves with purple and white violets freshly harvested by Aireen to add to our nitrogen-rich compost tea.
DR. WORM’S RECIPE FOR LOVE
In our first bed, we transplanted purple rodynda cabbage, spigariello broccoli, osaka purple mustard greens, red-cored chantennay carrots, rossa di milano red onions, and mammoth giant sunflowers. We direct-seeded slow-bolt cilantro, red rumpled wave lettuce, and french breakfast radishes, and companion-planted german chamomile and dukat dill next to the broccoli and cabbage. At first, everything seemed to be going okay, but then we noticed that white spots were forming on some of the cabbage, broccoli, and especially mustard green leaves, and a few leaves were even turning a sickly pale shade and dying. We learned that this happens when plants are nitrogen-deficient (and probably lacking in other nutrients too), so we knew we had to give them a health boost as fast as Popeye can pop a can of spinach.
Nitrogen is a basic element essential for growth and reproduction in plants and animals, and is a key component of amino acids, the building blocks of protein. Luckily, we had purchased a bag of nutrient-rich worm castings (a.k.a. poop) at the Green Festival, from God’s Gang (http://godsgang1.net), a food pantry and urban gardening program for kids in Chicago. We got a great deal: 5 pounds of worm poop for 5 bucks. Adapting a recipe from the wonderful gardening book You Grow Girl by Gayla Trail (www.yougrowgirl.com), another one of our favorite references, we brewed up our own special concoction of compost tea. In an old pantyhose stocking, we combined the following ingredients, soaked them in a bucket of water overnight and all of the next afternoon in a sunny location, then applied the tea nearly everyday for almost two weeks thereafter, refilling the water after every use:
• 3 cups sifted compost
• 2 cups worm castings (an all-around excellent fertilizer)
• 4 cups dried sea vegetables e.g. kelp and dulse (rich in nitrogen, potassium, and important minerals)
• 2 cups freshly cut dandelion greens (also for nitrogen and minerals; comfrey, stinging nettles, and horsetail are other options)
• A sprinkling of purple and while violets growing wild in the spring (optional; violets are edible for people too)
• An equal or greater amount of water as the total of the other ingredients (in this case, 11 cups of water or more).
For more potent tea, you can brew straight worm poop and/or compost for up to two weeks to make a power-packed fermented aid for ailing or pest-infested plants. Within a few days of applying our special formula, the plants began to make a significant recovery. Two probable reasons why they weren’t getting enough nitrogen are that we didn’t incorporate nearly enough compost or aerate the soil as much as we should have, and the soil, after years of being under lawn out of the organic matter life cycle, was deficient to begin with. Thanks to our compost tea, our plants are now healthy and thriving, and the bed looks beautiful!
MAGIC COMPOST TEA READY TO STEEP. Adam ties a knot to secure the compost tea stocking full of worm castings, compost, sea vegetables, dandelion leaves, and violets. The concoction will steep in a bucket of water under the sun for at least 24 hours before watering the garden with the special tea.
PLANT YOUR HEART OUT AND DON’T FORGET THE COMPOST
The second bed is planted almost entirely in heirloom potatoes, including Peruvian Purple, a fingerling variety that is thousands of years old, one of the earliest known cultivated potatoes from the Andes Mountains. We even took a risk by planting a few store-bought yellow potatoes at one end of the bed. Caution: only try this with organic potatoes, as chemically-grown, “conventional” varieties may be treated with extra chemicals to prevent them from sprouting. Even still, it is recommended that you plant certified seed potatoes which are tested to be disease-free. Plant seed potatoes simply by cutting off pieces with two or more eyes and leaving significant space around the eyes for the plants to have ample energy from the potato piece to grow. After cutting, one day of curing is recommended, and then you plant the potato pieces. Finally, we plan to plant beautiful marigolds, the quintessential garden companion, as a border around the heirloom potato bed,. At the very end of the bed, we transplanted twelve onions and two parsley plants. We’ll be digging the third bed today, soon to be bursting with tomatoes, basil, peppers, eggplants, kale, lettuce, and more.
None of this would be possible without the miracle of compost. We started building our first compost pile in November, but we had to rush things to ensure we would have enough in time to build the first bed in April. As a result, both the first and second compost piles weren’t built up high enough, and since they were built so late in the fall, they were too cold during the winter and early spring for proper decomposition to take place. Using a homemade compost sifter we built out of a galvanized steel tub and 1/2 inch chicken wire, we’ve managed to sift enough of the decomposed stuff to get our first two beds and several flats of seedlings started. The partially decomposed stuff returns to the piles to break down further. Our third pile, started last month, is the best so far. It’s a nice balance of green leaves, uprooted weeds, grass and leaf clippings, and food scraps for nitrogen and to aid decomposition, plus dried leaves and dried grass clippings for carbon, which provides organic matter. All materials are added to the pile in alternating layers of nitrogen and carbon with a 1/2 to 1 inch layer of soil in between. The soil layer slows down the decomposition for maximum nitrogen retention, and covers up sights and smells.
We have passed the official frost date plus one week, when it’s supposed to be extra safe to plant non-cold hardy plants, so it’s high time to plant many flowers, melons, beans, cucumbers, corn, and even winter squash. More stories from the magical realm of the garden, including run-ins with the neighborhood squirrel and bunny, still to come.
Until next week, the Hot Potato is in your hands. Pass it on!
TO DOWNLOAD a PDF of the article, click on hot_potato_18_ifyouplantit.pdf
