A Bigger Hugelkultur

lavender in it's new home

We're building a bigger hugelkultur.  A hugelkultur is a type of garden with large pieces of wood on the bottom and smaller bits inside.  As the wood breaks down it creates food for the plants and helps the mound to hold water.  If planted well the plants help each other out as well. The strawberries in the mini hugel were the catalyst for this garden.  They're just not getting enough sunlight where they are.  When we planned the mini hugel the tree above it was bare.  That tree filled in nicely and so now we have a shade problem.  The new and bigger hugel will be about 5'x10' and a couple of feet high.  This will put us over our goal of growing about 100 square feet of food in our yard.  The mini hugel is doing so well that we're looking forward to trying out this garden concept on a larger scale. A really neat border is in the planning stages but I'll just hold on to that idea for now.

the base of the new hugelkultur

Saturday:
I laid out cardboard in the area we decided on for the garden.  On top, I threw down the sticks we'd been collecting from our and our neighbor's yards.  After a good watering the new garden sat for the night.  We picked up a few bags of good topsoil at Ace Hardware today.  Tomorrow after we collect more wood we'll add it to the pile.

Rufus helping out

Barkley not so much helping out

Sunday:

branches, sticks and dry grass

After playing a round and a half of disc golf we walked back over the course and collected branches of various sizes.  Our friend helped us load up the car with wood and we brought it on home.   While my beautiful man worked on mowing the yard with a weedeater (way cheaper than a lawn mower) the dogs and I built up the new logs on the garden site.  Next I scooped up several buckets full dried grass and weed clippings from the work my beautiful man did yesterday.  Some clippings got thrown on top while the rest got worked in to the spaces below.  At this point I watered the mound well for two reasons.  We wanted to saturate these bottom layers to help the dry material start breaking down.  This big pile of branches, sticks, leaves, and dried grass seemed a lot like a big pile of kindling.  Next we added two buckets of partially decomposed compost the same way as the dried clippings.  Then we poured on 5 bags of topsoil.  My beautiful man lifted the bags and poured them on while I shook some of the bigger branches to help the soil filter through.  Finally the hugel got it's last watering of the day.

end of day 1

Tomorrow we will add more bags of topsoil and possibly fill out the bottom of the pile with more wood.  Once those tasks are finished we'll move the strawberry plants and add two more.  We'll also be starting some seeds for various fruit and vegetable plants.  Plants that enjoy light shade and slightly cooler temps will go on the north side while full sun and heat loving plants will face south.

gifts from my beautiful man

Monday:
My beautiful man, his name is Reggie by the way, woke up early today to run a few errands.  When he got home I went outside to meet him and he took me by the hand and said "Come see what I brought you."  He'd gone back to the disc golf course with his axe and cut up this huge fallen branch I'd wanted.  He also brought me 7 more bags of soil, 6 for the new hugel and one for the mini!  What an amazing man I have!

new logs added on day 2

The new branches were added to the sides to give us a wider base.   The 6 bags of topsoil got dumped on top and worked into the spaces.  I watered well after each bag to help the soil settle as much as possible.  I'd rather it settle now than after everything is planted.  Picking up those bags so high and holding them to pour them out made for a nice little arm workout!

I transplanted the strawberries from the mini hugel.  They look a little stressed right now but hopefully they'll perk up in a few days.  Two new strawberry plants also went in.  I'm expecting them to do much better here.  They'll have full sun and companion plants to help them grow big and tasty.  A couple of herbs that had been biding their time in clay pots while they waited for a new home got to move in too.  Several butterflies (and a few wasps) came to visit the new garden already.  They'll be excited to see that I sprinkled some butterfly garden seeds all over.  Soon we'll have some lettuce, chives, tomatillos, carrots and a bunch of other food and flowers coming up.  (See below for a full list of plants and seeds.)

hugel's first earth worm friend

I got a start on that mystery border.  You'll just have to wait.  When I was digging for the border I found 3 little earth worms and they all got relocated to the hugel.  Maybe they'll be happier there and make little earth worm families.

I'll make some posts as the plants start to fill in and the hugel evolves.  We're expecting a lot of food and we're happy to finally be over our 100 square feet of food goal.

the new hugelkultur all planted!

 Plants:
7 strawberry
1 lavender
1 lemon balm
2 okra
1 cucumber
1 thyme
1 oregano

Seeds:
salad bowl lettuce
purple tomatillo
watermelon
dill
borage (to attract bees)
black turtle bush beans (beans help strawberries)
chives
touchon carrot (friend of cucumber)
genovese basil
evening sun sunflower mix
black seeded simpson lettuce
triomphe de farcy bush beans (to help strawberries)
cilantro
dwarf nasturtium
"song bird mix" flowers
"bring home the butterflies" flowers
bell peppers

IT'S A TRAP!

"tasty treat" says the doodle bug

doodle bug damage to potato plants

In the dead of winter, in the back corner of our back yard we put in a mini-hugelkultur.  We rescued some logs from this pile we'd been seeing for a couple of months.  By the way, the huge discarded tree pile is still there.  We piled logs for the base then added sticks on top of those.  The next layer was straw and dry leaves.  Finally we added a few bags of topsoil, some with compost and some without.  Just a little side note here, many garden centers will give you a sizable discount on bagged dirt, mulch, compost etc if you're willing to take the ones with torn bags.  I got a few torn bags of topsoil from Home Depot.  They were wrapped in plastic and the gentleman who told me about the discount even loaded them into my car for me.

Lots of potatoes went into the hugelkultur along with some strawberries and thyme and a few dill plants.  All that decaying material attracted some doodle bugs (pill bugs, sow bugs).  And then it attracted more.  And more.  And more.  Doodle bugs are great in small numbers.  They act much like earth worms, eating decaying material and processing it into healthy soil.  The problems come in when their numbers explode.  When they overrun an area and there are too many of them to eat only the decaying material they start to go after fresh young food sources .... like potato leaves and small strawberries.

mulberries in a beer bottle

hand picked doodle bugs in a clear beer bottle

The great news is that these "pests" don't have to die they just need a new job.  Doodle bugs can be trapped and relocated to a place where their feeding habits will be beneficial.  Ours are getting moved (gradually) to the compost bin.  A pile of leaves would be another good location.  Yesterday I hand picked a bunch and dropped them into a empty beer bottle.  Over at the compost bin I gave the bottle a little tap or two to make them ball up and poured them right in.  Since our mulberry tree drops a great number of berries everyday we also have a paper sack with some kitchen compost and mulberries that I'll be relocating to the compost bin today and we'll be adding a bottle with mulberries today.  I'm sure it would be much easier to kill them off than it is to give them daily walks to the bin but the walks are good for us, the compost is good for the teeny little crustaceans and they are good for the compost.  Not to mention that whatever might be used to kill them probably wouldn't be good for other insects as well.  We don't allow any chemicals in our gardens.  Some doodle bugs will be allowed to stay to break down the bottom layers of the hugel and killing them off wouldn't allow us to leave some there.

doodle bugs "trapped" in a clay pot

Update a few days later.  The paper lunch bag of kitchen compost was GREAT for attracting doodle bugs.  Unfortunately, it was also great for attracting Rufus.  My sweet little dog tore that bag open and scattered bits all around.  Next I tried brown beer bottles with mulberries inside.  I caught a few butterflies but no doodle bugs.  Yesterday I put out a clay pot with a few mulberries and some straw.  This time I caught a BUNCH of doodle bugs and a bunch of ants.  All of those critters got dumped into the compost bin and I refilled the pot with more straw.  It seems that this may be the method that will work.  We're hoping that daily doodle bug removal will save the potatoes and the strawberries.

What do you do about your doodle bug removal?

Alternative Tomato Cages

red brandywine cage by my beautiful man

Some of the tomato plants are starting to get big, spreading themselves out rather than growing up tall.  Since they are also flowering and starting to fruit it was time to cage them.  The standard tomato cages you find in the store always bend and lean over by the end of the season so we looked for alternatives.  We decided to go with stretchy garden tape and bamboo poles.  This way we can add more support as it's needed and replace bits that bend or break.  My beautiful man won the 'most beautiful tomato cage' contest.  Ok ok.  There was no contest but his looks way better than the ones I did.

working on the green zebra cage

the green zebra cage

Uh oh.  Pictures of me.  I'm making the cage for the Green Zebra tomatoes.  The bamboo poles are plenty tall enough and we'll be adding tape as the plants get bigger.  This will allow us to adapt the "cage" to each plant's individual growth habits.

black krim with a single stake

The smaller plants have only received a single stake so far.  We will add support for them as it is needed.

compost added to purple cherokee

straw added to purple cherokee

While we were working with the tomatoes I decided they needed some more food.  All of the plants got some compost mixed in with their dirt and a dressing of straw on top of their soil.  A few of the plants were looking a little nitrogen deficient (yellowing bottom branches but good new growth) so those plants only had some coffee grounds mixed into their soil.

purple cherokee's first tomato

The first Purple Cherokee tomato also happens to be the very first tomato to show up.

the first yellow pear was a beauty

The first Yellow Pair tomato only got it's start the day before a bad storm with high winds.  In other areas this same storm spawned tornadoes.  Unfortunately, the next day I found the poor thing down in the dirt.  Hopefully another will show up soon.

We're looking forward to canning lots of salsa and tomato sauce this fall as well as some stewed tomatoes and whatever else we can make.  I'm sure we'll be sharing a lot of tomatoes with friends as well.  We have big heirloom varities, some paste tomatoes and these little yellow pears.  What kinds of things do you like to make with your tomatoes?

Butterflies love Watermelon

hungry friends

Just a brief post today.  I was out checking on the gardens and I noticed butterflies swarming the compost bin.  It turns out that butterflies love watermelon.

butterflies love watermelon

Ordinarily I chop up anything going into the compost but my beautiful man served up the watermelon for us and took out the compost that day.  I'll hack it up with the shovel later but for now the butterflies are enjoying it too much for me to disturb them.  I guess I'll just have to keep getting watermelons and add them to the "must plant" list for next year.

Onions Already?

onions freshly plucked from the ground

In February we planted some onions.  18 each of 10/15 and Granex and then 9 red onions.  We decided to go with transplants for two reasons.  One reason was that onions from seed take much longer and we were excited.  The second reason is that our favorite local garden center had them available.

As a bit of a disclaimer, I'm learning so much of this as I go so each step of everything I'm googling and reading books.  There is a LOT of information out there and, of course, not all of it is good so I try to verify things with a few sources before going with it.  If I publish anything here I find to be wrong I will make a new post to correct myself.

the onion garden with fallen leaves and flower heads

Earlier research would have been helpful but I'm learning now that if you plant onion transplants that are thicker than a pencil they are more likely to bolt early or finish early.  Another factor that can cause early bolting is a late freeze.  The problem with early bolting is that you get small onions.  We had two late freezes and I certainly did plant some of the bigger transplants so we're going to have tiny onions.  Next year I will likely plant a small number of onions just as early with a few sequential plantings after that and I will plant primarily smaller transplants.  I will also be planting a fall crop in late summer so I have some ready super early.

Another project we're doing is seed saving.  Unbelievably, saving seeds from the plants you grow is actually illegal in some countries and some American farmers have been found guilty of such in court.  This just blows my mind.  You can legally only buy your food or buy the plants and seeds each time you need them.  I'm learning to save my seeds from as many kinds of food and beneficial plants as possible and if this does become illegal I guess I'll be a criminal.  I'm just not going to (literally) buy into the GM food monopoly and I don't want to financially contribute to that poison parade.

onions sorted (10/15, red and granex)

These onions were pulled out of the ground 2 days ago, on Saturday.  They've been sitting on top of a shelf on our back patio where it's warm and dry.  This completes stage 1 of drying.  To start the next step I sorted the onions by type.  We have 10/15 from Aggieland, Granex which are supposed to be the best for onion rings (if they get big enough) and some sort of red onions.  I am getting better about labeling and taking notes, I promise.

removing seed head

Before starting the rest of the drying process I removed the flowering seed heads and dropped them into paper bags.  Each type of onion has his own bag which is labeled with the type and today's date.  They will be allowed to dry on a shelf until they are ready to break them open and remove the actual seeds.  At that point the dried seeds will be removed to a labeled and dated paper envelope where they will wait to be planted.

onion seed heads and borage seed heads drying on a shelf in our (non-climate controlled) shed

leaves removed from onions with stumps a few inches long left behind

The next step of the drying process requires most of the leaves to be removed.  Stumps of about 3 inches are left on the onions to keep them from rotting or being invaded by bugs.  The onions were then returned to the outdoor shelf to dry for two more weeks ... except the ones that are going into tonight's dinner.  Honestly I'm wondering if any will survive the two weeks without us eat them.

(You might notice Rufus in a lot more pictures.  My beautiful man has enacted a "if mommy is outside you're outside" rule with him and now he beats me to the door most of the time.  He's a good little guard dog.  The best thing is that he's well trained not to eat food without permission.)

onions returned to shelf to dry some more

onion leaves and mulberry branches in the compost

The leaves from the onions were cut into smaller pieces and thrown into the compost bin along with the mulberry branches my beautiful man pruned off a tree today.  Everything big that goes into the compost bin gets cut down to sizes that will break down faster.  My beautiful man turns the bin every day or two.  A wonderful earthy smell floats up out of it now.  It doesn't smell gross or like decaying food.  We've noticed the butterflies are back feeding from it.  In fact, I was "attacked" by several while cutting up the onion leaves.

After their 2 weeks on the outdoor shelf the onions will be cured for an additional 2 weeks.  I don't remember all the details on that yet but I'll post about it when the time comes.  Sadly, the early smaller onions don't keep as well.  I suppose that fact actually works to my advantage since I don't foresee all of these making it to the curing stage.

compost bin, mulberry tree and our neighbor's flowering plant that calls the butterflies

It feels great to harvest a food that we grew and create no waste in the process.  We eat the food and the scraps all go into the compost.  I will say that I am very fortunate to have a partner who supports me in all my "hippie" ways and helps me with these endeavors.  And I do love seeing him smile when he checks on the plants or eats the food that we grow.

a butterfly friend on the wall of the compost bin

Peas for Dinner

yummy dinner

fresh snap peas and organic butter

The other day I posted about the peas we harvested from the garden.  I couldn't believe it when I was out there today but there are so many more ready to pick now.  They must really love their garden and their
Mel's Mix.

I thought I'd share the dinner I made from the first peas we harvested.  I cooked the peas lightly in a little butter with some sliced garlic and a little salt. Once those were ready they were removed from the skillet where I cooked some mushrooms and red onions.  Toward the end of cooking I added in some green onion (the white part) and then a few minutes later the greens part.  I added the peas and garlic back in and then tossed it all with thin spaghetti, butter and parmesan.

peas cooking with garlic and butter

peas with garlic, mushroom, red onion and green onion

Peas Yummy Peas

peas fresh from the garden

Rufus enjoying a pea

My beautiful man, Rufus and I have been enjoying fresh peas from the garden lately.  Well, we've been enjoying them IN the garden lately.  Every day I pluck off a little baby pea for Rufus and he happily gobbles them down.  Barkley always turns his nose up at them so Rufus has been getting his too.  Yesterday I finally went out and harvested all the peas that I deemed big enough to eat.  Sadly, there were only enough for one serving.  Tonight the man and I will make a run to the grocery for some pasta and a few other veggies and we'll cook up something yummy with them.

beautiful man securing trellis

Today we ventured out to check on the gardens and my beautiful man decided it was time to add the extra trellis netting for the peas.  He just taped and tied it onto the pvc frame we use for tarping in the winter.  Then he drove screws into the bed borders and tied off the bottom of the netting to those.  The peas now have trellis on 3 sides.  We're hoping this will prevent overcrowding and keep harvesting easy as the newer plants grow up.  The holes in the netting are big enough to easily reach through.

flowers

While he was working on the netting I noticed that we had a whole bunch of new flowers popping out.  I really don't remember so many flowers and buds being there yesterday.  Perhaps I over looked them but I believe a lot are a result of the plants having extra energy since I pulled the big peas off yesterday (and I got a few more today.)  Harvesting food that is ready allows the plant to dedicate it's energy to new growth.  Once those newer plants come up we should have plenty at each harvest.

3 sided trellis

Notes:  These are two varieties of snap peas. 2 rows of Sugar Snap Peas from Burpee went in the dirt in mid-March.  Those were followed by successive plantings of 2 or 3 rows of Cascadia Snap Peas from High Mowing Organic Seeds on 4/2/13, 4/15/13, and 4/29/13.  All of the peas harvested so far are the Burpee Sugar Snap Peas and I can honestly say that, even raw and sun warmed they are quite delicious.

Other Note:  The whole thing looks so small next to my beautiful man but feels so tall when I'm standing next to it.  I guess that happens when you're a short lady with a tall man.

and now .... random pictures of peas ....

a wolf spider that tried to help

"smile you beautiful man"

happy little pea flower

more new flowers

a teeny plate of peas

 

cluster of flower buds