No Till Gardening

Bellevue gardens,  4/8/2012

      When I started our first home garden in 1975, I did not have a truck or a tiller, and so had to dig the garden by hand.  A lot of work, but it worked fine.  When we moved to Michigan a year later, I had read about the double dig method.  It should read the double the trouble method.  I won't do that again.  We had a garden, but it was a lot of work.  Still though, I had not used a tiller.  When we moved here to Delaware in 1979, the garden was already in, but it was a wet clay, slippery mess where the previous owner had put down  "two by fours" to be able to walk without falling in the clay soup.  Since that time, I have put down wood chips for paths, and ground leaves for mulch.  And more wood chips and more leaves.  And more leaves, and more and still more.  Everything goes on top of the soil.  The only digging I do is to plant seeds or starts.
      A huge benefit can be seen in the above photo.  My garden on the right is fully planted and currently productive.  Most folks are still tilling and now just starting to seed or put in transplants.  The plot on the left has already had a load of mushroom soil tilled in, but that mushroom addition has disappeared as fertilizer for the weeds.  It will get tilled again before being planted.  Then the pathways between rows will be tilled again and again as the method for "weeding" the garden.  All the while grinding up the weeds and grass into more small pieces that will grow again.  You can see the mushroom soil in my garden on the right.  I used it as a mulch on top of the soil, where it will still release its nutrient value, while serving as a valuable mulch to keep down the weeds.  The soil is so friable and moist, that any weeds that do grow are very easy to pull by hand.  In neighboring Pennsylvania where the mushroom soil comes from, the mushroom growers by law have to steam sterilize the mushroom soil before it leaves the mushroom houses.  Thus it makes a great weed free mulch.  Grass clippings, leaves, and wood chips on top of the soil all work as good mulch.
      By setting up permanent beds and paths, only the path areas get walked on.  The soil in the beds stays light and unpacked.  And full of plants year round.

      This shot shows the garden plots on the east side of my plot.  All three kale varieties, Beedy's Camden, Red Russian, and Scotch Curly leaf, overwintered and are producing harvestable leaves even as they are going to flower.  The cut seed heads before flowering are a delicious alternative to broccoli raab.  We had some last night with pasta, sweet peppers, and sweet Italian sausage.  Scrumptious.
      Also in current production are collards and collards flower stalks, Egyptian walking onions eaten as green onions, leeks, overwintered Tango lettuce, and cutting celery.  Lots of different lettuces are still producing in the cold frames, even as new starts are being planted.  And some cardoon is ready to harvest if I only knew what to do with it. 

     Out of nearly two hundred garden plots at the park, mine is the one green oasis among plowed furrows or weed patches yet to be tilled.  With gas at $4/gallon, I don't see any reason to change from my old ways.

     

Fifteen Minutes of Fame

      Most often our "15 Minutes of Fame" opportunities are most unexpected.  I was about to leave the park three days ago with an armload of overgrown Pak Choi that was to be lunch for the chicken flock of a new gardening friend Laura.  At that moment, a stranger pulled up alongside the gardens and asked me to hold on a moment.  The guy got out of his car, and I saw that he had both an ID and a camera hanging from around his neck.  I recognized him as Fred Comegys, the very well known and respected photographer from the Wilmington News Journal.  We had a lengthy conversation, and I learned that he was retiring from the paper in two weeks, after a very full 53 year career!  He asked me if he could take some shots, to see if something would turn out for the daily special 360 Degree shot headlining the local section.  Who was I to refuse.  So on this third morning of anxiously checking the paper, voila, there it was.  Here is the link to DelawareOnline.  You need to scroll down over half the page to find the shot labeled Bellevue 360:

http://www.delawareonline.com/

      After a very nice conversation with Fred, I took the clump of greens home to await a visit from my two youngest grand daughters.  We took the greens over to Laura's garden, and visited with her flock of thirty chickens, her huge but very friendly Great Dane, and her millions of toad tadpoles in the goldfish pond.

A treat for the chickens

      This is one of the pak choi plants that have gone to seed.  The whole thing goes into the chicken coup, where it disappears in a short time of appreciative cluck clucks by the chickens.  And yes, they love chick weed, and even have added their name to that plant.  So rather than throwing away weeds and overgrown veggies, feed them to the birds.

Laura's happy flock

Resplendent Radishes

      A google search for the word resplendent yields this entry: Attractive and impressive through being richly colorful or sumptuous.  Pretty much describes a good radish.  Having had great success with radishes last fall, I planted them in force this morning.  Here is what I put in:

      Yes, that could result in a lot of radishes.  Hopefully so.  I have not had great success with growing radishes in the spring and early summer.  They seem to like cooler weather, so I am hoping this early April planting will work out.
      I had fabulous radishes that were planted last September.  Maturing into the cooler weather resulted in plump radishes without the bite from warm weather.  The best radish patch was actually the result of spilling seeds by mistake onto one of the wood chip paths.  Please see one of my posts from last year:

http://fromseedtoscrumptious.blogspot.com/2011/11/gardening-in-wood-chips.html

      So hoping to capitalize on last year's success, this morning I planted the radish seeds at the ends of most of my beds, some directly into wood chips:

Radish seeds spread,  4/5/2012

      Some seeds were dropped directly on top of the chips next to this cold frame.  You can see the area planted because it is a little darker in color from having just been watered.

      Some other radish seeds went into this bed with mushroom soil.  Will be fun to see the difference between growing in wood chips versus a standard planting bed.  Another reason for planting at the ends of the rows is that I am quickly running out of space, and these precious little spaces were available.

      These white radishes were harvested on 11/23/2011 from a September planting.  I hope this spring planting is equally successful.

Park Garden Update, 4/1/2012

      The first of April is here, and already my garden at the park is full to overflowing.  It will be a challenge to be able to find room for the warm weather veggies.  Though in another month, a lot of the cold weather veggies will have had their day, and be ready to be pulled.

Cold frames open, 4/1/2012

Arugula frame

Assorted lettuce and tatsoi

      This cold frame has various lettuce plants that need a good picking.  The cell packs at the bottom have most likely been cut down by slugs.  The pack at the top with the single leaf was a five pack of purchased kohlrabi starts.  I was going to put them in the ground today, but the voles left just this one leaf out of the two packs of five that I had.  The voles are becoming public enemy number one.  The packs along the top are leeks, obviously not a favorite of the voles.  Maybe this garden should be all onions, garlic, and leeks.

Garlic on left, collards, transplanted garlic

Parsnips

Cardoon and garlic starts

Blooming cole volunteer, spinach, Beedy's kale, and Chinese mustard

Harvestable Egyptian walking onions

Fava bean row

Overwintered artichoke

Overwintered arugula and tons of potential garlic

Overwintered red russian kale and leeks

Overwintered Tango lettuce

Still waiting for the podded peas to sprout

Porch and Yard Update - 4/1/2012

Apr 1st:    Day length:   12 hrs, 41 min   -   That's 45 minutes longer than 3/15
                      Sunrise:         6:45 AM
                      Sunset:          7:26 PM
                      High Temp:    59 degrees F      Low Temp:    41 degrees F

      These two week updates keep rolling along at a furious pace.  As does the coming out of spring.  Flowers in abundance, and trees about to leaf out.  The gardening season already pushing further behind in plantings that need to be done.

Trex cold frame,  4/1/2012

      The Walla Walla onions started from seed have done well and are begging to be planted out.  The minutina in the bottom right corner is in full seed production mode, and I should harvest some just to try growing new plants from my own seed.  It also amazes me to see what  changes on the Fedco Seed Catalog from year to year due to crop failure.  Keeping one's own seed lines going can make sense.

Wooden cold frame

      The yellow blooms are from the mizuna mustard, a favorite for both the delicious greens and their attractive serrated appearance.  The romaine lettuce at the bottom of the cold frame are the plants from my post: http://fromseedtoscrumptious.blogspot.com/2011/12/plant-rescue-101.html

Fava beans planted 3/30/2012

Transplanted onions and swiss chard

Onions that overwintered and need dividing

Seedlings in busted aquarium

      Many of my starts from seed have been disappointing.  Here in the aquarium, the slugs have crawled in from the broken bottom and decimated most of the cole crop seedlings.  The voles over at the park love my little "micro" greens in my frames.  I cooked a whole flat of cole seedlings in one frame, and have quite a bit of slug damage at the park as well.  Certainly takes some of the fun out of the whole process.

  The tomato and pepper seedlings on the porch are still a high point though.  It will take careful hardening off on trips to the deck to get the plants acclimated to outside sun before they can go into the gardens.  And although the weather has been warm, it is still far too early to think of tomatoes or peppers unprotected this early in the season.  

Nature Lesson

      As I was headed across the kitchen this morning to go to the porch, a blur of motion outside caught my attention.  A fox right near the house.  With a dead squirrel.  The best kind of squirrel in my opinion.  Quick, where is my camera?  This may not be heady stuff to you bloggers up in Wisconsin and Minnesota, but this is a nature show at its finest here in Delaware.  This first picture does not include the prize, so if you don't want to see dead squirrel, please check out some other post and come back later.

Successful fox,  3/28/2012

      I don't think I missed the actual catch but by a couple of moments.  Here the fox is about to pick up the squirrel that is hidden by the liriope.  He may have actually hidden in that bed at the base of the ash tree.

Look Ma, I actually caught one!

      It was a beautiful young fox.  Nice markings, black ears, no mange.  The fox had to make sure that this squirrel was not going anywhere.

Better find out if I can move this thing

      He moved his prize to the middle of the yard and sat back down to start sampling.  All this activity attracted a crow that flew in and perched in the ash tree.  The crow cawed, probably hoping the fox would run off.

Forget it, this one is mine

      The fox stayed in the yard for 15 or 20 minutes.  Then it did me a huge favor by picking up the squirrel to probably take it home to show off to the other young foxes.  So I didn't even have to deal with the aftermath.

      Quite an unusual start to the day.

What is He Thinking?

Bellevue Cold Frames,  3/26/2012

      You might think that these cold frames plus the two in the backyard would be enough to keep me busy and satisfied.  And yet,

More glass, 3/26/2012

      I just couldn't resist.  A neighbor three doors down is having new windows installed.  How could I let these go to waste?  I drove around with these framed storm windows in my truck for over a week before I finally decided that the exterior frames were not needed.  Luckily for me, the window man was still around, so those empty frames went back on his truck.  This pile is just from the family room, there were a bunch we had already removed from the upstairs.  If you twisted my arm really hard, you could probably sweet talk your way to some free glass.
      The thing that excites me is that for every two pieces of glass, there is one matching screen section.  I am hoping that I can have some cold frames still covered in the summer with a combo of glass and screen that would keep out cabbage moths and harlequin beetles.