A Good Farmer's Husband (and the inherent perils)

Guest post this evening—this is Jay, Josh's husband. Josh is off on an adventure that I'm quite sure he'll blog about soon. In his absence, I've had a couple of small projects he asked me to do, including harvesting the garlic in the front yard and hanging it in the garage to cure with the rest he harvested and we hung together, and picking the remaining pea pods. I did that earlier in the week.

I noticed the grass was getting long in the back yard (the only grass we have). Josh does most of the mowing—heck, he does most of the outside stuff. I am the "yes dear" with the outside projects. That is, Josh says, "Let's build an orchard in the front yard." "Yes, dear." "Let's build raised beds in the back yard." "Yes, dear." "Let's add two hugelkultur beds in the back yard." "Yes, dear." And I jump in and help. I help with preparing beds and planting in the spring, and harvest in the fall. Josh does most everything else.

Anyway, I thought I'd be a good husband and mow the back yard while he's gone. While I was mowing, I noticed the ever-present Creeping Charlie was encroaching on the asparagus beds. So I circumnavigated each bed, pulling it up. Between the bed and fence it was so thick, I literally rolled it all up from the dirt like carpeting.

Then I checked out the hardy kiwi Josh planted, for which we built the trellis. I saw that it was doing a great job of vining on the asparagus, shown right. I teased it apart from the asparagus (no small feat!), and trained it up on the wires of the trellis.

Hardy Kiwi and Asparagus at war

Much better

Nettles, right?

I then continued weeding around the beds. When I got to the east end of the beds, I grabbed a weed and tossed it behind me. It felt little thistle-y. Within moments my right hand started stinging. What the...! I ran into the house and washed my hands several times with dish soap. Must have been nettles.

OK, now the Farmer's Husband knows what nettles look like. Be careful with nettles. No more nettles stings. [Yeah, I probably should have warn gloves.]

I come back outside and continue my weeding. A few seconds later, "ow, OW. OWOWOW!" I got two bee stings, one on the back of my left hand, the other above my left elbow. I went in—again—and washed, and checked for stingers. I didn't find one.

I went back out again (can you see it coming?) and got stung AGAIN by a bee—this time below my left knee. There must be a beehive on the east end of the asparagus beds. All bad things happen on the east end of asparagus beds. I took a Benadryl.

I'm attempting to NOT have my lesson be to avoid doing yard work. :o) However, we will need to do something about the bees, I think.

So, I have a lightly stinging right hand, and three stinging welts. What an adventure! However, it's very gratifying to see the kiwi vines getting trained on the trellis. I can't wait for Josh to post pictures in the future when it's really established in a couple of years. Fresh kiwis here we come!

Asparagus failure

One of three asparagus plants that survived winter.

I think it's important to write about both successes and failures. Well, what are failures if they're not learning experiences? So we'll call it a set back :-)

Last summer Jay and I were very busy in our backyard, and built some raised beds well after the chicken coop was complete, sometime in July.  While I had purchased 20 crowns of asparagus early in the spring, I didn't get around to putting them in the ground until mid-summer. All but a few came up and I diligently packed dirt around the new shoots as they grew out of the soil. I covered the whole thing with hay mulch in autumn and this spring, I waited eagerly for the asparagus to return.

Unfortunately, only three plants returned. I suspect it's because I planted them so darn late in the season, they didn't have enough time to build roots to survive the winter. As I was digging news holes for this year's plants, I uncovered one of the old crowns. Most of it was dead, but you can see below three white roots that seemed to be alive. I wonder had I not dug it up if this would have survived. I found a few other crows too, but they were entirely wilted and starting to rot.

One of last years crowns showing a little bit of life.

Newly dug trench for this year's crowns.

So this year I dug the trenches a little deeper, put a little more compost in the holes, and planted them in May. I'm looking forward to a vibrant asparagus crop for years to come.

A happy new crown, planted deeply, and at the right time of the year!

Finished hugelkultur bed

Chicken word of the day: chickens coming home to roost: to experience the consequences of one's behavior.

Last week I finished the hugelkulture bed. It's going to be our permanent asparagus patch. As described earlier, I used logs and branches from trees cut from our back yard fenceline, and buried them with dirt dug from garden paths and around the chicken coop. Unlike the other garden beds Jay and I built, these have a very rustic quality that I rather like.

This is a total experiment, I'm hoping the asparagus doesn't mind that the bed will settle as the wood at the bottom begins to rot.

It's also nice to finally have some of my gardening projects completed. For this project, we'll have to wait three years to harvest our first asparagus.

Hugelkultur - that's not a swear word

The word Hugelkultur, literally translating to “Mound Culture”, is the gardening practice of using excess wood debris in creating giant raised beds. The woody debris (sticks, twigs, logs, etc.) is placed in the base of the raised beds, acting as a sponge, holding in moisture, creating fungal hyphae and also building soil fertility.

I learned about hugelkultur during my permaculture design course. Last year, we had several trees removed from our property along our back fenceline, including an apple, elm and several box elder trees. I asked the tree service to chip all the small branches, but to leave me all the trunks and larger branches with building a hugelkultur bed in mind.

The logs have been sitting in the yard since because I didn't have enough dirt to cover them. But after excavating for our chicken coop run, and also excavating for my raised bed paths, I have enough to create a hugelkultur bed.

I want to keep the bed moderately in place, so I'm using some of the largest logs to reinforce the sides. And I'm using some of the skinniest logs as stakes to hold it all together. This is just about the opposite of the very square, very level, very precise garden beds we are also building in the back of the yard.


Next, I added coffee grounds that I collected this winter on top of the wood. 

Last spring, I collected coffee grounds from local shops for the big orchard sheet mulching project. Then I discovered that Starbucks gives away five pound bags of espresso grounds. No five-gallon buckets and no paper filters flying around the back yard.

Finally, I added soil from a big pile onto the logs.

Hugelkultur beds are best when built tall, and having steep sides so the fungi can get enough oxygen. I don't know how much dirt I have yet, but I'll pile it as high as I'm able. I think I have a lot of excavating to do yet from the raised bed paths.

 


 






The first few years of a hugelkultur bed is its most fertile, so planting heavy feeding plants is best. My plan is to plant asparagus (a heavy feeder) into these beds. As the wood decomposes, the whole thing will sink and I'll have to add manure (again, asparagus is a heavy feeder).

This is a total experiment, we'll see what happens.

Today's poultry phrase: good egg: a regular guy, good-natured person.

AmFam Community garden opens!

There are many things I like about our community garden. One of my favorite things is workdays, when we rally together and get a lot done in a short time. One of the most impressive times was when 30 people moved 30 cubic yards of wood mulch in about an hour. While we didn't open the 2014 garden with that big a bang, on Saturday I had a great time with my fellow gardeners getting the garden ready for a successful summer.

Our primary purpose was to get our weedy community garden patch under control. While I don't advocate for repeat rototilling, it seemed like the only way to manage this weed bed was to beat them into submission and then smother them. We had a number of people to pull back last year's hay mulch, and then we rototilled the three rows a couple of times. Gardeners then applied a new fresh batch of hay mulch to the newly tilled beds.

Next week a different group of volunteers is going to plant asparagus and raspberries. I'm still wondering about the wisdom of us releasing that many raspberries on to our garden, but it's what people wanted to do and this area has always been an experiment. I'm game. And I'm particularly excited about the asparagus!

At the same time volunteers were hooking our hoses up to the water spigots. It feels like the garden really comes alive when this kind of equipment gets put into place.

We also had a load of 100 hay bales for gardeners to use to mulch their gardens. A couple of strong people stacked them up (strings not on the ground) so they'll last until people want to use them.

But what I'm most excited about is our little free library. Last year one of our gardeners built this library, and we installed it this weekend. I was happy to add some books my friend Tara had given me, and some of my own gently read copies of Organic Gardening and Urban Farming magazines.

Finally, it seems to us that one of the perennial challenges is figuring out who actually is using their gardens even after they signed up for a plot. It seems like every year a couple of people sign up and pay for a plot, but the never get into the garden. We don't discover this until June 15 when it's weedy and pretty much past time that another gardener could use the plot, or we could dedicated to food pantry production.

This year we put numbered flags in each plot, and are asking the gardeners to remove the flag and put it into this box to both help them find their plot and indicate that they are actively using it. I understand that for some people things come up and they simply can't garden. But maybe this way we'll find earlier those people who never even tried.