The joys of discovering something for free

Last autumn, I found, hauled and shredded leaves from my block to make four large compost bins. I mixed the leaves with coffee grounds and let them sit over winter, mixing several times this spring, and had beautiful compost mulch for nearly all my gardens.

Nearly...

I was so pleased with the resulting compost that I wished I had hauled more leaves home last autumn, as dry leaves that don't contain grasses and weeds are hard to find in the spring and summer.

A treasure of shredded leaves waiting for me to haul away.

The other day while eradicating Canadian thistle in my community garden, I wondered over to our compost pile where I was sure to find some. Indeed, I found the mother of all thistle colonies. While there, I also discovered a beautiful pile of shredded leaves. It must be where the landscapers for the surrounding area dumped them.

I immediately recognized the solution to my lack of leaves problem. Today, while running errands around Madison's east side, I backed my car up to the pile and dug in. The leaves on top were crispy and not very decomposed, but just a few inches into the pile and they were wet, decaying and smelled wonderful. I filled two collapsible containers and the trunk (which I had lined with a tarp).

Passengers, you can't see in the photo, but they are belted in!

I stopped at the two Starbucks that are on my way home from work and one of them paid off with four bags of coffee grounds. Not enough for all the leaves I had collected, but a good start.

Back at home, I filled a compost bin, put down a layer of coffee grounds, then a load and a layer of too fresh horse manure, then a load and coffee grounds. I'll add water (or let it rain, whichever comes first) mix it up a few times and it will be a steaming pile in a few days; and should be beautiful compost to put my beds to sleep with this autumn.

My plan is to repeat leaf and coffee ground collection until all four of my bins are full. This should be enough for autumn mulching. After I empty them this autumn, I'll fill them again with leaves from the block. My ultimate goal is that I don't need to buy hay for mulch any more. I almost made it this year, but ended up buying two bales at the last minute when I ran out of my own compost.

Hay bales and direct seeds

Poultry word of the day: chicken, chicken out, chicken-hearted, chicken-livered: to be cowardly.

When planting seeds directly in the ground, I'm always careful to lightly cover seeds with a sprinkle of hay and row cover, and then later mulch with hay between rows. It's a real pain to tear slabs of hay apart and tuck them between rows without damaging fragile seedlings.

Until now.

On reading the back of the beet seeds I planted last weekend, rows are to be 18-20 inches apart. I planted the rows, and then decided to try to mulch between them now. When I laid down the first slab of hay, to my delight (and let me reiterate this was a total accident) I discovered that a slab of hay is either 14 or 18 inches wide. (Hay bale slabs are rectangular.) I found that I had accidentally planted my beet rows with enough space between to allow me to lay down a slab of hay in the 14-inch orientation, allowing space for the plants to push up between the mulch.

I am never, ever going to plant seeds any width other than a slab of hay. I share this with you so it doesn't take you 33 years of gardening to figure out this simple mulching trick.

I planted three 16-foot rows of three types of beets, Detroit Golden, cylindra and Boro hybrid. Jay and I want enough for fresh eating and lots of canning. And after sampling borscht last year, I'm looking forward to making our own.

Hay slabs are conveniently as wide as the suggested spacing for the beets.

As I've said before, I'm a big believer in row cover, even over the hay.

Sheet mulching - not 900-count, 900 square feet

Sheet mulching, otherwise known as lasagna gardening, is an organic practice of putting down layers of alternating carbon-rich in nitrogen-rich materials to accomplish a number of goals.

The first is to kill the grass. I know, lots of people worked their entire lives to get the perfect lawn, but the last thing I want to do with my life is mow it -- I'd rather kill the grass and plant something productive in that open space.

The second thing sheet mulching does is brings in a lot of organic matter to enrich the soil. Organic matter can be anything, leaves, manure, hay or straw, wood chips, compost, even on garden debris from last year. The trick to a successful sheet mulch is getting the carbon and nitrogen ratios right so you don't have an imbalance. Too much carbon and there isn't any organic activity; too much nitrogen and it gets smelly.

There are books describing the perfect sheet mulch project, so I'm not going to go into it here. (I'm reading Gaia's Garden right now, great book!) The sheet mulch layers we're going to use to smother the grass and create lovely soil for our orchard will look like the following. From the surface down:

• Woodchip paths or a 2" layer of compost seeded with a low-growing white clover
• 6 to 8 inches of marsh hay (doesn't contain weed seeds)
• 1 inch compost
• solid layer of cardboard
• 1 inch compost
• coffee grounds
• dead grass (leftover from the lawn)
• original soil

Many people who sheet mulch their yards spend a lot of time collecting compost, old hay, leaves, cardboard, wood chips etc. But since we didn't have much time before we wanted to plant our orchard, we're purchasing most of the woodchips, compost and hay; and we scrounged cardboard from the neighborhood and collected coffee grounds from local cafés.

I will take lots of pictures during the sheet mulch process and show you how it turned out in a future post.

Two juniper trees were removed this week. Props to Garret of Gere Tree Care for the short-notice job.

Garret left a load of wood chips (some from the branches of our tree, some from earlier jobs). The tarp is less to keep them dry and more to say "Not free for the taking."

Proper watering techniques in a drought

We're having practically drought-like conditions in Wisconsin. But you can still overwater your tomatoes (and the rest of your garden for that matter). All the reading I've done says that at this stage in the growing season, you need to soak your plants with an inch of water (remember rain gauges?) once a week. Overwatering will produce leafy plants with little fruit and can weaken plants. Here's a great article explaining blossom-end rot and what can and can't be done to prevent it.

Mulch

You can help the soil maintain moisture by heavily mulching your tomatoes. Our community garden provides bales of marsh hay for garden mulch. Use "slabs" of hay around the base of the plant to both maintain even moisture between watering, to protect the soil from erosion and to keep weeds to a minimum. Straw, plastic and any number of other materials work as well. Wood chips are not good for annual plants such as tomatoes, wood consumes nitrogen from the soil as it decomposes, stealing it from your plants.

Even watering

If a plant receives excess water, the roots can’t breathe, and will rot. The gardening Web site Suite101.com says, “Over watering also leads to fungal diseases and mold. Once root rot begins the plant will start to die, but if it’s caught early enough, it can be saved. Signs of over watering include: wilting, yellow leaves, mushy stems and mold growth on the soil.” 

Check out the rest of this excellent article on proper tomato watering techniques.