No Soil, No Veggies

It's always been an interest of mine to see what other people do on their land, including design, functionality,  Then I come back and look at my piece. I used to get a little depressed about our gravel-laden, mossy, weedy yard. (That's it there to the left) Then I turned my thinking around to realize the potential it has. I certainly don't need to worry about drainage! I don't need to worry about putting a shovel into it and coming up with construction trash (like our last home). I can do whatever I want with our piece of land...mostly. Because the front yard is where the septic tanks and weeping field is, I'm going to plant most of our vegetables in the back. It's logical, larger and by growing crops in the back, I'm not tempting Murphy (of Murphy's Law fame).

My first issue to address in the back is the soil. As far as I know, there is only one way to grow anything in this soil, and that's to amend it. Many of you know I am a big fan of organic gardening and farming. Some of you know I believe whole heartedly in growing food and not grass. I know we have the potential here to grow a butt-ton of food, using a combination of square-foot and bio-intensive methods. But first things first, something has to be done with the soil.

We have two composters here on the property, and they get used, tended and mixed quite often. One of them had sat in the same location for a couple of years until just recently. When I moved it, I was happy to see that there was enough finished compost for me to use in a few spots around the yard. Those spots will be herb beds next year. (With what remains of this growing season, I will be focusing on building garden beds, growing herbs and lettuce indoors and of course, soil improvement.) The composter that I moved had a lot of wet items in it, what the composting gurus call "green" matter, but it wasn't real high in "brown" stuff. Before I confuse you, let me explain.

What you put into your composter has a lot of influence on  how quickly  the raw materials break down, as does the size of these items. If you fill your composter with only sticks and dry leaves, they're going to take longer to break down. The same can be said of vegetable trimmings. The trick is find the right ratio. The organisms that do the work in a composter need four things to work properly; carbon (this is where dry plant matter comes into play such as small broken up twigs, dry leaves and straw), nitrogen (in order to make new and more of the aforementioned organisms to oxidize that carbon), oxygen to help decomposition, and water (to help maintain organisms without giving too much moisture and creating a stinky situation). Now, if you remember that fresh, juicy, wet materials are usually "green", it gets easy to think of "green" compostables. Apple cores, grass cuttings, banana peels, feathers, manure, tea leaves, potato peelings, watermelon rind, coffee grounds and so on. All of these are high in nitrogen as well. Now the "brown" ingredients are easier to identify as well. Dry leaves, shredded corn stalks and cobs, wood chips, small sticks, grass cuttings that have dried on the lawn, peanut shells, straw, bedding from all kinds of animals from gerbils to horses ... you get the idea, right? Remember, the smaller the pieces you put in, the faster it will all break down. I've heard of a lot of people acquiring worms and dumping them into the compost pile. Proponents of vermiculture say there is only one kind of worms to use, and that's the red wiggler. I don't know this for sure myself, but I know that it's now possible to order them through the internet! Google is so useful...

So, compost is a key element of organic soil amendment. No matter how much I want to hurry it along, it takes time. Depending on the style of your composter and what you put in it, and how often it's mixed; it can take either months or weeks to get finished compost. Or so the experts say. I've never had compost in weeks. Apparently if one has a tumbler style composter (this one looks like a barrel with a handle), the drum can be rotated every week or so and therefore better mixed. There are composters that look like a drum that gets narrower at the top. I've never been able to see why this design is better than any other, but if you ever get the opportunity to go look at composters for sale, this may be the most common design. Another design is the three bin system, with each bin holding progressively more completed compost. I have never tried this style, but with six of us in the house, I am faced with the possibility of making a three bin system soon! I think design comes down to the preference of the person composting. What's more important is rebuilding the soil, and giving back to the planet instead of taking away.

So what's in your composter, you might be asking me... We eat a lot of fruit and veggies here, and the fresher the better. So we have a lot of vegetable trimmings. Potato peels, watermelon rind, cucumber trimmings, and beet ends Small twigs and dry leaves from my ongoing battle to not let the forest take back our property, dried straw, and coffee grounds. This week I'm hoping to acquire a source of goat and chicken manure that I can mix into the composter as well. Before you start wondering about the smell, let me assure you that if a composter is managed correctly, there is no smell. I had a 5 gallon bucket that I had put small holes into at my former home, an apartment, that I put all our kitchen waste into, as well as dried leaves and sticks and some small amounts of soil from a local ravine. (The soil came with the dried leaf matter on the shovel. I wasn't digging holes in the ravine, in case you wondered) As long as I was conscious of the ingredients of my bucket, and kept an eye on things, (or should that be nose?), and kicked the round bucket around the yard to mix it all up my neighbors never smelled a thing. In fact, many didn't believe me until I showed them the compost.

So, to wrap up, compost is the first step to any soil amendment, and definitely my starting point. It's not as overwhelming as it first seems when you break it all down. Pardon the pun. Plants are better off for the time and effort put into compost, the soil will be richer for it, and in the end, the vegetables grown with it will be all the healthier for it.
Do you have a composter? If you do, what style do you have? Is it a barrel or three bin system? What do you put into yours? If you don't have a composter right now, is this something you plan on doing?
Let me know in the comments section; I love learning what everyone else is doing!

What I "C" From the Urban Trench

My apologies for the length of time between posts. Life has a nasty habit of getting in the way when you make other plans.
So the letter of the day is "C". It's taken me a couple of days to list some things that applied to our little world here, and then narrow that list down, but the most important for us is country. As in, we're moving out to it. We're finally getting out of the city, and none too soon. Now, I know that's not news to you regular readers, but it's a huge change for the boys and the dog. Moving from the city to the country will allow us  more freedom, more options, more self-sustainability, and definitely more security. The recent rash of "bath-salts" drug using has me more convinced than ever that we need to get the hell out of Dodge, so to speak. Yes, I know you can find pot growing in the bush because someone figured it was safe there, but at least someone high on pot isn't going to try and eat my face off!

Also a change for us will be the raising of chickens. We'll be raising layers in the hopes that we can keep our mini-horde of egg lovers satisfied, and  any extras (ha!) will be sold to generate money for feed. This is just one way to provide a bit more food security, and eat healthier too!

Compost is a big part of eating healthier in a way. Feed the soil, and you feed the plants, and in turn, eat healthier yourself. So I've been devoting a lot of time to learning how to make compost quicker and better.

Cover crops also help feed and protect the soil. They feed the soil by replacing nutrients and carbon mass, thereby building more productive soil, and increasing crop yield each year.

Speaking of crops, there's dozens that start with our chosen letter of the day. I look forward to harvesting all kinds of carrots, celery and cucumbers. I've never grown collards before, but since someone in the family wants them, we'll give them a go. I've been told they are similar to a cross between turnip greens and spinach. Well, I guess I'll just have to see.

Conservation of water and food has been a big thing for us lately, and will continue to be. I've taken to figuring out how much water we'd need for a week and setting it aside in sanitized 2L pop bottles here. Up at the new homestead, we're already getting rain barrels and eavestrophes in place so that we can save water there. Part of food conservation is canning, which I also look forward to. I've not been able make jam or salsa here, and honestly there's nothing like bright and lively homemade fruit salsa or crunchy pickles.

There's a lot to be said for home cooking too. Eating out has become fraught with super sized portions even I can't finish, preservatives I can't pronounce and a general feeling of dissatisfaction. Making our meals at home allows us a little more control over portion size, favor, spices, sodium and best of all, taste.  Not mention that the amount of food one can buy for $30 eating out is nowhere near the amount of food one can cook for $30. I feel sorry for all those folks at McD's, but my family has to eat better than questionable mystery meat, fries white with salt and drinks I can't finish.

Candles are important to those who like to prepare for emergencies. During thunderstorms, we gather candles in one place and make sure we adults know where the lighter is. Much better than groping in the dark. yes, cell phones give off some light, but I'm not sure I'd want to find my candles by cellphone light! Even if there is an app for that.

Well, this wraps up today's installment. Be sure and let me know about any "C" items I may have missed, in the comments. I love hearing from my readers!

"C" you all next time!

The A B C's of An Urban Trench

The obvious place to start is "A", of course, and with agriculture.

Wikipedia says that agriculture can be defined as "the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi, and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life". The New Oxford American Dictionary  says agriculture is the science or practice of farming, including cultivation of the soil for the growing of crops and the rearing of animals to provide food, wool, and other products.

That's still pretty broad. There are dozens of  branches to get lost on in the study of agriculture. If one were to go to school to study agricultural sciences, we would be studying irrigation, agricultural productivity, plant breeding, agricultural diversification, pesticides, soil, agricultural techniques, and the list goes on. So, if we use the two definitions above as our starting off point, we can study how we use animals, plants and fungi in our day to day lives, how they're raised or grown and how we modify them for our own use. Our track record, generally, isn't good.

We have a bad habit of squeezing animals in massive numbers into cages or pens too small for them, denying them basic comforts, force feeding them so that rapid growth benefits us, and even feeding them in a cannibalistic manner because slaughter house floor scrapings are cheaper, never mind the health risk. All one has to do is sit through half of Food Inc. to really see how we treat the animals destined to become our food. Now, I'm not a vegetarian, and I have no plans to become one. My standpoint here is that we, as a higher life form, really should know better than to continue down this slippery slope. We already dance with danger every day. E. Coli and Mad Cow runs rampant, and usually it's because some member of the human race has done something they know is wrong. E. Coli in melons killed 13 people, because two brothers thought they could save a few bucks. 9 people died because of salmonella in peanuts back in 2008. The list is exhaustive, and not the main thrust of this post. You get the point I'm sure.

One way to live healthier is to eat healthy food. I've written here before about diminishing nutrient values in our fruits and vegetables, and while I'm still appalled by it all, let me say that the declining nutrient levels have caused many to start their own gardens. Indeed, it is the main thrust behind my passion for organic growing methods. Growing healthier food starts with healthy soil. Soil that is teeming with life in the form of worms, microbes, fungi and bacteria. Before you get grossed out, these tiny critters are the keystone to good food. If your spadeful of shovel has no worms, chances are it is bereft of the smaller soil-dwellers too. That's not good for the plants. To feed the plants, you must first feed the soil. No soil ... no food.

Massive industrial agriculture is not a viable option for the future as the model stands today. There needs to be a change in our habits, and while there is a revolution that marches on, it is still small. We need to get politics out of our fields so that monsters like Monsanto wither and waste away. We need to get politicians to stop paying farmers to let their fields sit empty, and instead pay them to think more organically. We need to educate more people so that they better understand soil and what should live in it. We need to spread the word about compost so that everyone knows what it does, what it should be and what it can do for us. We need to understand water and how to live with less, as well as how to conserve it both in a small scale and a large one. We need city councils to allow us to raise chickens in our backyards, and sell eggs and grow tomatoes in our front yard if we want; not take homeowners to court when they rip up water-guzzling lawns.

This conversation is a massive, ongoing dialogue, one I hope we can all wade in on and share our opinions. It is only through the exchange of ideas and truly listening to one another that we can learn. So tell me what you think of agriculture today, perhaps you'll teach me something or get me pondering some aspect of it that I had overlooked!

A Pea Here, A Potato There

So now I approach the whole book of my plans differently ... "Wait, what book?" you ask. I have a very large binder that houses all my notes on everything I thought I might find useful in off-grid, green manure, power production, water storage, food production, pest control, specific plant type notes, seed saving...you get the idea.
So now I need to approach the big book of knowledge as not just a repository of knowledge, but as a tool within the plan. The plan is to feed us with as much homegrown, natural food as possible. Realistically, there will still be things we'll need to acquire from town, but it's my hope that the list of those things shrink as the land and I grow together.
Soil is the first priority, I think. Without good soil, nothing will grow to it's full potential.

“Be it deep or shallow, red or black, sand or clay, the soil is the link between the rock core of the earth and the living things on its surface. It is the foothold for the plants we grow. Therein lies the main reason for our interest in soils.” --- Roy W. Simonson, USDA Yearbook of Agriculture, 1957

I will need to decide where the raised beds are going, replace edge boards to the old raised beds that are sagging, and compost to those as well. I'll also need to decide where new raised beds are going, lay the boards for those, dig a little to improve drainage and plant clover as a green manure. These will be the pea patches. It's my hope that with rotational green manure crops, I can improve the soil enough that I can get a reasonably good crop next spring.

Despite our limited number of days we will have remaining to us once we move, we'll still be growing a variety of things, most of which will be started and planted by then. Many are, indeed, started even as I type. No, not by me. By the Mom-Gardener. We'll already have under way pumpkins, squash, lettuce, tomatoes, beets, carrots and dill. Not much at a cursory glance, that's true. But we'll be growing what we can between the end of July and that dreaded first frost. But no matter how much it turns out to be, it will be more than she could have last year, and more than I have been able to grow in 12 years. We will be thankful for each and every morsel.

I have to give a shout out to an unlikely gardeners-left-hand, my Dad. I was unexpectedly thrilled to learn he got approximately five gallons of compost the other day. Way to go, Dad! (insert high five here) I was so encouraged by the news, I grinned like a dork for an hour.

There will need to be the right place found for a patch of oats that I'd like to grow next year. We're a big oatmeal family, all of us, and I'd like to be able to augment our store bought oats as much as I can. The only way I see the quality of our food improving is by eating more of our own, and realistically it's going to be a slow conversion. (For the picky eater in the family, that might be a good thing) The same goes for potatoes and corn. The "feeding" requirements for each will be a little different, but I'm already planning a three year crop rotation.

Next time, I'll talk more about crop rotation and why monoculture farming may have contributed to the big dust bowl of history.

Planning, Dreaming and Learning From Eliot

A big part of the fun of growing one's own food is the planning. Gardeners love to studying seed catalogues, plan, modify and change their orders numerous times over the winter season. Then all of a sudden we realize it's almost time to start the seeds indoors and we feel the rush of hurry up and wait! I am not above this condition. In fact, last night at work, I realized my seed planning was far from complete. It hit me suddenly...How many pea plants will I need to fill 48 pint jars? How many tomato plants will we need to fill 64 pint jars? How many tomato plants will fit a 4'X4' bed? How about the peppers? I've had more success in the past  with square foot gardening than with rows, and it's proven you can increase your yields using square foot spacing. So, where I can, that's what I'll be using. I have to try and produce as much food as I can for 7 people, remember. Now, I know that every season my yields will increase as I invest more time, work and TLC into the soil. That first season, we'll be moving part way through the growing season, and thereby lose a big part of growing time. There's not much that can be done about that.

But I have an ever-growing list of projects to keep me busy, and there will be vegetables that will grow in under 60 days. Peas, lettuce, radishes, baby carrots, baby spinach, cucumbers, and beets. Thanks to Eliot Coleman, I've been learning a ton about  season extension. That will make a big difference. I will be planning and implementing a green manure rotation plan as well. There will be new beds to locate and develop, the garden shed to fix up and a spring on the property I'd like to develop as well. I'll need to find a water testing lab for that, as well as cast an eye at potential flow. I'm going to be building on the current water catchment system, and I'd like to improve the current composting system. There are a few basics in place, they really just need some attention to flourish.

But for right now, this is the season of research, education and planning. I've been learning about season extension, organic gardening, market gardens, food preservation and nitrogen. Let's not forget the many facets of companion gardening, crop rotation, organic pest control and increasing one's self sufficiency. I'd like to learn more about ram pumps, water storage and solar power on a small scale.

The hard part is taking it slow.

Shifting Agriculture Could Change Everything

My partner and I were talking about our future one day when she made a statement that still has me thinking weeks later. I was telling her about my plans for the not-quite-an-acre property, and how I plan to eke as much food from it as possible. She nodded and said, "Your job will be growing the food and mine will be preserving and cooking it" Now, obviously there will be more to it, but she has the essence of it right. With the core of our new roles put like that, I realized I can't take a break from learning all I can about agriculture.

John Michael Greer talks about two agricultures in his blog entry, Two Agricultures, Not One dated August 18th of last year. He talks about how the mega-farming as we know it today is an industrialized and chemicalized version of the intensive farming that fed our ancestors, and he also shares the opinion that intensive gardening is going to help us pad our food shortfall,
"A team of researchers at pioneering organic-gardening group Ecology Action found, on the basis of extensive tests, that it’s possible to feed one person year round on a spare but adequate vegetarian diet off less than 1000 square feet of intensively gardened soil... In the more troubled parts of the future ahead of us, some of us may have to do just that; a great many more of us will need to be able to garden in order to pad out potential irregularities in a food supply that’s desperately vulnerable, over the short term, to fluctuations in the price and availability of fertilizer feedstocks and fossil fuels. The victory gardens of past wars are likely to be a useful template for the survival gardens of the deindustrial future." 

I completely agree, and I've begun to see it already. All of that only frustrates me on another level, because here, I can hardly grow anything, facing north and being in shade. So on one hand, I could sit and whine about it, or I could shut up and DO something. Months ago, I chose the latter. So it has become my secondary job, if you will, to learn everything I can about growing as much as I can on very small acreage. Starting with the soil. I already knew that compost is better than any chemical fertilizer we can manufacture. It's better all round, for the plants and for the environment, and it goes hand-in-glove with the various micro-environments in one's garden. I've been learning exactly how earthworms break down plant matter, how plants use the nitrogen from the air and how the no-till method is better than churning up our soil every spring and fall. I've also learned quite a bit about why seaweed is a better fertilizer than one that relies on ever diminishing oil supplies. Did you know that plants require not only the big three (nitrogen, phosphorus and calcium), but also micro-nutrients? Without those micro-nutrients, the plant cannot grow to it's true potential, and the resulting food lacks in nutrients also. Hence the mystery of the tomato with less Vitamin C.

So, the answer then I think, is to go back to farming, or at least gardening, the way we used to. Those that can need to turn away from chemical fertilizers, away from row gardening, away from the way 90% of all gardening books tell us it should be done. We need to learn all we can about organic gardening, intensive gardening, square-foot gardening, composting, vermi-culture, soil tilth, extending the growing season no matter where we live, and the value of the old-style farmsteads. The inter-relations of soil, air, food, animals, trash and what our culture has done to our planet cannot be over stated. But in the end, we will all come to a point where we must put down the books, turn away from the computers and do something about it. More of us need to focus on food production in a way that will not poison ourselves and our environment. We need to get back to basics, we need to take that first step.

Once we take control back over our food, we can begin to take more control over our lives and hand less of ourselves to the government. Once we get back to basics, many of us will need less and be happier with less and realize the folly of our culture's demand for the latest, best and fastest gizmo of the week. (I write this while admitting I spend more time on my computer than I probably should) I also admit that getting back to basics will inevitably improve our health, give us clearer vision when we look at what's going on around us, and in many cases, shift our priorities.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, it's true. We all need to start thinking about what's coming and how we might each be responsible for changing our corner of the world.
What do you think?