Why use "lasagna" no till gardening?

I have already talked all about how wonderful compost is for your garden.  For some people, including myself, there is just not enoughroom in your yard to have enough compost piles to feed your wholegarden.  So why not just turn your whole garden into a compost pile?

Lasagna gardening or a no till garden does just that.  You build up your garden with the same layers of browns and greens that you would in acompost pile and just leave it there.  When done well, you can plant your garden right into these piles of compost with little further effort.  You don't need to till because the materials will compost and turn into a nice, soft bed for you to plant your garden in.  You don'tneed to fertilize because your garden is going to be built out of fertilizer.  You don't need to weed as much because the thick layers will block the weeds from growing where they would normally grow.  You don't need as much water because the organic composting materials hold much more water than standard garden soil and the water is there waiting for your plants to drink it up.  The layers you add on to the garden may even prevent some of the diseases and pest you have had in the past from being able to return to your garden for another year.  

I think this coming year I will dive right in and set up my garden this way.  Starting when I do my fall clean up.  The hope is that I walk out to my garden in the spring and throw the plants in the ground and they are already fed and watered for the majority of the summer.  That and I won't have to do much weeding.  We will see how this works out.

How to care for your compost pile

Once your pile is built, the only maintenance it needs is water and aeration.  The bacteria you have working for you are just like most other creatures on earth.  They need water and they need oxygen.  If the pile dries up, the decomposition will just slow way down.  If there is no oxygen, then the anaerobic bacteria will get to work.  These are the bacteria that don't need the oxygen to work.  If this is what you have going on, your pile will smell really bad.  This is not what you ideally want to have going on.
If you chose a good location, you may not have to water except on the really hot spells.  Compost is good at holding water so if it rains often enough, the pile will hold an adequate water supply and won't need much help.
If you keep the size of your pile about a 3 foot diameter, that helps greatly with the aeration of the pile.  If it gets much bigger, the surface area to pile ratio is greatly reduced and there is less available oxygen for your pile.  Either way you will need to aerate your pile to some extent.  The smaller piles are less material to move around and are therefore easier to aerate.  The most common method of aeration is a pitchfork.  Dig in and throw your pile around.  Try to get all of the drier outer material closer to the inside so it can start breaking down too.  They do make fancy tools to aerate your compost, but I have found that those work well for a bucket composter or for the edges only of your pile.  They don't get the heavier innards of your pile very well.  A good old fashioned pitchfork will do the trick perfectly.

No dig potato harvest

If you have been wondering about my no dig potato experiment went, I'm pretty disappointed.  I only got a small bucket of salvageable potatoes.  The rest were so tiny

that there was no point in picking them up.  Many of them were also pretty large but rotten and partially eaten.  I'm not entirely sure why this was, but I'm going to do some research and figure out what I need to do differently and try it again next year.  It wasn't a total failure, I did get some potatoes and I learned that I can't do things quite how I did them this year.  I also knew going in that I had not made any amendments to the straw I used and that there may not be enough nutrients for the potatoes.  I like to try things out bare bones first to see if they can be done that way.  This doesn't seem to be one of those things.  There were also many potatoes that could potentially have grown bigger had I let them go longer.  However, many of the potato plants were ready to be harvested, so I harvested them all.  The one thing I did get out of this garden bed was good, healthy soil full of good bugs .  If you look at the picture above, you can see how rich the soil is that was left behind.  Not a waste at all.
 Either way this was a learning experience.  I started this blog when I did, before I have my future homestead, because I wanted to share these learning experiences with everyone.  I like to learn as much as I can now, before I am on my own homestead so I know more of what I need to do when I get there.  Not that things will be perfect, but I will know more than I would have if I chose to wait for the real thing.  That, I believe, is the most important step I can take to being successful at homesteading.  I hope I am right, we'll find out soon enough.

Kill mulch for bittersweet and ivy?

Around the edges of my garden seem to be a little out of control.  I have bittersweet, ivy, and some weird sort of mini rose that are just growing out of control.  I considered going crazy one day and digging it all up, but I am about six months pregnant right now so that just isn't going to happen.  I have been collecting large cardboard boxes to lay down in the pathways of the garden but I think I could probably use them as a kill mulch for these weeds.  I'm not sure that the weeds aren't too much for this sort of a thing, but I am ging to give it a try.

The spots I am trying to fix are along the side of the house and along the side of a retaining wall.  What I did was to dig along the edge of the concrete and bury about four inches of the edge of the cardboard perpendicular to the ground against the concrete.  Then I folded the cardboard down so that the rest lay flat on the ground.  As the fall comes along I will bury the cardboard with leaves and other yard waste to weigh down the cardboard.  Hopefully this will smother all of these weeds and I won't have to spend time cutting them down all next summer.  Tune in this spring to see if it worked.

My flower garden: Marigolds

Marigolds are one of those flowers that has so many reasons to plant it.  It is an excellent companion flower all over your vegetable garden.
They are cheap flowers to buy and very easy t grow and maintain.  I am not good with flowers at all.  I kill them most of the time.  The only flowers I can grow from seed and get to survive are marigolds and nasturtiums.
There are some types of marigolds that are edible.  Therefore you can grow them and add them to a salad to make it pretty.  Some people also use them to make things like vinaigrette or even wine.  I have yet to taste one myself.
Marigolds grow from spring to fall.  They add color and beauty to your garden for until the frost finally kills them off.  This also means that you are attracting bees and butterflies to your garden for three seasons with just one type of flower.
The reason I plant marigolds in my garden is that they can be used to deter many types of problematic insects like tomato hornworm, Mexican bean beetle, nematodes, thrips, whiteflies, and squash bugs.
There are many types of flowers you can grow to do the things that I have listed above.  One of the more important concepts to keep in mind when setting up something like a permaculture homestead is that many things can have many different purposes.  Why do many things that each only serve one function when you can do one thing that can serve many functions?

Why compost and not chemical fertilizer?

If you have read all of the previous posts on composting (why, what' happening, what goes in, and where to put it), you may be wondering why you should compost and not just use fertilizer.  Have you ever tasted the difference between a tomato you picked off the vine and ate right away verses a tomato you bought at your local supermart?  That is probably the difference the plants "taste" between compost and chemical fertilizer.  Compost is fresh and alive, teeming with life.  It smells good and feels light and fluffy.  It holds on to water and feeds it back to plants that are so happily living in it.  It becomes part of the soil and bring nutrients and life to anything that grows in it.  Chemical fertilizer is stale and dead, having nothing alive about it.  You can't smell it or touch it with bare hands because it is poisonous to people.  It washes away when it rains and flows down to local lakes and streams and poisons them.  You don't notice it's poison because you think it's helping your plants grow big and healthy.  But what is really doing is stripping the soil of all its nutrients so that you have to buy and apply more and more every year.  When you apply compost, it  works in to the soil and just gets better and better.  You should still add more every year, but if you don't, there is still good stuff left over from before.  If you use chemical fertilizers, there is actually less than what your soil started with.  Nothing left from the year before, it all washed away rather than incorporating into the soil.  In addition, if you throw mulch, like fall leaves, on top of your compost, that will also turn to compost giving you the benefit of both the mulch and later the compost.  Happy plants and happy gardeners!

Who is eating my tomatoes? Hornworms.

Ever gone out to your garden to find the tomato you were hoping to eat with a large bite taken out of it?  I have lost about eight tomatoes so far this year to this pest.  The large

bite is actually many little bites taken by a tomato horn worm.  They creep around on your tomato plants and eat just enough of your big beautiful tomato to cause it to fall off of the vine and rot on the ground before you can eat it.  They blend in fairly well so unless you are aware that they are around you may never see them.  I found this one while picking cherry tomatoes last night.  It was just sitting there not moving so I guess

that night time is a good time to find them.  I have also gone out in the morning to find them and if you are quiet enough you can actually hear them crunching away on your precious tomatoes.  If you look at the picture to the right, you can see the bites taken out of the unripe cherry tomato.  I snipped the branch off to dispose of this nasty thing before it got to anymore of my babies.  I also found one other horn worm

 tonight.  It, however, has succumbed to organic pest control. The little white things hanging from this worm are parasitic wasp eggs.  When the eggs hatch, they will eat the horn worm which means that the horn worm can no longer eat tomatoes. All you need to do to get the parasitic wasps to come to your garden and eat your caterpillars is to feed the adults.  They need flowers that their tiny little heads can get to.  Yarrow, mallow, parsley, angelica, and marigolds are all good potential food sources for parasitic wasps that I have in my garden.  Other good options are dill, cilantro, fennel, alyssum, and queen anne's lace.  If you find a hornworm that looks like this one, loaded with parasitic wasp eggs, leave it in your garden.  The one I found without any eggs I got rid of, but you want to keep this one.  Once the eggs hatch, they will turn to adult parasitic wasps and they do a much better job finding caterpillars than you ever could.  I doubt they can do too much more damage once they are infested.  I was very excited to find this in my garden. I would have been more excited to find ripe tomatoes I could eat, but at least the problem was being dealt with.

My flower garden: Nasturtium

Nasturtiums can be grown for many reasons.  You can grow them because they are pretty flowers that are easy to grow.  You can grow them to eat both the flowers and the leaves.  I grow them because they are beneficial to the bug population that I want to have in my garden, or not so beneficial to the bug population I don't want.
There are many different types of nasturtiums you can grow in your garden.  Some grow like bushes, some grow like vines.  The colors range from yellow to red to shades of purple.  They grow well in not so good soil, so they can be planted anywhere there is full sun.  You pretty much just plant them and they grow.  I plant mine when I plant my beans and they bloom throughout the summer all over the garden.
Nasturtiums have a sort of peppery taste to them.  They are related to the cress family and are often added to salads both for their flavor and for their decorative qualities.  You can even use the seeds in pickling for an interesting taste.
I grow nasturtiums because they are known to ward off bad bugs.  An excellent form of organic pest control.  Cucumber beetles and squash vine borers dislike the peppery smell they emit.  Good places to plant them are among cucs, pumpkins, squash or anywhere you have room really.  Aphids, slugs and white cabbage butterflies like nasturtiums so they can be planted near other plants these bugs like so that they will go after the nasturtiums first.  I personally don't like this idea, but some people do use it with success.  Most flowers also attract pollinators to your garden.  Bees and butterflies are always a good thing to have around to help pollinate your crops.

Planting for a fall crop

This picture is taken underneath the area in the garden where the beans and tomatoes are growing.  They form this great shaded area where moisture is retained in the mulch well enough for mushrooms to grow.  The grey thing towards the middle is actually a little volunteer mushroom.  This means to me that I did a good job with the mulch and the additional help from the shade layer is retaining plenty of moisture for my plants.  Hopefully, this should also be enough moisture for me to plant a fall crop among these plants.  I have always failed in my attempts at growing a fall crop in the past because I'm not good about remembering to go out and water the new seeds.  If fact, I rarely water my garden at all.  That is why it is important for me to use as many methods as possible to retain water.  It looks like this year there may finally be a good set up for my fall plants to be able to sprout.  I planted radish, turnip, lettuce, spinach, and kale.  The plan is to throw the seeds around with a little soil cover and then wait and see if I set things up for them well.  I also planted quinoa among my corn and nasturtiums.  That may have a harder time since the corn doesn't provide as nice a shade layer as the leafy tomatoes and beans.  As the plants start sprouting and the beans are finishing up providing, I will slowly cut them back so the strong plants underneath can get the sun that they need.  The bean plans I cut will be spread on the ground around the fall crop to continue retaining water for the new plants.  The roots of the beans will stay in the ground to break down and provide organic matter for future plants as well.  Bean roots are extra nice because they have the nitrogen nodules on the roots that are so good for the future plants as well.  Well this all sounds good in theory, we will soon see if it is going to work well or not.

Kitchen scrap composter

This is a picture of my kitchen scrap composter.  They do make expensive, fancy versions that are probably nicer to look at, but mine only cost about ten dollars.  I chose a garbage can with wheels so that I could move it and a locking lid to keep critters out of it.  Next I drilled holes all around the sides and bottom for aeration.  That's it.  All finished.  When you start filling it up with kitchen scraps, it is a good idea to remember to brown vs green ratio.  I throw newspaper or cardboard in with the scraps to try to maintain the mixture.  By adding just kitchen scraps, you end up with a stinky wet sludge pile that becomes a solid mass that can't compost, so don't forget the browns.  Every now and then you should give your compost a good mix.  I tip my garbage can on its side and roll it around a little bit.  Be sure the lid is locked on tight before you get to rolling it or you may have quite a mess on your feet.  Not everyone may feel the need to compost kitchen scraps separately.  I do this because it keeps the critters away and because I can't get to my compost pile when it's snowing.  During the winter, when the compost freezes, I had the garbage can rolled right up next to the door for easy adding of my scraps.  It won't smell or anything because it is frozen solid.  Just be sure to move it away from the door as soon as things start thawing.

Structure for your compost pile

There must be a hundred different structures you can build to house your compost pile.  You can get from very simple like a pile with no structure all the way to a three bin rotation system or a large barrel mixer.  Some people go for the expensive fancy systems because they are nicer to look at or because they don't want to get too dirty.  Others don't care what they look like and even like to play in the dirt, so they go for the simpler no structure or simple structure type of a pile.  Sometimes, you need something more complicated if you have a lot that needs to be composted.  Currently, I have 2 composter types at my house.  A pile of leaves that sometimes has a wire cage around it and a garbage can with holes drilled into it for kitchen scraps.  Very simple, easy to build and easy to manage.

I like the pile because as I work I can just throw everything right there into the pile with no effort, rhyme or reason.  I do have to go back and mix it up as it composts, but not too much.  The wire cage helps to contain the pile somewhat so that it doesn't go everywhere or blow away.  It goes up when there starts to be too many leaves to keep in place in the fall.  When the cage is in my way, I just open it way up or take it down.  This usually means that I am mixing the pile or it's time to throw it on the garden.  Just about every time I have taken the cage down, it goes up in a totally new spot.  That is just one more reason why I like it being so simple.  I can change my mind as to where the best spot for it is whenever I need to.

Why to save your own seeds

There are plenty of reasons to save your own seeds.  The first reason that comes to mind for me is that if you save your own seeds, then you don't have buy any next year.  Seeds can get to be expensive to buy every year and being on a homestead is not hugely profitable.  Every expense you can cut, you should.
By using seeds from plants that you grew on your land helps the plants adapt to you.  When you save seeds, you save the seeds from the healthiest plants and therefore the ones that did the best on your land.  This makes your plants that much stronger and healthier every year.  The stronger and healthier they are, the less attention they need from you and the easier it is for those plants to fight off disease and infestation.
When you save your own seeds you have to initially buy seeds from companies that have not genetically modified them.  If seeds are modified, then you cannot get them to reproduce properly, meaning they are not worth even trying to grow because even if they do grow, they are sterile and will not fruit.  There are many other reasons not to buy genetically modified seeds, but that is a chat for another day.  Buying seeds that are not modified in any way will produce stronger plants.  If you think about it, non-modified, natural plants have been around growing for many, many years.  They may have mutated naturally to be stronger or more disease resistant, but it was not done in a lab.  When plants have been around for many years and have been allowed to grow and change naturally rather than having random genes thrown at them, they are far more stable.  They change only in ways that mother nature wants them to change are therefore are far more likely to survive against disease, infestation, drought, and other hazards.
Doing anything you can to have stronger plants will save you time and money.  It takes a lot to grow plants that aren't in the best health, and you will be constantly fighting to keep them alive.  Why not start them off right with your own saved seeds that never been genetically modified?  That way you can give them the best chance at growing healthy and give yourself more time [and money] to relax and enjoy your homestead.

My flower garden: Angelica

As I had mentioned before, a flower garden can be a form of organic pest control if you plant the right flowers.  So what are the right kinds of flowers to plant?  Angelica is the first flower I started in my garden.  Initially, I chose this flower because I wanted some perennials that could grow in partial shade and attract beneficial insects, and these were on sale.  It turns out that these were a great choice for me.

Angelica is a biennial plant which means that it will grow for about two seasons.  It likes partial shade and loamy soil (although mine is growing quite well in the clay that I have).  They like cool moist climates and can get from 4-6 feet tall.  The small flowers are white or greenish white and grow in large clusters.  It is part of the Apiaceae family along with dill, caraway, queen anne's lace and chevril.  There are also a couple of poisonous plants that are very similar to these plants, so be careful if you find it wild.  
Angelica can be eaten in many ways.  The leaves have a sort of celery flavor and can be used in place of lovage in many recipes.  The stalks are slightly sweet almost licorice like and are often candied when harvested young.  The stalks are also good to flavor liquor and the leaves go well with rhubarb.  Even the roots can be eaten.  Check out this site for a couple of angelica recipes.  
Angelica is also part of the grouping Dong-quai, second most common herb used in China, second to ginseng.  Angelica contains compounds called coumarins.  Coumarins can be used to reduce swelling, especially in the lymph nodes and associated with arthritis.  Angelica can be used for women to help relieve symptoms of PMS and hot flashes.  You should not take angelica if you are pregnant!  Angelica contains bergapten, which can be used to treat skin conditions and linalool and borneol which are antibacterial and antifungal.  The boiled roots can be used to speed up healing.  It also increases immunity and circulation, stimulates appetite, relaxes muscles and many other things.  
When I bought my first few angelica plants, I did not know any of this.  All I really knew about it was that it was good for attracting beneficial insects.  It's tiny flowers make it easy for small bugs like parasitic wasps to get to the pollen.  Parasitic wasps are good for your garden because they use big bugs like tomato horn worm to grow their babies.  This is turn kills the tomato horn worm, organically protecting your garden from them.  There are also many pollinators that will be attracted to your flower garden and angelica.  I was happy to see that they bloomed in early spring which helps to get the pollinators to your garden right away.  I now need to add some flowers that will bloom right after the angelica to keep the pollinators around.  
Now that I know all I do about angelica, I will be able to take full advantage of the plants next year.  I plan on saving seed (I'll talk about this later) and learning how to use all the parts of the angelica plant to their full potential.  I can't believe I was so lucky to stumble across such a great plant! 

What to put in a compost pile

Now that you have a spot set up for your compost pile, what do you put in it?  You need a good mixture of green and brown materials.  Green materials are things like grass clippings and fruit and vegetable scraps.  Brown materials are leaves and papers.  This combination is again to support the bacteria you are trying to get to work for you.  They need certain nutrients that are available from the different materials.  Carbon is in the browns and the greens are for nitrogen.  The suggested ratio is 25 parts carbon to one part nitrogen.  If you have too much nitrogen, don't worry, it will just smell a little funny.  If you have too much carbon, the pile won't break down very well.  You can always add other things to your pile like wood ash, seaweed, or shells if you need other nutrients for your soil but these are the basics.

Where to put your compost pile

The first step in composting is to choose a good spot.  The bacteria living in your pile that are breaking it down for you need warmth and moisture to do their jobs.  Therefore, choose a location where you get a little of both.  If you put the pile in the middle of a sunny field, it will likely dry out, kill the bacteria, and not compost quickly.  It will also likely get too much rain and that can kill the bacteria too.  Don't put it under total cover either.  You want it to get some sun to warm it up and some water from the rain so you don't have to water it yourself.  My pile is at the edge of the tree cover in my yard, right at the border of my garden.  That way it is in the sun part of the day but can still get rained on.  Another option is to put it anywhere you have some room in the sun, water it when it gets dry, and cover it with a tarp to retain the moisture.  I always go for the choice with the least effort and I think that tarps are ugly.  One other consideration for location is effort to get things to and from the pile.  I mentioned that my pile was at the edge of my garden.  This makes for less work in the spring when I am the busiest.  I have to walk further in the fall when I am raking leaves, but that time of the year isn't as busy so I don't mind.

If you notice, the old compost pile is in the middle of where you would find all of the fallen leaves.  This made sense when I was raking leaves, but then when it came time to move the finished compost, I realized what a pain it was to move all that heavy compost across the yard.  There was a second compost pile under the pine trees, but that was a mistake as well.  Whenever I went to the pile I was attacked by hundreds of hungry mosquitos.  So now the pile is out at the edge of the tree line where I hope it will be able to stay.

Hugelkultur mounds

The perfect way to fertilize a tree or bush is a hugelkultur mound.  This will provide food for years with only a little effort  in the beginning.  It retains water so you don't need to provide supplemental, just rain water should do.  It gets nice and warm so that if you are planting trees or bushes that should be in a warmer climate, they have a much better chance of surviving.

 So what is a hugelkultur mound, now that I know I want one?  Basically it is a pile of rooting wood around your tree or bush that is covered with dirt.  It rots and breaks down just like a compost pile which provides nutrients, the spongy water retaining texture and the heating up.
It is very easy to set one up.  When I planted the bush here in the picture, I just set it up around the planting.   I started out by digging an extra wide hole with the deep spot in the deep spot in the middle for the bush to

go.  I put a handful of leaves into the hole and put the bush on top of that.  Then I placed four large logs each on one side of the bush in the hole.  Then I filled in the spaces with large and then small sticks trying to fill in most of the gaps.  Over the top of that, I put a couple handfuls of leaves over all the wood around the base of the plant.  Cover the leaves with the dirt you dug out of the hole.  I did a lot of stomping on the dirt all around the plant because I'm sure that it is going to pack down at some

point.  I did water it some, but it is supposed to rain tomorrow, so I didn't go too crazy.  I assume that when it rains, it will all fall in and I will have to top it off.  Either way, this bush should do fantastic as soon as it settles in. The logs I used were already started rotting, so I don't think it will be long before that bush can begin to benefit from it.

What is happening in a compost pile?

Now that you know that you want to have a compost pile, what is going on in that pile that leaves you with such great plant food?  When you set up a compost pile in your yard what you are really doing is building a giant buffet for bacteria, microbes, fungus, mold, worms, and other tiny creatures. These creatures are naturally present everywhere, but when given the proper conditions, like in a compost pile, they run wild. They each have their own favorite meals, and so everything gets eaten.

Bacteria are the main workhorses int he compost pile.  They take in oxygen and use it to breakdown the organic materials in the pile.  As a byproduct, they create carbon dioxide and heat.  The heat created can get to be up to 140 degrees.  This will attract heat loving microbes to do their part of the decomposing process.  Once the microbes are done, the  worms come through and eat whats left of the organic matter leaving you with nutrient rich worm poop.  

Why compost for my garden?

If you were to walk out into the woods, brush the leaves away from the ground and take a good look at the soil, what would you see? You would see natural, rich, healthy soil that is perfect for growth. The leaves and twigs fall from the trees, lay around for a while on the ground, and eventually breakdown for the new plants to grow in. This is a perfect medium for healthy plants. Compost is the same thing, except we can customize it and speed up the process depending on our soil needs. We rake up our leaves and throw them into a pile along with food scraps and whatever else we may have. We water the pile and mix it up so that it breaks down quicker. We can add things like seaweed, wood ash, oyster shells, or anything else we may need to make the soil we have into the soil we want to have. 
This broken down organic matter does many things for our plants. It provides essential nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, sulfur and micronutrients that plants need to grow. It adds texture to the soil so that there can be adequate air exchange and water retaining and draining abilities. It is much less compact and dense than standard dirt allowing for roots to move around more effectively. The composting process causes the soil to heat up and therefore kill pathogens and some weed seeds. Compost laid out in your garden can also prevent weeds from coming up and prevent erosion similar to how mulch works. Is that enough reason for you yet?

New sprouts in compost

No dig potato progress

Before

 So it looks like quite a few of my potatoes are growing quite well.  There are definitely some that did not sprout and grow at all, but that would have happened no matter how I had planted them.  A few weeks ago I did spread some composted manure around the top of the hay to give some nutrients to my potatoes.  It seems that the ones closest to the manure have grown the best so next time I'll be sure that I spread it more evenly among the potatoes.  

What you would do with potatoes planted normally would be to add more dirt on top as the potato plants grow.  My plants have grown to the point where they are pretty tall, so what I did next was to layer some more hay around the plants just like if you were burying them the traditional way.  So far so good.  Now we just have to wait a few more months to see if the actual potatoes do as well as the plants are doing.  

After

Wood ash fertilizer

After cutting down a few trees the other day, we had a large pile of wood.  So we spent the evening sitting around our fire pit enjoying the days work.  This is what was left of our trees the next day:

Lovely organic fertilizer.  Wood ash is an excellent fertilizer for your garden.  It adds potassium and raises the pH of the soil.  If your pH is low, then you can sprinkle the ash over the soil before you plant for the season. If you do not need to raise the pH, then just add the ash to your compost pile to reap the benefits.  When using ash to fertilize your garden be sure that what you are burning is safe for your plants.  Pressure treated wood is full of chemicals that can kill your plants, and is also unsafe for you to be breathing as it burns.  Black walnut trees are full of juglones which can prevent grow of many plants.  And whatever you do don't burn things like poison ivy.  It could really ruin your day.

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