February Garden Update

Ever have plans that go awry? 

Ha! Who am I kidding?  A more impressive feat would be if someone had a project go totally and completely according to plan.

My goal for the garden this month was simple: to lay down cardboard and mulch again. To perform a reboot of the garden space since we had let it go and weeds were the only thing growing. But that simple desire meant we had three major problems: no mulch, no cardboard, and huge stumps. 

As you recall from the January update, we dug one stump out of the ground and were working on burning down the other. We ended up burning it down in stages as our first couple attempts didn't work out quite as well as we hoped, but we learned some tricks.

Tips for burning a stump:

1. Pile up the charcoal. It works best when the pile is at least two briquettes deep. It allows the top to ash over and keep the ones underneath still red hot and burning down through the wood.
2. If you have the ability, drill air holes. We would drill in from the side and then down from the top making sure the two tunnels met up. This helps provide oxygen for the fire so it keeps burning faster and longer. 
3. Combining these methods are effective, but can be dangerous. We ended up with a fire that stayed lit for 3 days. Hubby went out the second day and took his blower to scatter the ash build up to start again on fresh wood. Well the wood was still burning and it immediately turned to flame. He used that to his advantage by throwing more briquettes on the stump, but it could have been dangerous if it wasn't in a protected area of our yard. 
4. Between fires if there will be multiple take the time to blow away the ash, and take an axe to try and increase surface area and break away the stump. Remember the goal is to have the stump gone, not necessarily to burn the stump away. (Unless of course you have some marshmallows that need eating!)

I thought people were crazy when they warned about stumps catching on fire, burning below ground and spreading fire through the roots. Now I can see how that could happen, so do take precautions. Our stump had chicken wire wrapped around it to contain the charcoal and prevent things from falling into it. It also was in a remote area of our yard with little risk of things falling into it. So be careful. 

We had plans for the stump removal, so that left cardboard and mulch. Surprisingly finding the cardboard was the easiest part of the whole ordeal. The first time we did this we had to scramble from store to store to find the cardboard and ended up with a few mattress boxes (which are ideal), but mostly used large and medium boxes from retailers. But a few weeks ago I had a work event around the corner from a mattress store. I decided to take a detour and saw that they had a bunch of boxes in their dumpster. I was going to impress Hubby by returning home with a full car, but the boxes were to big to fit. He was nice enough to come and help me load up the trailer.

The mulch might be a little more time consuming. The straw will be easy, just a quick trip to the feed store to buy some bales. It's the wood chips will be more challenging. Last time we had a local tree company deliver a huge pile. It was too much really. There was enough to lay it around the coop, house AND the garden. I'm guessing we will have to drive to the tree lot and fill the trailer. Thankfully it is free, but it does mean moving yards and yards of wood chips on our own. 

So instead of having a garden ready to plant all I have is a whole in the ground, a fire hazard, a stack of cardboard, and no plants. Here's hoping the March update will be more fruitful and go according to plan!

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January Garden Update

We had been growing a few things over the winter, but due to the location of the sun it wasn't growing very much. Then in the beginning of January we finally had our first hard frost. So before it came we harvested all that had grown. We had a ton of green tomatoes, a few heads of broccoli and some jalapenos.

After the frost the tomato plants died. It was crazy to see how the plant shriveled and the tomatoes turned white and mushy. Our zombie jalapeno plant that wouldn't die finally kicked the bucket too.

Not everything in the garden was deterred by the frost however. The lone broccoli we didn't harvest survived fine.

The cabbage never produced anything, nor was it perturbed by the frost. Unfortunately the weeds weren't affected either. :(

Seeing this we realized that we had let the garden go. We were going to start over by laying more cardboard down and putting down mulch. 

We also took opportunity to try and remove two stumps in the garden. The largest one we tried to burn down with charcoal.

I'll admit it didn't work great like this. The next day we piled far more briquettes and it made a bigger dent in the stump. Although we still have a ways to go for it to be manageable.

The other stump we were able to dig out using axes, pry bars, shovels, and a chainsaw. Hopefully this stump will get out so we can extend our garden all the way to the fence.

Update: We finally figured it out! How to burn a tree stump.

Were you able to grow anything in January?

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December Garden Update

Yes, it's the middle of December and we still have a garden. We are fortunate to live in Florida where the temperatures allow a garden nearly all year long. We did have a couple of nights that dipped into the 30s, but no freezes so our plants appear to have survived.

Now, as I've mentioned before, the garden area doesn't get that much sun this time of year, so things are really slow to grow. We also had a bit of an issue with squirrels eating our Brussels sprouts. So we haven't had much of a harvest from the garden.

 However our broccoli is full and leafy, you can even see the start of a head here.

Our cabbage also has had full broad leaves for a while, but is now only starting to think about growing the actual plant.

Lettuce didn't grow much and then sort of bolted. However we've still been able to get some leaves. In fact, I used some of it in a sandwich yesterday! I'm so happy that we are finally on our way to growing a 'salad'!

Most of our tomatoes are still present and green, but as you can see here we've got one that has ripened on the vine! We were prepared to pull all the green tomatoes if we had freezing weather, but since that isn't a fear we are going to let them go a little longer.

Our watermelon has pretty much stopped growing and the leaves are starting to die back. So I think it's time to harvest this one and see what we've ended up with. This whole year is a practice garden and I think this winter garden has illustrated it best. So I'm not holding out a lot of hope that this will be the best watermelon ever, but it might provide a yummy snack!

I'm curious where we are going to go from here. I can't imagine January/February are going to be much better producers. Things are just taking so long to grow since there is less direct sunlight. However I'm excited for spring to get here and our garden to start taking off again!

Why We Laid Cardboard Down In The Garden

When we bought our house it had a huge backyard and we were excited about putting in a garden. There happened to be a local gardening class that gave us information about where to put our garden, what will grow, and how to mulch.  Their recommendation was to cover the area you want to use as a garden with cardboard.

Hubby watering the cardboard. It helps make it less slick to walk on, and also easier to cut through if you are planting right away. 

Their goal in gardening was to teach us an organic, no till, weed-free way of gardening. The cardboard helped with all of that. The cardboard was an easy way to help cover and kill a lot of ground cover and weeds. The cardboard will not allow the sunlight to pass and thus deprive the grass and weeds of nutrition leading to their death. The cardboard is easy to cut through so you can easily plant in it and it will eventually biodegrade adding to the garden.

Furthermore it was a way to help maintain the soil-food web in a way that tilling would not. The soil food web is a way to preserving and enhancing the microbiome of the garden to help nourish the garden. By tilling, you are breaking through the earth, but bringing bacteria that would normally be in the dark and buried in the ground and exposing them to sunlight and air. There are bacteria the help break down nutrients making it more readily available for the plant. By encouraging those bacteria it would allow for healthier plants. Besides, laying down cardboard is far less work than tilling. :)

You want to have large pieces of cardboard that are plain (without a lot of colors or designs). Mattress boxes, especially tempur-pedic boxes, are the best at covering large areas.  You want to make sure that holes and cracks are covered up because plants and weeds are tenacious.

After laying the cardboard we added mulch and started our garden. We put hay on the garden rows and wood chips on the pathways. We were able to get a load of wood chips delivered to our yard for free from a local tree company. We had gone to their store before and picked up trailer fulls, but it was far more convenient and we got a ton more by having them delivering it. Call around to local tree companies they may do this in your area too!

We put in each row separately. You can see we put in and planted the first row and had just finished the second.

After we put a layer of wood chips  down on the cardboard we still had a ton left. So we laid some extra cardboard down and made a path of sorts along the edge of the house running from the backdoor to the garden. We also put some around the chicken coop and mulched along the driveway. Yes we got THAT much mulch from the tree company.

So how well does the cardboard work? Pretty well! We only have two kinds of weeds in the garden and they both are pretty tenacious, but easy to pick. Each kind has an extensive root system which allows them to get nutrients and spread over a large area. If we weren't participating in the ultra lazy form of gardening we probably could have kept it at bay some more too. We should have probably been adding more mulch roughly each quarter. We did a little bit better about adding hay to the growing rows, but didn't really do much to the paths.

Weeds from the garden.

It also wouldn't have gotten so out of hand if we had kept on the weeding better either. Remember both of our weeds have huge root systems so they can spread quite well, by keeping it at bay when it was only in the paths and outskirts of the garden would have kept if from getting into the growing rows.

So what do we do to combat it? Add another layer of cardboard and some more mulch! We went cardboard dumpster diving and got some boxes to cover up the paths. For this, medium to large size boxes were better than mattress boxes because we didn't need to cut them to size and we didn't want to cover the growing rows. So far that's where we are at, because remember, we are ultra lazy gardeners and haven't gone to get wood chips yet. However I take comfort in knowing the weeds are still dying even if our garden doesn't look the prettiest.

Garden with cardboard laid in paths

Would you use cardboard in your garden?

November Garden Update

We are in the middle of our Fall Garden!

We discovered that while our garden gets full sun during the spring and summer, it is only getting about 3 hours of sun right now. There are two trees that are blocking the sun right now. One is a huge one in our yard. That would be nearly impossible to remove, or very $$$. The other is in the neighbor's yard and I doubt we are going to convince them to cut it down.

A few spots are eeking out a few extra minutes, but that lack of direct sunlight has meant that things are growing a little slower than they were in the spring.

The tomatoes are doing well, well we've got one runt, but we've also got plenty of green tomatoes just waiting to ripen.

As you may remember from last month I've got an unknown plant. I'm thinking it's a watermelon, but not sure.

The broccoli is doing ok, but hasn't produced anything.

The lettuce is just sitting there.

So is the cabbage.

Our jalapeno is still going strong. It's in 3 main bushes and as you can see it's still producing several peppers.

Do you have a fall garden?

Easy DIY Garden Fence

As you may remember we recently got a new puppy named Maggie. We love her to death but she has caused many more headaches for us than we had with our other dog Lexy. She is a chewer, we've lost several cat toys, shoes and DVD cases to her. She's also a digger. She used to dig holes under the fence to come visit Lexy when she was still the neighbor's dog. Now she's moved from trying to dig under the fence to digging in the garden and yard.

We didn't want to lose our garden due to her digging and the chickens have started to scratch the mulch so we decided to put in a fence.

We knew that we needed something that was taller than Maggie to discourage her from trying to jump over. We'd probably have to have a 6 foot tall fence to completely eliminate that risk, but we figured if it was taller than her it would serve enough of a deterrent.

I didn't want it to cost too much because we weren't expecting to buy a fence and I didn't want anything too permanent as I'm hoping the animals would just magically stop going in the garden. The holes are about 2 inches by 3 inches. Big enough that you can see through it, but it keeps the animals out.

Garden Fence 

We went to the home improvement store and looked to see what they had. We finally settled on a 50 foot length of wire. The area we needed to cover was about 56 feet, however. So we knew we would need a gate.

Hubby had a cart full of lumber to build a gate when he saw the prefabricated piece of fence that he was able to just split in two to make a door. He attached it to two pieces of lumber so it is more sturdy.

Garden Fence Gate

We are just waiting to attach the lock, but it's been working great even without that. We've found no evidence of dog or chicken since putting up the fence.

Do you have a fence around your garden?

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September Garden Update

Last month the garden was pretty bare and all we had were some seedlings that were started. Well this month those seedlings flourished!

We lost one of our broccoli plants and have yet to put mulch back over its spot. The other 3 seem to be doing ok. The first two are obviously doing better than the third which still has its protective cone on. We keep the cone on for the first little bit to help prevent bugs from crawling in and eating them while they are getting their roots established. Most the time it works, but today I found a caterpillar on one of the plants inside the cone. I guess that time the cone was trapping the caterpillar in, rather than keeping it out!

We have 6 tomato plants which are all doing well. We have Roma, beefsteak, and cherry tomatoes. Don't ask me which are what yet though! Four are in this row and two are in the next row over.

Our jalepeno is still producing, but the amount has fallen way down. Hubby is still enjoying his pickled jalapenos and it's not in the way so it gets to stay a little while longer.

This watermelon seems to be doing quite well.

I had this great method of being organized and labeling all of the seedlings. Unfortunately some of the plants we replanted in containers to let them grow a little more rather than planting them directly into the ground. At that point my organization and record keeping fell apart, so I fully expect some surprises in this garden! For example I'm not sure what these plants are!

I planted some carrot seeds in this part of the garden and didn't have anything make it. I know carrots are a little bit tricky and you should plant radishes in with them to help break up the soil and see where you planted them. I didn't plant the radishes, and I may have left the mulch covering on too long. I'm going to try again at a later date, but right now this carrot experiment is a failure!

We are still dealing with caterpillars. :(  Hubby and I bought some bt to spray and did it once, but I think it's time (past time, really) to apply it again. Since it is deactivated by sunlight and washed away in the rain we only have a narrow window to apply it. Florida is the sunshine state, but we are also plagued by regular thunderstorms. Hopefully later this week we can put some more on!

We have lettuce! While this one little plant most likely won't produce enough for our needs, I am excited that we are on our way to growing a salad, which has been my goal all along.

Our okra continues to grow and produce okra, however it seems like the production has slowed a little bit. We have eaten it fresh, fried it up, and put it in jambalaya. I didn't think I really liked okra, but I love having this plant and hope to grow more in the future.

Hope you enjoyed this update. How is your garden doing?

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Bloom: Biosolids Compost

I recently attended a meeting of the Pensacola Organic Gardeners Club where they had a speaker from the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority (ECUA) tell how the company treats waste water. He also went into detail about how they make their compost which they call Bloom.

Bloom is a compost made from biosolids retrieved during the waste water process. As you may remember partially treated waste water enters retention ponds where the biosolids flocculate and fall to the bottom and the clear effluent continues on the waste water route. The biosolids, or sludge, is diverted off to make fertilizer and compost.

Before they started making compost they would take the sludge to the landfill. However landfill tipping fees became so excessive that they wanted to find a more economical way of disposing of the waste. They say their natural gas bill is nearly a million dollars annually so I can't imagine now much it was costing to landfill that all, or what a mess that would make of the landfill! So I'm pleased they are looking for other alternatives to landfills.

After being removed from the retention pond the biosiolids go into a dryer where it is turned from a sludge consistency to a cake like consistency. Then the composting process can begin. First they lay out mulch into long rows. The mulch is from the grass clippings, tree clippings, leaves and branches that are collected from the city's yard waste collection. Between two rows of mulch a row of biosolids is added. Then, using a machine called a windrow, the three rows are mixed together. Next a proprietary blend of bacteria and fungus is added to either end of the row.

The pile then composts over the next 30 days. The organisms grow and digest the biosolids and yard debris. The temperature of the pile rises to at least 130 degrees. On day 30 they turn the pile again and let it go for another 15 days. At this point it is fertilizer ready for sale to the public after it goes through testing confirming the levels of "fecals" are appropriate. Fecals are either pathogenic organisms or indicators for pathogenic organisms.

The Pensacola Organic Gardeners hosted the meeting, but they invited many other local gardening groups to attend.There was a large discussion about whether this compost could be used in organic gardening or how it compared to other types of compost and fertilizers.

According to the USDA, which certifies organic foods and to the OMRI, Organic Materials Review Institute, which certifies products for use in organic gardening, compost made from biosolids is not organic. In fact the OMRI considers it's synthetic! This rating is not due to the presence of human waste (which would obviously be non-synthetic) but more has to do with the presence of pharmaceuticals, cleaning products, and other unknown chemicals that may be lurking in the biosolids.

Therefore it was determined that gardeners wishing to practice organic gardening, sell their products as organic and/or become certified as an organic grower should not use the Bloom product on their Garden.

There were several conventional gardeners present as well as some non-food gardeners like the Rose Society. So there was a discussion about how Bloom compost may be a cheap compost for them. There was a large discussion about the amount of heavy materials heavy metals found in the compost and the chemicals which are tested.

The EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, has recommendations for amount of metals which can be added to a given plot of land per year and cumulatively over many years. Two of the speakers did calculations from those EPA limits and the information about heavy metal content found in Bloom. I won't bore you with them, but they said that in order to stay under the annual EPA limits for heavy metals one should add no more than six inches of Bloom compost to their garden.

Just to clarify that's a height calculation, not a volume calculation. So if you put a cubic yard over your garden and it spreads out to 2 inches thick you are ok, if your garden area is so small it's more like 8 inches of soil, you might want to rethink adding that much. If you do need to add it in quantities larger than that...if you have a pot to fill, for example, you can mix it with other soil so you aren't exceeding the 6 inches.  Furthermore, according to the cumulative heavy metal exposure for land, you could add that 6 inches annually for 40+ years and still be under the cumulative maximum! The speaker also showed amounts of heavy metals in naturally occurring soil in Washington state and Miami and they had some heavy metal rates higher than what is found in Bloom.

There was also an interesting discussion about the different kinds of biosolids and fertilizers made from them there is a class of category B fertilizer which Bloom predominantly makes which can be sold to golf courses or other agricultural processes to use for fertilizer it has a higher tolerated level of pathogens or other chemicals. Category A fertilizer is what ECUA can sell to consumers . Since it is sold to consumers at the household level it does not need to be monitored more is the placement recorded . Florida actually has quite stringent laws relating to where biosolid fertilizer can go.

Will I use the bloom compost? Probably not. While we do tend toward organic practices for garden I would say my primary goal is laziness. Yes, it is organic to lay cardboard down and mulch your garden to prevent weeds from occurring. And I do it to prevent weeds, because I am lazy and don't want to pull weeds. Unfortunately working in the medical field I know that many of the chemicals we interact with on a daily basis could possibly still be present in the compost. I'm not very concerned about pathogens since the compost pile reaches such a high heat for such a long period of time, however we do not know what this will do to the chemical compounds in the compost nor what they would degrade into. Since there's so much unknown, and we have other options, I do not think we will be using Bloom as our primary compost. That said I am not against it and we may decide to use it sparingly in the future .

One of the other options is a mulch product also made by ECUA which does not contain biosolids. It is simply a mixture of the yard debris they collected and mulched. Unfortunately it has been found to be contaminated with quite a bit of plastic. This is primarily due to the fact that consumers used to be able to package all of their yard waste in plastic bags. There is now an effort to put yard debris into paper bags to help with this composting process.

Would you use a compost made from biosolids?

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August Garden Update

August has been a transitional month for our garden. We've pulled many of the plants that either stopped being productive or got eaten by caterpillars so it looks pretty sparse. In fact two of the rows don't have anything planted!

The okra which we just recently planted has been doing phenomenal, we haven't got any okra from it, but it's growing really well.

We still have the eggplant, as you may remember we let some of it get too ripe. I've been considering pulling them, but they are still producing flowers so I'm hoping it will make something of itself.

The jalapeno is still going strong. Hubby is loving all of the pickled jalapenos. Next time we plant jalapenos Hubby wants even more bushes.

Our bell peppers are still producing so they get to stay.

We've started seeding some plants, but most of them are still not quite large enough to put into the ground.

We have started zucchini, carrots, watermelon, tomatoes-beefsteak, roma, cherry, lettuce, leeks, Brussels sprouts, and pumpkin. I hope they keep growing and sprouting and will provide us food soon!

How did your garden do this August?

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