Chickweeds and Old Leaves

                Here it is, Ash Wednesday in February; a late-season light snow is falling outside.  Here I am, trying to live the good retirement life… the simple, frugal life on a few acres in the country. Starting in February I knew it would be time to spend more time outside …I needed the fresh air, the sunshine, and I needed some exercise to gradually tone up after a couple months of holiday feasting and lounging in the living room next to the fire, reading  seed catalogues and gardening how-to books.

                I began the month by dragging tree limbs downed by heavy January winds and snows up onto a burn pile. Once burned, I will spread the ashes onto those garden areas which will require potash and lime, especially where I’ll plant cantaloupe, Crenshaw, corn, winter squash, cabbage and other sweet- soil loving plants.

                I felt that if I could start some compost piles in the beginning of February, maybe I could have partially finished compost to mulch with by late June.  There were lots of leaves that I had stored from last autumn, so I had plenty of “brown” or carbon-rich material, but what could I use for the “green” or nitrogen –rich material needed to make compost? There was some daily garbage (peels, rinds, coffee grounds, etc.) but that would not be nearly enough. There was also the cover crop of rye grass growing on the ground where I would plant my early vegetables. I could skim off the ryegrass along with a little topsoil for incubator microbes and layer that on top of the six-inch layers of well-wetted brown leaves. Still that was not enough green material to reach the 50-50 ratio I needed between brown and green materials to make compost.

                Chickweed is nature’s winter cover crop, at least in our area of southern Indiana. It grows an inch to three inches deep and is an indication of good soil. Chickweed doesn’t grow out in our cultivated field but is rampant in the woods where the soil has been enriched by falling leaves.  Chickweed is really cold hardy; it is a neat sight in January to see all that green ground cover back in the woods. Some people consider chickweed a winter wild salad green but based on my reading, I do not think it is quite safe for that use. Apparently though, as its name implies, chickens love it for winter fare and it is healthy for them. With a sharp hoe, chickweed peels off the soil like wool being sheared off a sheep. So to make a long-winded story shorter, I covered my six-inch layers of leaves with six-inch layers of chickweeds.  I like the idea that this process is all integrated and self-sustainable since all the material comes from right here on my property. Only time will tell if it makes a good batch of compost by summer.

                In our locale, Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day are the traditional planting times for garden salad greens and peas. I have lettuce and spinach seed planted and will add radishes soon, but I’m not a pea fan, preferring the green beans in my freezer instead.  I’ve raked the leaf mulch off the asparagus so maybe we will have sprouts in a month. As far as the February garden calendar goes, I need to start leeks, seeded-onions, and cabbage plants in trays on the front porch so I can transplant outdoors in March.  Mostly I’m out digging a little in the garden each good-weather day, making beds for the early crops which will be planted in March, (early potatoes, carrots, beets, chard, onions etc.)  Anyway I’m getting a few hours of exercise and sun most days, no gym or tanning spa required.