Mulch

When I began my garden in March, I did not plan to use so many different types of mulch; I just used what was available and it just happened. First, I had a good pickup load of last fall’s maple leaves which I had tried to compost over the winter but they only partially biodegraded. Once my sweet corn was up about three inches tall, I spread the leaves between the rows. My corn is about knee-high now in mid-May and weed free. I’ve thrown some aged horse manure on top of the leaf mulch and worked a furrow of both into the soil and planted Butternut squash between every other corn row. This leaves me enough empty rows to harvest corn from and after that hopefully the squash will form a living mulch over the leaf mulch and also provide a late season crop.

I had put a bale of straw up against our north-facing crawl space entrance to help insulate the crawl space and water pipes last winter. I laid an old throw rug, rubberized bottom up, on top of the straw bale to keep the weather from degrading the straw. This spring that straw went over a strawberry patch of about 25 plants, along a row of bush beans (once they were three inches tall) and over a plot of late potatoes. I put only straw over the late potatoes, which they have now emerged through, but for the beans and strawberries I put two ply of newsprint under the straw. If I did not use the newspaper, it would just have been a waste product to be hauled to the recycling bin. Newsprint and straw or grass clippings seem to work well as combination mulches. The paper is a difficult barrier for weeds and grass to break through but would blow off without the straw or grass to weight it down. Before I put the top mulch on, I wetted the paper down with a garden hose to get it to mold to the soil. I also used newspaper and cardboard weighted down with soil on the edges to protect plants during a light late frost.

I decided to buy some black plastic for plants which like especially hot soil for their roots such as peppers, sweet potatoes and cantaloupe. I could have also used it for cucumbers and tomatoes, but I didn’t. I am trying some large rocks and bricks around my tomatoes and the cukes are planted along with a couple zucchini to form a living mulch under my pole beans. For the plants in black plastic (except for the bell peppers ), I put an old soaker hose down, covered it with the plastic and made a furrow with a hoe down either side of the plastic, tucked the edges of the plastic in the furrows, and then filled in the furrows with dirt to secure the plastic mulch. I’ve had problems with that old soaker hose blowing out large leaks from my water pressure. I have to tear a hole into the plastic at the leak, slit a piece of old garden hose and use radiator clamps to fix the garden hose over the leaks. In hindsight I probably would have been better off doing my sweet potatoes and cantaloupe like I did my peppers and skipping the soaker hose altogether. For the peppers, in addition to the two side furrows I also made a third furrow down the middle, then put the black plastic down and planted into the middle furrow. The middle furrow forms a trough which catches any water from garden hose or rain and delivers it straight to the plant holes.

Carrots are notoriously slow to germinate; the weeds always come up first and then the carrots are lost to one giant mess of a weed patch. This year I tried a trick an old farmer had told me and planted my carrots under boards. Each day I flipped the boards to one side to see if the seed had sprouted, then sprinkled with a hose and pressed the boards back in place. When the carrots did sprout, I laid the boards to the sides of the carrots to suppress any weeds between the rows. I am very impressed with the results to date and plan to keep an eye out for any surplus unpainted and untreated lumber that I might happen upon. Wood is organic, heavy enough that it doesn’t blow away; it lasts for years so you don’t have to find new material each year and no weeds or grass grows through it. If you need to thin a crop like carrots or beets, or pick a row of bush beans you can place a stool’s legs on the planks on either side of the row and work sitting rather than kneeling. One other advantage is that fishing worms congregate right under the boards for easy picking.

So in conclusion, I have used three types of mulch: organic (like grass, leaves, newsprint, wood, cardboard and straw), inorganic (like black plastic, old carpet, and large rocks or bricks) and living mulch (leafy vining ground covers like cucumbers, cantaloupe, squash and sweet potatoes) to mulch my garden, conserve moisture and suppress weeds.

Half-wild Salads

The irises have been popping blue-purple everywhere. The apple tree and cherry trees blossomed snow white a couple weeks ago, then shed their blossoms and now the green cherries are already beginning to appear. Spring passes in a blur of speed. It has been an unusually droughty April, which the farmers loved because they could get their corn crops in the field, but today the weatherman has promised an inch or two of rain and possibly a twister so I have time to write a blog.

I divided some rhubarb plants and replanted them in one-foot deep and wide holes filled with compost so that next year we should have some early summer pies to be followed by the cherry pies of late summer and apple pies of fall. It is nice to have a succession of eating even though that is not necessary today with a freezer. We had not planned to plant strawberries but when a neighbor gave us 30 plants we couldn’t pass it up. The rhubarb and strawberries now occupy a perennial area in the far west end of my garden. They receive the morning sun but are somewhat shaded by the apple tree in the hot afternoon. The morning sun is a blessing in summer but the afternoon sun is a curse. Next year I also hope to add a permanent bed of asparagus to this perennial area of the garden.

This year where the asparagus will be next year is a bed of salad greens, seven five-foot rows of lettuce and two of spinach. This represents the first produce of the garden we have begun to consume. We have had several salads so far, some of the wilted greens variety made with a hot topping of sweetened vinegar, bacon and bacon grease—the kind we ate in the 50s before salad dressings were sold in plastic bottles. We threw in some sweet violet leaves which are ubiquitous in my yard and edible and tasty in salads. Violets have none of the bitter taste of dandelion greens and have more nutritional value than garden grown greens. We will probably be eating a lot of salads for the next month until later vegetables begin coming in. Good deal for the waistline.

The early spuds are up, about six inches tall, and the late potatoes are planted and under a straw mulch to keep down weed competition. I also have bush beans, pole beans and corn all up and about six inches tall. There are four tomato and four peppers plants. I am taking a chance by planting so early but I have sandy soil that drains well and heats up early. Seed is relatively inexpensive if I do have to replant because of a late frost and I really want to get the plants off to a good start before the insect hordes arrive. I did have to cover everything with newspaper and cardboard one night when frost was predicted, but I think it is worth the effort to beat the bugs and summer drought.

Besides the vegetables I’ve already mentioned, I also have two 25-foot rows covered with black plastic and drip irrigation hose under the plastic for melons and cucumbers. My horseman buddy arrived right on schedule with a free dump-trailer load of two-year aged horse manure. After two years it has turned back into soil and you would never be able to identify the substance as horse manure. So all the beds, including plastic topped, drip irrigated strips are well fertilized. The black plastic has proved a real incubator and Crenshaw, cantaloupe and honeydews are all beginning to poke through the holes in the plastic. I am taking a real gamble with the Crenshaw and honeydews since the local farmers don’t grow them and I have learned not to question the locals. But I am a melon lover and have decided to take the long shot anyway. As for watermelons, I will plant a whole field of Jubilees around May 15, hopefully from transplants and under irrigated black plastic, so they aren’t included in my little 25’X40’ vegetable garden.

That pretty well brings everything up to date. I’ll just sit here, eat my greens and listen to the thunder and rain. I don’t REALLY think there will be a tornado?

Spuds and Naturalizing

It is just spring and not quite April. The Saturday before Palm Sunday and we are in a brief cold snap with the weatherman promising a week of sunny skies and warm temperatures a couple days into Passion Week. Time to plant potatoes. I have halved and quartered five pounds of Red Pontiac seed potatoes and the wounds are curing on a tray on the chest freezer top; they should be ready to plant in a couple days when the weather and soil warm. I will probably plant some straw-mulched late potatoes in early June for fall harvest.

Speaking of potatoes, we just cooked up the last of last year’s sweet potatoes and have a large pot of yams in the fridge to micro wave and eat during this coming week. I was pleasantly surprised by how well the sweet potatoes kept in a basket in our rear utility room. I didn’t follow the best curing methods at harvest but instead just let the tubers dry a few hours in the sun after I dug them. The last of the yams still showed no damage and were as good as the first. For people who don’t have the time, space or inclination for a vegetable garden, sweet potato vines can still be a decorative ground cover in a sunny flower garden for annuals like red cockscomb to grow through. This works especially well if you choose a couple different yam varieties with different shaped leaves and leaf coloration, e.g. forest green and yellow green. As a bonus you still get the root crop in October.

Yellow is the predominant color in the yard now. Daffodils have been blooming now for a couple weeks, and we have gobs of them all around our property. They are naturalized, semi-wild and spread on their own to surprise us in the first warm spell each year. Absolutely zero maintenance. The Forsythia bushes are also blooming now, so still more yellow. My wife cuts daffodils for the table and house and puts them in a dark blue vase. Dark blue seems the perfect contrast hue for all the yellow and we have a few purplish-blue hyacinths up now which give this same color contrast outdoors. The Spirea bushes are sprouting orangeish-red leaves. The scarlet red quince buds are full and will open any day. Quinces are tough as nails and are one of my favorite bushes. I think of them as early-spring roses.

But naturalization is not all about color; it is very much about tough plants, very low maintenance, ground covers, and just plain being too darn lazy to mow an area. During the first warm snap in early March, I lopped off and hacked down the scrub growth on our road bank. It is a fair-sized area that is too steep and too much trouble to mow, even with a riding mower. I scattered some chopped off aster bushes up around the fence and then planted clumps of Hoosier “ditch lilies” spaced every three feet down to the gravel road. These clumps should take over the bank within a year, a sea of leaf foliage and spreading rhizome roots. I like to plant plants together which have similar leaves but different flowering dates. I intend to add some surprise lilies and yuccas to the orange June-blooming ditch lilies to get some white and purple July blossoms in the same bed.

Yuccas are a desert plant and are unbelievably tough. When we wanted to put in the driveway to our garage there was a yucca in the way. Not wanting to waste a good plant, I dug it up and planted it elsewhere, but it had a deep taproot that I cut off. From that taproot it grew back through five inches of hard packed white rock driveway—twice. I had to use Round Up® it to kill it.

Our sandy, desert-like acreage is full of these tough, yet beautiful flowering plants: trumpet vine, prickly pear cacti, morning glory, and honey suckle etc. which I concentrate in patches to naturalize areas that I can enjoy without any mowing at all. Time to get off the keyboard and get outside. Got to walk-the-walk a little too.

Skimming and Concentrating

After a tough winter of “couching it” a.k.a. holding down the couch, I was taking on the blubberous proportions and pallid hue of Moby Dick. I needed some sun and March exercise. My first impulse was to start a spring walking program, but then I decided to just work my garden this year with hand tools only and skip firing up the tiller. I had plenty of time on my hands and I just might enjoy the quietude and the meadowlarks singing.

Two acts of magic had occurred in my garden patch over the past fall and winter. The first was the disappearing act of the compost piles. Where I had put about ten pickup truck loads of horse manure, ruined hay bales, and autumn leaves, only about one pickup load of semi-finished compost remained. It had literally vanished into thin air. The second act of prestidigitation was the appearance of truck loads of green manure/cover crop ryegrass from the three pound bag of seed which I cast to the wind late last fall. Because of the ryegrass seed, which I brought home in my car glove compartment last year, I have enough organic material for my garden. The compost on the other hand, will have to be rationed out.

With a sharp bladed, long handled shovel I skimmed a little over a foot wide swath of ryegrass and top couple inches of dark top soil and laid the turf to one side of the row. This skimmed area is where I plan to put my planted row. Next I dug out the skimmed-off row to a shovel depth and put the soil to the other side of the row. (I know this sounds like a lot of work, but recall I am doing this as a workout regimen as much as anything; it’s a lot cheaper and more enjoyable than going to a gym.) After I dug out the row, I spread about an inch or two of my limited compost into the trench bottom. Next with a pitch fork I laid the sod that I had skimmed off, inverted grass down, on top of the compost. Then I skimmed off the top couple of inches of sod which I had originally laid sod on next to the new planting row and inverted that, grass-down into my new planting row. Finally, I pulled the soil from the other side of the row, back over all the inverted sod. In a nutshell, what I have done is created rows of concentrated organic material alternating with valley rows of relative infertility. The patch looks like a graveyard of really tall skinny men.

This is all just an experiment. I believe I enjoy experimenting as much or more than the actual gardening. I am really a newbie at gardening and don’t know what I’m doing except that I’m enjoying the outdoors. My plan is to let the long rows of inverted sod rot down in the soil for a month and then plant into them. I hope as the green manure further composts in the soil, that it will serve as a slow release organic fertilizer throughout the summer. I plan to resow the infertile valleys between the seed rows with more grass and then when the soil has warmed up in mid-June, cover the new grass and kill it with Maple leaf mulch. Hopefully this process will bring back fertility and maybe next year my whole patch will be dark soil to a shovel deep depth.

Each year I am curious as to what will get me this year. My first two gardens in my retirement were only marginal successes. (That is a euphemism for “not successful”.) The first year the cute bunnies and the drought got the better of me. Last year insects covered my plants but I decided to wait until I saw actual eating damage to the plants, just in case these might be beneficial predator bugs which ate the undesirables. I waited and no leaf or fruit eating damage showed. Too late I realized these were not eating bugs but sucking bugs. They were sucking the life out of the plant without any visible damage. Live and learn.

So this whole skimming and concentrating process took me a couple weeks. I did enjoy the outdoors, and got some exercise and sore muscles. Now I am just waiting to plant and see what happens next.

Cabbage Casserole

In some of my earlier blogs I mentioned that my still-working, unretired spouse wanted me to take up cooking so that there would be something on the table when she came home. I also talked about the virtues of simple cuisine, a.k.a. “good old Depression food.” What follows is a recipe that is inexpensive, nutritious (full of cancer-fighting cruciferous cabbage), low calorie, and tasty. So yes, I did remember that I said I would share recipes with you. (Even an idiot husband like me can make this one.)
Ingredients:
1 small head of cabbage (or half a large head)
1 lb. ground beef
½ cup chopped onion
1/3 cup uncooked rice
¼ tsp. black pepper
½ tsp. salt
2 cans (about 10 oz. ea.) tomato soup
1 ½ cups water
¼ cup grated Italian cheese
Process:
Chop cabbage into medium-sized pieces and spread in a 9”x13” glass pan.
Brown ground beef in a skillet (with a little water in the bottom.)
Drain off fat and water.
Stir in rice,onion, salt, and pepper, then spoon over cabbage.
In a small sauce pan, heat the tomato soup and water to boiling; pour mixture over cabbage.
Sprinkle with cheese, then cover pan tightly with aluminum foil.
Bake in a 350-degree oven for 1 ½ hr.
I have reason to believe this recipe really did come out of the Great Depression. Cheap, tasty, healthy, and easy to prepare; could this really be the perfect dish? Well… if you ever embarrass yourself in a public place in a public way, just forget you ever read this blog!

March Garden

Thank God, winter is over. I believe Spring-like weather has finally taken hold. This should allow for a major shift in my blogs away from long-winded opinionated soapbox oratory on various and sundry topics (yes, even I was getting annoyed and bored with myself… blame it on cabin fever.) I hope to now begin more realistically chronicling what I am doing out-of-doors.

February was unusually cold, but I did manage to get some brush cleared on our road bank and some trees cut down or pruned. Now the day lilies on the bank can come up unimpeded. I hauled all the brush and firewood to the section of the garden where I want to grow sweet corn and butternut squash. I built fires which I sat around and tended for a couple days. I was really surprised at my lassitude sitting by the flames, but hopefully my stamina and pep will improve as the warm weather progresses. Otherwise, I’ve just plain gotten old. Getting out of shape in winter is one of the downsides of being retired.

I’ve heard numerous people say that farming is gambling and I think gardening is too. My first two gardens after retirement were marginal successes at best, but like the gambler who steps up to the slot machine one more time, I’m convinced that this is my lucky year. I may be making a mistake by spreading the wood ash around my sweet corn patch but I am going mainly on what happened to another area of our sandy ground where we once burned a tree and the weeds grew twice as tall as those on the surrounding soil for a decade. It’s an experiment… but I feel lucky.

About a third of my compost piles are well-aged humus and ready to go. I rolled one compost pile forward and the soil underneath looked absolutely perfect, almost like peat. In this area of perfect tilth, I made a raised bed about 10’x4’ and planted my early salad garden of lettuce and spinach. The traditional day for planting early greens around here is St. Valentine’s Day, so I’m probably not too early seeding it in the beginning of March. If I were so tight for garden space that I could plant only one crop, it would be salad greens (along with a tomato plant.). Bagged salad greens are expensive in the grocery and tend to go bad and wilt quickly in the fridge. Salads are nutritious and one of the best foods for losing pounds. So I have the seed in the ground and watered and that’s a start.

I have put up a two-foot chicken wire fence around a 40'x25’ area to deter rabbits. I may have to go higher. I hope to grow everything within the fenced in plot. My idea is to have a small well kept garden rather than a sprawling one that I can’t keep up. I could plant edible pod peas this early in the year too, but we still have several bags of them in the freezer from last year. The cardinal rules of gardening seem to be: grow what you like to eat, grow what is expensive in the store, grow what is nutritious for your body, and grow the produce that does not keep fresh for long.

That’s enough for now; I will continue my garden journal on another day. It is nice to get out-of –doors, again. Hope really does spring eternal.

Market Epiphany

I had my eureka moment while grocery shopping last weekend. The sales flyer had advertised milk on sale for less than $2 a gallon. Skim milk is a staple in our diet and we drink about three gallons a week. When we arrived Saturday morning the dairy shelf was empty of the sale milk. We were assured that another truck was on the way and would arrive in about an hour. My first thought was that we would take a written “rain check” and break even over a two-week period. We would buy expensive non-sale milk this week and make up for the extra budget expense with rain-check milk the next week.

Then the light bulb went on in my brain. We would be going right passed a Walmart® on the way home and they advertised that they would match any competitors advertised price. We could buy cheap milk this week and next week just by grabbing three gallons and showing the cashier the competing sales flyer. The five minute stop saved us $5; as a wage that would translate to $60 an hour.

I realized that I could collect the mailed sales flyers of all three of Walmart’s local competitors plus a couple large chain drug stores which also advertise teaser food items to lure customers into their store and get the mega store to match all their sales. One store chain in our area was very bad about having small amounts of sale items, so that they could draw us into the store and then not lose money on their lose-leader sales items by being sold out. Their rain checks were pretty worthless too, because when we returned the following week they did not stock the rain-check item. It was a scam to keep us coming back for weeks to get our rain check. We stopped frequenting that chain, but we can still use their sales flyer at Walmart where the product will be in stock.

For those of you who are not big fans of Walmart (and there may be a few, even one at this typewriter) consider that you are not really doing the mega store any favors if you only buy their sales items and lose-leader draws from other stores. You are probably costing them profit on each item. I will continue shopping at the store where they were out of sales milk because I know this does not happen often or purposely and because their Kroger® store-brand products are many, of high quality and low price. I do want the mega store to have significant competition to force them to keep their prices low. But I expect to take the rip-off chain’s sales flyer, whose bait and switch teasers were always sold out, to wally world to see if they make good on their promise to match competitors advertised prices.

Actually, this is not my first shopping epiphany. Earlier I had realized that I could take aisle way canned soup coupons from a store where soup was not on sale and high priced and use them at another store which gave no coupons but had soup on sale. This strategy works well for many items other than soup. Another epiphany was when I realized I could buy whole wheat bread (a healthy staple in our diet) on Tuesdays at the bakery outlet store for 40 cents a loaf. We buy a month’s supply at a time and freeze it to keep it fresh. When there are good sales, we buy in bulk to stock our freezer and pantry so that we often eat out of the pantry and freezer rather than the grocery store. We make a lot of meals from scratch (not much “convenience food” on the table) and have simple menus based on what is on sale that week. We also have a lot of recipes based on inexpensive store-brand staples.

These are some of my strategies for “guerilla-warfare shopping.” If I come up with any new dirty tactics, you will be the first to know.