How we fared in the new garden

As the summer winds down it’s time to report on the success and not so successful garden transformation. When I started this project I wrote about the permaculture concept. What I didn’t state or write about was the other concept the garden beds are based on. The concept hugelkultur is a method of burying logs and wood into very large beds. The wood breaks down over a period of time and provides nutrients to the soil. There are some very important factors to take into consideration when deciding to go this route. First and foremost is the understanding that wood will suck the nitrogen from the soil and deprive the plants of the valuable nitrogen. Picking the right wood can make all the difference in the world; it is best to pick wood that has started to decompose and stay away from walnut, cherry and other hard woods. Hard woods tend to take a very long time to break down. In my case I used dead wood found in our woods with some stages of decomposition happening. The other important factor is that I did not bury the logs in my soil in the same fashion as a large hugelkultur. Instead I framed the beds with the large logs and filled the beds with large sticks in various stages of decomposition. The idea of the wood in the beds is to hold water, provide air pockets for roots to grow and eventual break down of organic material. To compensate the nitrogen loss I used horse manure, compost and large amounts of mulch throughout all of the beds; our mulch came from hay. Hay is interesting in that most hay is not cut when it goes to seed; it is cut before it goes to seed thus the problem of the hay sprouting new seedlings is not really that likely. Weeding the garden was not a problem and usually amounted to picking one or two weeds every so often. Even if you do not build your own hugelkutur you should be using mulch in your garden or planting companion plants that will hold back weed growth. Both of these methods will also help in water holding for the plants and in some cases help to resist pest.

The tepee or three sisters

So…how did we do? Let’s start with the “teepee.” The concept for this area was the “three sisters.” The three sisters are where corn, squash and beans are planted in the same space, each provides important nutrients to the other and they are exceptional growing companions. In my case I planted sunflowers instead of corn; sunflowers are acceptable in this concept. The beans climb the large sunflower stalks and produce beans as they grow up the stalk. The squash fills in the space below and help to hold water in for the rest of the plants. I also added flowers in some of the nooks and crannies of the log walls; this produced areas for pollinators, bees.  In addition later in the season I added cucumbers and peas. The harvest of this area will be okay but not great. I have about 7 to 8 butternut squash, several cucumbers and have picked about three pounds of beans. The peas we ate as we picked them! We just could not resist the pea’s sweet raw flavor!  Overall I am happy with the bed but know that I will have to feed this bed a lot of nitrogen over the winter season and I am considering moving the tomatoes to this bed in my crop rotation plan. I will be researching what will be the best follow in the rotation plan.

The next bed contains our parsnips, assorted salad mix and spinach. This bed also has a patch of fresh thyme. We have been eating the salad mix for the past two and half months and we consumed all of the spinach. The parsnips are looking good and I will harvest them in December. I will cover them with a heavy amount of mulch and when it is time to harvest I will brush away the snow and mulch and harvest. We did this last year and they were awesome; the sugars in the parsnips really took over and they were excellent! The bed itself was small and again little to no weeds! One of the greens found in the mix was mustard; mustard is an awesome plant to have in your garden as it acts as pest control for the plants.  The other added benefit to having mustard in the garden can be found in its ability to work as a living mulch. I have to admit I did not plant the mustard with any of the benefits in mind; in fact it was quite unintentional. Yet, the mustard grew with the salad mix and ended up adding some excellent beneficial cover crop, pesticide and tasty addition to the garden!

Parsnips, salad mix, spinach and thyme bed

The next bed was our carrot, lettuce and cucumber bed. This bed has been an awesome producer thus far. We planted butter leaf lettuce and a wide variety of carrots. Carrots are fun to grow and you can add more to the bed if you are not getting the results early on. This is exactly what I did; we planted our carrots and some of them did not take so I sowed more in about two or three weeks later. The bed is full and I am sure we will be eating carrots well into January or later. Just like the parsnips I do not plan on harvesting them until late November early December. The sugars in the carrots will convert, making the carrots sweeter and just like the parsnips produce some awesome flavors! The butter leaf lettuce has been incredible and we have been enjoying eating it for about two months. I have noticed the bees liking the lettuce and witnessed them flying into the leaves seeking water. This creates an interesting harvesting plan; carefully cutting the lettuce away, rinsing the lettuce and getting those pollinators to fly out before my fingers reach in to pull out leaves. So far I have not been stung! At the end of this bed I put up a trellis and planted cucumbers on the outside of the bed. Probably one of my most disappointing aspects of the garden has been the cucumbers; I believe we have been hit with a fungus and have been working with hydrogen-peroxide to remove the fungus. Thus far I have not been too successful and will continue my research into what we can use that will not kill bees. A recent study found that the use of fungicides have more to do with the contributing loss of bees in North America. Pesticides are a problem but the study found that the fungicides might be a larger factor in the loss of the bees. So … I have been monitoring the situation and yet still have harvesting a small amount of cucumbers.

Above is the carrot bed with the cucumber trelis above this picture is one of  our big bushy carrots!

  

This year I decided that my love for leeks required a bed dedicated to leeks! I was worried about getting the leeks planted in time as it took me a little longer to get the initial beds built. I planted the leeks in my cold frame and managed to get them started while I was finishing the beds. I am really happy with the results! I have a nice crop of leeks coming and have picked a few to thin them out and they are wonderful in flavor! What I found was they need a good daily soaking and lots of mulch. The bed is doing nicely and once again I will be harvesting them later in the season after the first frost. As you have read in my blog; I cannot stress the importance of mulch!

Our Tasty leeks!

The next bed is our tomato bed. Last year we planted 27 tomato plants! We just cooked up our last bag of tomatoes from last year! This year we planted 6 tomato plants; I suspect I will not be using this year’s tomatoes next August! Timing had everything to do with how many plants we were able to plant this year; just not enough time to put more plants in and besides we did not want to deal with the harvesting issues of last season! Literally we stopped harvesting tomatoes as we had nowhere to go with the excess! The new bed was planted with onions, nasturtiums, dill and basil. All of the planted items were companion plants and seemed to be thriving quite well. Our dill did not take to well but not worried because we have dill popping up everywhere else in the yard! I let last year’s dill go to seed (on purpose) and the seeds must have blown around the yard! Needless to say we have plenty of dill. All of the tomatoes we have planted are heirloom varieties and all seem to be thriving. We have just started picking them and they are meaty with good flavor. The nasturtiums, on one side of the bed exploded and we have blooms everywhere. Nasturtiums are edible and have really cool looking blooms, the leaves and flowers are edible and have a pleasant peppery flavor. We used to serve them in our salads at our restaurant (The Sandhill Inn) years ago.

Tomatoes, onions, nasturtiums, dill, and basil bed

Finally our last bed, another success story, the swiss chard and golden beets has done quite well. We have been enjoying swiss chard for about 2 ½ months now. Swiss chard is considered to be one of the super foods and if anything it is super in flavor! I tend to braise it lightly with vinegar, butter, onions, garlic and salt and pepper. The beets are looking awesome (I only wish I would have planted more but due to the late planting, we have what we have) and I have tasted a couple. My favorite thing about beets is the earthiness they have when you inhale the sweet smell as you pick them. Not to mention they taste pretty darn good! I also have a few leeks in this bed as there was not enough room in the leek bed for all of the seedlings.

Swiss Chard the super food!

Golden Beets

Overall the garden has fared well. The plan for the winter is to build a couple of small hoop houses over two of the beds. This will allow us to grow fresh greens, and other hardy plants all winter long. I am currently reading two books about four season gardens and if all goes well we will be enjoying our fresh salad in the middle of winter!