Spring or Fall Garden Soil Improvathon

When we first started expanding our garden we had nothing but clay soil to work with to get things established. Things did not grow so well that year..but after that year we started getting results..and now the soil  no longer looks or feels like its clay beginnings. It has totally transformed into loamy lush dark soil that is chalk full of nutrients and love! Our veggies have responded in turn by providing us with a bounty of fresh veggies. What is our secret? Bribery? No. Special varities of veggies? No. Spend all day and every day in the garden? No. The answer: Compost..lots of compost and tilling everything in during our busy fall or spring augmentation sessions. We use whatever we have..well composted leaves, manure, our own chicken manure, grass clippings and food scraps. It is a never ending cycle of improvement! And it works wonders for your soil.

In this video we grab all the compost we can hold…then put it on top of our beds. We give the chicken manure to the beds which need it the most then move on to using our leaves. We till it all into the beds and get things totally ready for the next growing season..so come along for a chicken poop adventure where we hope you will watch it all and not leaf. Groan.

Obviously improving the soil is not the only thing we do.

 

Finished Digging!

Some of you might remember us finishing our digging out of the new garden bed in October. Editing progresses. Slowly.

..and A* gives me a covid-19 Haircut.

 

Measuring Level and Measuring Lettuce

Prepping for next spring and cut away 1/2 of the insulation around the bottom of our place. We are going to be putting it back on before winter but we wanted to get some measurements. Looking at things under our place and it looks really good and dry. We were not sure how it would turn out 12 years ago but it is much drier than I could have hoped for with not much sign of rodents.

Dry..but shifting slightly over the years. The good news is that the beams are very accessable for jacking. The bad news is that the thick bed of crusher dust and the thick layer of gravel are compacting when attempting to Jack them with the bottle jack. We will need to dig these all out to create a large enough footprint on stable ground to jack. Or slide 3 26ft beams under and Jack from there. We will see in the spring!

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..and our Bok Choi might go to seed for the 2nd time this season..might be too cold for bees. Lettuces still going too.

..and sad days..the backhoe is taken off the tractor and replaced by our back bkade. Which means winter is nearby. Yuck

The good news about all the levelling and jacking Bunkie work we did…we actually think it will go fairly smoothly when we apply the same principles to our place. Fun!

We started trimming out parts of the Bunkie..or pairing parts that need protecting from the elements.

…and more YouTube. Supporting the loft with lag bolts and kludging a beam to the wall.

 

Doubling the Garden Progress…

We loved the upsizing we did to our garden in the spring…to the point that 7 months later we decided to expand things again. We only had 1 big garden bed at the end of last season after harvest. After that point we created 4 smaller beds..one of which had garlic planted in it. COme spring we made 2 new smaller beds and 3 large beds along the rock walls…to the point this fall where we have 1 very large bed, 6 small beds ( 7 if we include the triangle bed we made..) and 3 large winding beds along walls.

The area where we wanted to expand had a gentle hill on it and was at the end of our small beds…or did. We removed the hill to level off things in prep for spring bed creation..and have started using part of the dirt to create additional flower/shrub beds for all of the things we still need to plant.

If you are asking whether this is a ‘chicken or the egg’ situation…both are accurate. We needed more dirt to create shrub beds and the easiest situation to get the dirt was to expand the garden..but we wantd the garden expanded…almost equally.

 

Fall Turns

A record breaking zucchini!

8 years is up and our battery bank is toast. Long live the new Trojan T-105’s!

The first night with lights in the bunkie.

I would do a better job of describing the rest if WordPress would show me my uploaded and placed images. I am betting bike shots. A melon grown from our company pile, harvesting day and curing or veggies. 120lbs of potatoes. Great garden year and still harvesting lettuce, Bok Choi, kohlrabi, carrots, beets and Swiss chard after an early frost. Followed by 3 weeks of warm weather. Killed the tomatoes. We had harvested many and canned many too but there was a late batch coming on which would have made it based on the weather afterwards. Oh well, still a great harvest for the mostly new garden.

..and the tiny home/Bunkie/home office work keeps pressing forward. Wiring and insulation is in. Lights roughed in and usable via a fuse bar and a neat control panel.

 

More Bunk

I thought a new title might add some flare to an already tired subject to blog about. Bunkie work and gardening. And canning.

The work has gone from outside to in. 3 windows added and a new patio door. New to us anyway. 2 of the windows and the patio door were free. The patio door has some fogging but we sealed it up and covered over things with privacy screening. Great stuff.

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Wiring, insulation for 3/⁴ done and some vapour barrier installed ta boot. The rest was awaiting loft finalization..which we just knocked out. Went swell once we flattened the main log beam to make good square contact. More support and finishing is needed but smooth sailing from here on out..once we vent the propane exaust from the fridge. And install the woodstove. And finish the needlessly complicated 12v system. Been fun so far and not to bad a state for a twice snow collapsed shed. Yes, the first 2 did not sink into a swamp. This one is sure to stay up. My neighbor was by and works on metal buildings so I asked him his opinion of our construction job and sealing up of the metalwork around the windows and doors. He thought the structure would ‘…not budge before we die.’. A* has never been more happy.

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Making Annuals

Wow..we get to save ourselves nearly $4 in annuals! What a savings!

OK..not so thrilling but into part 2 of dealing with addictions with shrubs. Propigation through cuttings from a coulple of annuals which we did not use last year as well as a ground cherry and Wandering Jew. The plant. We cut them off from the parent plants 3 weeks ago. Applied root starter then and now all of the seedlings have healthy root growth. We wanted more practice with starting plants from cuttings so we can attain more shrubs and bushes this coming spring via the same method…we are going to do another round of annuals this week too..it is too easy and from 1 plant we should be able to get 20 clones or so in total.

..and we planted lettuce. We have ( and ordered more of ) waaaay too many seeds. So for sun we are trying to grow some lettuce inside.

Prepping for later in the month where we will be putting our veggies into pots as we await the last frost!

 

Some 1st Year Garden Results

Garden producing..the new beds need more soil augmentation this fall/spring to help with the soil quality but we are happy enough with things for year 1 with the long bed..

Not wanting to be too adventurous with new varieties we stuck to some of our known favourites..but tried out ground cherries ( a variety of tomato?) and really loved them!

..we already ordered/recieved a pile of shit…manure for future augmentation..many of our other beds need manure too so we ordered big. We also have fall plans to ‘islandize’ some of our perennials..the war of the perennials has been tough on some while allowing others to flourish..to the point where many of our original beds look completely different due to some plants taking over. We want to keep some of our favourites but these always seem like the ones who are losing bed wars…so a new area of isolation!

…and the manure is in another newer area we are creating with fill from the new area I am pulling stumps from..but more on that later.

 

Fighting Addictions

..I have a problem. Every greenhouse, garden center or shop I visit where they are selling shrubs and bushes I buy more..I have plenty but I want more, more, more.

..but today we took steps to start fighting the problem..propagation!

Sure..it is late for doing this and the chances of anything making it are slim..but practice makes perfect..and if we can get these badboys to root this whole process should be really easy in spring!

Hydrangea, pierlis, barberry, nootka, dappled willow and some russian sage..no harm in trying!

 

New Path to the Garden

Well..still some wood for next year in the way but we levelled off the old raised bed area, created a new path to the lower garden and creaded an ornamental raised bed below the oak/chestnut tree..Amazing how fast things go with the tractor bucket is on.

( but the first shot is of the new area I am pulling stumps up from )

..and once we are happy with things we will wait until fall and then put grass seed down. Grass is not our end goal.but it is much easier to deal with than weeds are!