Getting Down and Dirty with Dao

[Stigweard]

The Story So Far....

 

Step 1: Plot out the area.

 

Cheap crap !!!

 

Loosening soil in order to remove grass.

 

First shaping of the beds.

 

Put as much as 1 inch of compost over the top and mix this into the top 12" with a spading fork. As it was our first time through we had to buy 8 bags of compost.

[Stigweard]

The Story So Far (cont) ....

 

LOL Remember to put gloves on BEFORE blisters start forming

 

Working across the width of the bed, dig out one trench of soil to be used in the first compost. Little Akasha keeping a close eye on things for me

 

Using a spading fork, loosen the soil down another 12", spread some more compost on the lower level and mix through. Then shovel the next top layer over on top. Continue this down the whole length of the bed.

 

Getting a few pointers midway through the dig

 

Damn cheap crap !!! Thats the second digging fork !!!

[Stigweard]

The Story So Far (cont) ....

 

The finished bed on the right is noticeably higher then the one thats yet to be 'double-dug'.

 

In go the new babies at the full moon. The biggest root growth is just after the full moon so this helps with transplanting. Poor little buggers were wilted for a day or so cause of the transplant ... called root shock.

 

Time to prepare the new compost pile. Loosen 12" down under the site first for aeration and water dispensation.

 

Time to get the compost pile going. It's like a big chocolate mud cake !!

 

Steps:

 

1. Loosen soil 12" below area

2. 5" layer of dry twigs, branches etc.

3. 4" layer of draw vegetable matter like straw

4. 2" layer of green matter including kitchen wastes

5. 1" layer of soil that was dug from the first trench in the garden

6. Repeat 3 - 5 until 4 - 5 ft high

 

Remember to water your compost just like you would your garden bed. Not too much though, cause you will drown the microorganisms.

[Stigweard]

The Story So Far (cont) ....

 

YIKES!!! When you hear that THUNK stop and check before you keep going. It may not be the tree root you think it is. Luckily this was just a down water pipe that I missed in my plan. In Australia always Dial 1100 Before You Dig. Not sure what it is for other countries, in the US, they've recently set up the 811 program.

 

A quick plumbers call and we redirected the down pipe away from our site.

 

"Do it properly now boys". The over grown shrubs were stealling our sunlight, so we called in "Kenny's Kuts" to trim it all up. With the turbo powered shredder we were provided with MOUNDS of fresh mulch for the compost.

 

A happy gardener. That compost pile is a treasure trove!!!

[Marblehead]

Those are neat little green things growing in the garden Stig. They're not weeds, are they?

 

Lookin' good!

 

Peace & Love!

[gendao]

Imagine the smell of that if you are standing down-wind from it!

Compost smells aromatically SWEET when it's ready! I just made a small batch myself...and it's true!

The finished product is rich, dark, crumbly and sweet-smelling.

[voidisyinyang]

Yup ... Australia has the same service: Dial 1100 Before You Dig

 

Fortunately this was just a rainwater downpipe outlet that escaped my notice so wasn't on my 'map'.

 

$70 for a plumber and we have diverted the pipeline away from the garden

 

Yeah that John Jeavon's is a great book -- I read it 15 years ago when I worked on a Community-Supported Ag farm (a huge organic garden)....

 

And now for the REAL compost:

 

http://humanurehandbook.com/index.html

[Stigweard]

Grow little babies ... 2 weeks after transplanting I expect to see some leaf growth as the moon goes to full moon.

[Marblehead]

 

Grow little babies ... 2 weeks after transplanting I expect to see some leaf growth as the moon goes to full moon.

 

You're not making moonshine too are you?

 

Peace & Love!

[Ya Mu]

Harvested five 5 gal buckets of potatoes and 4 varieties of garlic. mmmm good. Cabbage next.

 

Do you know how difficult it is to keep a potato plow on top of the row with a feisty rather large horse pulling it?

[Stigweard]

Harvested five 5 gal buckets of potatoes and 4 varieties of garlic. mmmm good. Cabbage next.

 

Do you know how difficult it is to keep a potato plow on top of the row with a feisty rather large horse pulling it?

Hahahah !!! Nice

 

Pictures ... I want pictures

[gendao]

I had to transplant this sapling. It had stopped growing and was losing leaves due to a freak windstorm & perhaps underwatering.

 

Well, this time when I replanted it, I properly gave it some potting soil, mycorrhizal fungi & mulch. It now got full sun & I've watered it daily too.

 

It then took about a month to recover (with transplant shock added), but is now growing VERY vigorously. In fact, you will notice that the new leaves (all the light green growth) are MULTIPLE times the size of the older (dark green) leaves!

I don't know exactly which factors this is due to - or if it's due to a combination of everything - but the results are pretty startling!

 

 

Caution - I'm not positive if mycorrhizal fungi is symbiotic with ALL plants out there. I had 2 other types of plants that I recently repotted & added mycorrhizal fungi to - that wilted away and are almost dead now. Of course, they had first wilted when I transplanted them out in the hot sun & there's many other factors at play here too. But, I can't rule out for sure that the mycorrhizal fungi was perhaps incompatible with these 2 types of plants, either. The only plant I know for sure that it causes disease in though is tobacco.

Edited June 26, 2010 by vortex

[Stigweard]

I had to transplant this sapling. It had stopped growing and was losing leaves due to a freak windstorm & perhaps underwatering.

 

Well, this time when I replanted it, I properly gave it some potting soil, mycorrhizal fungi & mulch. It now got full sun & I've watered it daily too.

 

It then took about a month to recover (with transplant shock added), but is now growing VERY vigorously. In fact, you will notice that the new leaves (all the light green growth) are MULTIPLE times the size of the older (dark green) leaves!

I don't know exactly which factors this is due to - or if it's due to a combination of everything - but the results are pretty startling!

 

 

Caution - I'm not positive if mycorrhizal fungi is symbiotic with ALL plants out there. I had 2 other types of plants that I recently repotted & added mycorrhizal fungi to - that wilted away and are almost dead now. Of course, they had first wilted when I transplanted them out in the hot sun & there's many other factors at play here too. But, I can't rule out for sure that the mycorrhizal fungi was perhaps incompatible with these 2 types of plants, either. The only plant I know for sure that it causes disease in though is tobacco.

Nice !! It can be pretty heart wrenching to watch a tree suffer, and it's a nervous process to move one like you did ... great result well done

[Stigweard]

Growth after 5 weeks:

 

[thelerner]

I'm sipping some smooth garden made gaspacho. Threw in 2 handfuls of 'grape' tomatoes, half of 'giant' jalapeno, 1/3 cucumber w/ some v8. Also salt & olive oil. Tasty and nutritous, could use a little sweetener though.

 

My neighbors are pulling out some veggies for there dinner. The rewards of a garden, even a small kitchen garden are many.

 

 

Michael

[Stigweard]

I'm sipping some smooth garden made gaspacho. Threw in 2 handfuls of 'grape' tomatoes, half of 'giant' jalapeno, 1/3 cucumber w/ some v8. Also salt & olive oil. Tasty and nutritous, could use a little sweetener though.

 

My neighbors are pulling out some veggies for there dinner. The rewards of a garden, even a small kitchen garden are many.

 

 

Michael

NICE!!!

 

My first thought was to throw in a pinch of cayenne pepper to give it some ZING

[Brian]

..

[voidisyinyang]

Well since I had mentioned the humanure topic -- I've spent the last month focused on my new chestnut trees.

 

The American Chestnut was the biggest single wipe-out of a tree species in the U.S.

 

The American chestnut (Castanea dentata), rendered virtually extinct in the U.S. by a killer fungus that may have originated in the Orient, once represented half of the total tree population in the East. The story of its decimation reveals the worst of what can go wrong in the American forest.

 

It was truly a money tree, the driving force behind lucrative industries in lumber and produce. Its wood was unsurpassed for building, and its nuts were an endless food source for both man and animal.

 

So I cleared out a ton of buckthorn (the top invasive species in Minnesota) and I planted 16 Chestnut tubelings -- they're actually a hybrid of Chinese and American Chestnuts.... Then they got full on smothered by candy-striped leafhoppers. So I used soap and oil spray to hunt down and kill the leafhoppers....

 

Then we had tornadoes and we're out of power for a few days. The deer got into my garden for the second time -- I use a make-shift buckthorn fence but the branches break down and sometimes I don't replace the branches....

 

So I got beans growing back, peppers, squash, pumpkins, corn, potatoes. I started using "liquid gold" urine fertilizer but then I was doing it around the house without watering it down enough so the ammonia smell got real bad.

 

Anyway then I contracted Lymes Disease so I went on antibiotics and took pain relievers -- I never take legal drugs (except alcohol sometimes or coffee)....

 

Still the "death warmed-over" symptoms of Lymes Disease is pretty bad -- I had absolutely no energy. Of course I used full lotus to charge myself up.

 

I guess we all become humanure in the end. haha.

[Apech]

Since I have nothing intelligent to say today (it being excessively hot) I am posting a picture of my marrows (I feel I know you all well enough now for this ):

 

 

 

I'm not saying they are the largest in world but nothing to be ashamed of ...

and my carrots

 

 

 

all sweet and tasty.

 

Cheers

 

John

[Stigweard]

Since I have nothing intelligent to say today (it being excessively hot) I am posting a picture of my marrows (I feel I know you all well enough now for this ):

 

 

 

I'm not saying they are the largest in world but nothing to be ashamed of ...

and my carrots

 

 

 

all sweet and tasty.

 

Cheers

 

John

Nice !!!

[thelerner]

The last post here was the end of July. I wanted to see people had any words of wisdom on how there gardens turned out. What they tried, planted and learned from the growing season.

 

In the Midwest we had a lot of rain and everything grew like crazy. My mix of Mesclun lettuce grew great, but I wished I had planted a milder mix (& some spinach). I grew mammoth Jalapenos, which did brilliantly and were milder then small ones, at the end of the season they turned red and sweetened. I planted yellow grape tomatoes, despite being planted in the same area as last year they did great, giving me 3 1/2 months of sweet tomato berries.

 

This is my second year planting on the super simple raised square foot garden(from Mother Earth mag). Last year I laid 8 40Lb bags of cheap soil end to end, I made one long cut on the bottom and totally opened the top. I mixed in one bag of miracle grow, things grew well, at the end of the summer I removed the plastic bags. This year I had to pick out some grass that grew as weeds & I mixed in another bag of miracle grow soil. It was very productive.

 

My plantings, especially the lettuce and carrots was helter skelter, no rows just dumping everything down. It didn't hurt the mesclun lettuce (I think it helped keep it weed free infact), some of the carrots were stunted by over crowding. Still it was 30 or 40 carrots from a $1.99 bag.

 

I didn't have a fence last year, and I didn't lose too much. This year instead of putting a fence around the garden I laid down some fencing on top of it. The wire lattice had point edges. It worked, the plants grew through the fencing and it mostly escaped animals. I suspect they might have been poked by an edge or bitten into wire and given up. Or other gardens were tastier. I did have some marigolds on both ends for looks and the supposed ability to detour some pests.

 

Michael

[Stigweard]

Dirt! The Movie

 

[thelerner]

My dirt is good. I've covered my garden area in a thick patch of half decomposed leaves. The soil this spring is dark and moist. My 2 gardens are relatively small and narrow so there's never been a foot on it to compress it.

 

I tried simple composting just throwing greens and sticks into a old trash can and keeping it moist. I read that the simple way. It didn't really work, it ended up half decomposed, but it still made a nice mulch that's protected my soil through the winter.

 

I have a neighbor who has an amazing giant compost pile. For some its an ugly brown eyesore, but to those in the know its brown gold.

 

This year I'll have another 'gazpacho' garden (tomatoes cukes, peppers, lettuce) . I'd like to accent it with some sort of garden sculpture using metal tubing. I'm also going to build a trellis gazebo for my back yard, with hopefully grape vines covering the top.

[Stigweard]