Feeling
under the weather can be productive in a few ways: sitting still is good for your head, sinus
and throat rather than moving around and stirring things up; instead of being
frustrated by sitting still there are many (and I mean many) videos and clips
to watch about Permaculture, No-Till Gardening, Seed Starting, Seed Saving,
Chicken Raising – endless hours of available learning.
I’ve
been having a hard time grasping this No-Till or Low-Till way of
gardening. I know it’s the direction I
want to follow and it’s good for everything and everyone, but I was having
trouble getting it. I do believe I get
it now. I watched several short videos
from market garden farmers and small farm farmers who have been doing this for
over 30 years and it works. It was beyond
me how you could not till, although I know in the end tilling harms the goodies
in the soil, but the thought of leaving weeds in my rows appalled me. What if the weeds all come back with
vengeance? Won’t the weeds harbour
disease? Won’t the weeds rob the
vegetable plants’ nutrients from the soil?
Okay, I’m learning now. We’re
actually meant to be winning over the weeds, drowning them in goodness, killing
them with kindness aka COMPOST. That’s
it. I knew that. It’s the compost which is my missing
link. Yes, there was a tandum truck of
organic compost delivered and spread over the gardens, more compost delivered
and spread over the rows and then the little bit of compost and leaf mulch
which we are able to harvest from here. While watching the compost videos, I can
almost smell the familiar sweetness of what is going to be gorgeous soil once
incorporated into the gardens. We have
to step up compost production here and do it right, not complicated in any way,
just the right amount of each ingredient, provided naturally. I need to find a way to turn it. When the compost bins were built, they were
made such that they could be turned easily with a small tractor’s front end,
but we don’t have one of those – so off to Plan B – um which is not yet in my
head, but I have a few weeks to work on that.
If anyone lives near us, has a little tractor and farms free of
chemicals, I’d be happy to pay you (in food or vegetable plants?) to turn our
compost every now and then once it reaches that certain degree of heat.
My plan,
when we made the 50 rows last year, after our original tiller broke and any of
the rented ones didn’t do the job, was to till the first year and then just
tidy up with the tiller in the coming years.
We ended up getting a lovely Troy-Bilt tiller, young Thomas and his
friends love to use it, and off they went up and down once each row was
cleared. Ninety per cent of our rows are ready for planting come Spring. But wait – ERROR – we left the ground
uncovered, which I have now been reminded that Mother Nature does not do. Thriving forests are so due to leaves, weeds
and all things dead covering their floor, this all being, yes, Compost in the
end.
Organic
(non-chemical-sprayed) straw is so hard to find. We tried one year to grow our own, but it’s
hard without a decent tractor and it was a year of
biting-off-more-than-one-can-chew. Our
beautiful ¼ acre of heritage oats rotted in the field and did not re-seed,
which I had hoped it would. This year we
were able to buy up a couple of hundred bales of untreated local straw, half of
which we spread in between each of the 50 rows, a small portion of which we set
up in the chicken Coop for insulation and some in the chicken Pen for
protection from the wind for the girls.
This is the start of our Low-Till Gardening. Also, I planted, for experiment sake, some
fall rye in the large Greenhouse. It
germinated nicely and grew until the deep cold came along. It looks wonderful and as soon as I can turn
the soil the rye will be blended into the Greenhouse beds to provide
nourishment for that soil – after I cut some for the chickens to eat. I’ll be doing that in the actual rows next
year as a cover crop.
Speaking
of soil, we were at EcoFarmDay in Cornwall February 20. We got to play with buckets of soil
varieties. We heard a very enthusiastic
speaker tell us that Eastern Ontario has the best soil on earth to grow
whatever we like, if we take care of our soil.
The speakers’ focus was mainly “the Health of the Soil”. This has been the highlight of many a
documentary and top-ranking book in the past few years. This is my sixth year with the property and
gardens and I`ve run with that “if it grew there before, it’ll grow there again”
belief. Well, not exactly. I am rotating the vegetable crops every few
years but have found that over the almost six acres the soil has a great
variance, many peaks and valleys, dry and soaked areas. It was a hay field forever until we started
to garden. The beds will remain the
physical shape they’re in at this point, no need to change them, we’ll amend
the soil if necessary, add plenty of compost and cover crop each fall and take
what I learned from EcoFarmDay and run with it.
I understand now, and of course I used to have that full-time job
thing with little energy left for soil details, that knowing my soil
composition is a primary factor in what is best to grow in certain areas of the
property.
An
afterthought has occurred to me, the rows are not uncovered – they’re covered
in snow right now. That’s a good
thing.
Well,
having not grown pea shoots and sunflower shoots before now, I’m learning
again. Thank you for indulging me. I’ve got it now. These precious little darlings grow when they
grow and need to be harvested the very day they are ready, not before, not
after. So, Heather’s Healthy Harvest has
been selling the Shoots as they become available, about every other day. They barely, if at all, make it to her fridge
after I deliver them before someone comes in and scoops them up. I will have some for you this week. Very little handling of these tenders is best
so I rinse the soilless seed starter mix from them, but you should wash
them. The Salad Greens are lovely, they
are micro, I keep hoping to get some started in the Greenhouse so we can have
lots but it’s just too cold at night for them to survive. The
day will come, I remember having a good amount to sell at the Sustainability
Fair last April, so it will be my goal again.
That date is Sunday April 17.
We have the
following deliciousness for you this week:
Eggs $2.50/half dozen
Micro Salad Greens $4 bag
Pea Shoots $2 bag
Sunflower Shoots $2 bag
Tomatoes, dehydrated
$2 bag
Tomato Powder $10 125mL
jar
Sprouts: $3 bag
Ancient Eastern Blend (fenugreek, lentils, kamut & adzuki)
Crunchy Bean Mix (peas, lentils and garbanzos)
Sandwich Booster (clover, alfalfa, radish and mustard)
Spicy Lentil Crunch (lentils, red clover, alfalfa, radish & mustard)
Spring Salad Mix (broccoli, radish, alfalfa & clover)
Tomato Sauces: $6 500mL jar
Caesar (somewhat Celery-tastin, it’s good)
Crazy Green (made with ripe Green Zebra tomatoes)
Herb (made with fresh herbs from here, mostly oregano)
Hot (a few hot peppers tossed in)
Just Nice (the right amount of everything, just a pleasant
tomato/pizza sauce)
Warm (just a little bitty bit of hot pepper)
Vampire Buster plus Heat (deliciously garlicky with a kick)
And remember some of Day Brighteners Farm produce can be found at Heather's Healthy Harvest in Kemptville.
Until next post, have a great every day.
Jo
Jo
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