This morning, amongst doing the washing and tidying up at the old house, and having a ton of things to do like finish the taxes, call the carpet guy, deal with the electrician, paint the house, and so on, I weeded the garlic bed, putting the fresh, unseeded and lovely grass to a big bucket to take down to the new house. Why this madness, you ask?
Soil.
The soil at the new place is sandy - stands to reason, because we're by the sea. It's not sand sand, but sandy dirt, if that makes sense. I don't know the official name. I'm just glad it's not clay. Like at my old place, it just needs a lot of organic matter to come good. Hence my desperation at starting compost, though I've got the house to paint, the floor to lay, and three million other reno jobs.
But. Soil.
Good soil means healthy, strong and tasty vegetables. Though we haven't established the bigger vegetable beds yet, I have them in my sight, so I have to get compost started as soon as possible. Compost is simple really - layers of brown and green, with maybe some veggie scraps thrown in, ash from the fire, broad leaf weeds, leaves, nothing too big. Big leaves like rhubarb and artichoke are green as they provide green matter and help create air pockets which is good, as air flow helps everything break down.
So I'm adding the grass, which has lots of good soil attached to it, and I'll layer that with the pea mulch that's dried out from their stupid cactus and daisy garden at the side of the house. Cactus has also gone in the bottom. It'll rot down before it takes root.
The big compost bins aren't ideal but until I have time to build bays, they'll be good enough. I've been taking chicken manure from the coop and the half finished compost down from the house as well, and I'll take some bags of cow manure as well and layer it through. Lots of bugs and worms will get it going faster, and comfrey as well - comfrey and borage helps break it down faster. Actually writing this post helps me think about what I need to dig up and take down!
I've also transported the worm farm.
Meantime, I've got two raised beds that I put in that I've managed to fill without getting garden soil from the garden centre. The bottom is filled with the succulents I pulled out, rotten logs, and branches that we had chopped down, plus compost and chicken litter from the old place. The top layer is a thin layer of compost, but I'll get some bags of soil from the garden centre and plant things in little pockets for now so I have a kitchen garden all ready to go.
I've also started a fertiliser 'tea' in a big black bucket, containing broad leaf weeds (I have no comfrey growing yet - it's still dormant), well rotted manure, and worm castings. I'll add some seaweed to that next time I'm at the beach.
The buckets in the background are wicking buckets for tomatoes and chilli - I have about eight of them still to go. Basically it's one bucket inside the other, with a plastic plant pot that sits down inside a cut hole to the six inch water reservoir below. The soil fills the bucket and the plant pot, and the water 'wicks' into the soil, providing the plants with water as needed. It works brilliantly for tomatoes and chilli. I've been gradually filling them with a blend of cheap garden soil and compost, ready for planting in about a months time. For the tomatoes, I'll put an egg and a banana in the base as well, providing what the tomato will need nutrient wise.
Jamie has called me mad for all of this, but soil is so important, and if I don't do it now, I won't have prepared for late spring and early summer when the bulk of seedlings are planted and things start really growing.
And it's pretty impressive really, for only having been in the house for ten days.
If you need me, I'll be hauling compost, green waste and chicken straw and manure down the road...
THis was in response to the Hive Garden QOTW which was about soil, and is a few weeks later because I've been silly busy! And I also nearly missed the one about herbs, so here goes the 'herb' themed question!
Whilst Jamie was busy painting, I dug out a herb garden along the side of the shed. I can't live without herbs. They are so nourishing and add pizzazz to all meals.
As I said, the soil above is so sandy, so I have layered seaweed and straw and horse manure and plants the herbs in little pockets of compost. I transplanted thyme, oregano and garlic chives from the old house, because they grow in nice clumps. They also don't mind poor soil. That's enough to get started at least.
I also planted a white sage I had in a pot but I'll pick up a culinary sage soon.
This summer I'll plant basil in a pot on the balcony I think as I don't think I'll have enough growing space as yet. Coriander is my favourite but it's past the season - coriander dries out quickly so it'll have to wait til I have some better soil.
Mint will go in a pot, as I'm not making that mistake again... It grows wild and you need a lot of space to let it spread!
I was also really really chuffed to discover what I thought was a non culinary native rosemary was actually a genuine rosemary when I was weeding out the front today. I think I was talking to @holoz0r and @beelzael about how I wasn't going to plant one as it's easy enough to get from other people's gardens as it's so common, but I was super excited to find one already here! As it looks like coastal rosemary it blends well with the natives in the front so it can stay! Stoked!
Right, now I've written this post I have to get outside to take some photos for this post but it's absolutely pissing down rain! Hope your own gardens are doing well.
With Love,
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It sounds like you have something similar to what I have: sandy loam. And it does need a lot of organic matter added, especially if it hasn't been taken care of. But it will make some of the best garden soil in the end!
I can't believe all you have done in 10 days! But doing the gardens first is really important!
It's so dry! But I know what to do, right, and itsbetter than clay!!! And yes if you don't have a garden what's the point??
And being dry continues to be a problem here, which is why I start almost everything inside. Something to bear in mind. My husband used to say there was a 20 minute window between mud and dust. It does drain very well!
Your work is impressive. I do gardening too and organic farming is truly laborous, yet very satisfying and above all it is not contributing harm to mother nature.
Oh I see a lot of chemical use here on Hive and it's hard not to lecture people! But at the same time there's a lot of people using organic and permaculture methods too. Good to hear you are one of them!!!😎
I also teach some of the methods I knew to my students. We do vegetable gardening in school and I taught them the importance of organic matter as fertilizers and we also made our organic pesticides. I am not very knowledgable about it but I am trying.. ☺️
That's awesome! One of the things I learnt about gardening is that you never stop learning! It's what I love about it.
My grandma was a very keen and excellent gardener who lived in Fife in various places but always close to the coast. She called it coastal soil and I remember helping her fork in all the compost matter to the soil. I think our grandparents generation were so eco friendly in a lot of things that they didn't get enough credit. Recycling reusing and glassware were just some of things she bestowed upon me.
Oh yes I leave from my gardening Nana too. They didn't have the chemicals to buy and couldn't afford it anyway so they knew many tricks that today we recognize as "eco"!!
Meanwhile, today, my gardening exercises consisted of buying a $229 whipper snipper from bunnings and butchering the weeds (marshmallow, mainly) growing out of my little slip of front lawn.
I haven't used a whipper snipper since I was ... like 13 (dad never taught me) - so butchering is indeed the right term. I am certain it will be a scarred, ragged mess this time next year, but that's okay, I'll want to start it from scratch at some point anyway. :P
In the UK they call them strimmers, which is far less cool. Jamie couldn't believe it when I said what we call them.
Marshmallow sends such long rap roots down! They're great medicine though.
We were just talking about getting rid of the front lawn as it's struggling anyway. More natives!
I think Rosemary actually loves that kind of sandy soil. Not sure though. Potatoes do, though. It's been a long time since I did soil research... Soil Preservation was one of my subjects when I was doing my exchange semester here in Ecuador. But that was focused on erosion, not so much on types of soil. We learned a lot on how to implement the local watering system, which works through small irrigation channels between each line of crop, so they have to be almost parallel to the inclination. It was very interesting.
Anyway, I know the soil problem. My soil in the garden is very sour, as it seems they unloaded a truckload of crushed cement blocks there. The husband of the owner of the restaurant below is a gardener, and he helps out with the organic matter part by bringing the grass cuts. He told me to use ashes to reduce the acidity, which is awesome, as I like to do fires.
I was thinking about this yesterday as I watch the rain off the bank of soil in front garden. I was going to dig some little channels to prevent that happening. It's amazing what you pick up over the years!!!
Food tip about the ash. I use it round fruit trees and layer it in my compost.
I love in the runoff zone from Glacial Lake Missoula. Way back in prehistory at the end of the last glacial maximum, the Flathead Valley in Montana was apparently closed off into a great lake and flooded entirely. When the ice dam burst, the entire lake drained across western Montana, the Idaho panhandle, and a lot of Washington State, spreading as it went and scouring the land. It left behind gravel and silt and clay randomly distributed in the valleys and plains here. Any gardening requires manure and compost to build this poor dirt into proper soil.
Such fascinating geological history. Aty old place half an hour away it's all very old volcanic soil. It had been used for grazing and ag for years so was basically bereft of nutrients. Still, like yout soil, it was perfect as you could just add manure etc. better than clay!
That egg and banana trick in the wicking buckets is genius, totally beats paying silly money for tomato feeds. My inner bean counter loves how you stacked free inputs into the mix, layer the grass, pea mulch, chicken litter, then let the compostt and worms do the heavy lifting :). If you want to keep it even tidier, crushed eggshells give slow calcium and and a bit of grit around the roots, so you dont need much else for a strong start.
Your raised beds look great and are very practical. What are they called and what material are they made of?
!PIZZA
!HUG
They are made of corrugated iron that has a protected paint coating which prevents them rusting too fast...
Really cool, probably unaffordable here in Germany, but I'll keep my eyes open.
I'd like to create a herb spiral and think this sheet metal would be perfect for it. Thanks for the information. Have a wonderful day, and here's hoping for peace and love.
$PIZZA slices delivered:
@themyscira(2/5) tipped @riverflows
Come get MOONed!
Hola que bien se ve esa técnica de aprovechar el césped, como no tengo contenedores haré unos agujeros en una parte del terreno y lo colocaré alli