Organics, Health and Mindfulness

   Organics is using no artificial sprays, fertilizers as well as following some standards like cleaning tools at the end of every day.  I believe there are some other rules; like no chemicals in the field for 20 years.   

Perma-culture: Healthy Food without the Cost of Our Environment

   So what is perma-culture? I chose to add a dash to the word, as I feel it should be a free word.  It's like the alchemist's stone of farming.  Throughout the years I've heard of it from time to time, but could never point a finger and say "There"!  Personally, I see it as closely related to food forestry.  I'll give some examples in my small garden.

   As you see here there are flowering broccoli, Swiss chard and a few lettuce left.  This bed was planted around march.  After around 3 months of lettuce and Swiss chard the broccoli finished.  Around this time I switched over to a bed with more sun.  I added heavy mulch, almost covering the lettuce(which was flowering), mostly stopped watering and left it.  Now the days have shortened and we had a few rains, I lightly weeded it and added more compost.  The Swiss chard is growing back from seed, it is also a well composted raised bed that remained mostly weed free through the summer.

   Sustainability is an important factor here.  Placing the bed in partial shade, I get slower growth.  By taking the time to understand plants needs, I can provide for them; without needing to be there all the time.  Which leads up to my next post on organics and why they are important.  

   Thanks for reading,

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Gardening

Greetings,
         It's the end summer, removing weeds is easier when they are dry.  I have been adding a few more plots. Most lettuces have gone to seed, I am leaving them alone because I don't have more to plant now. There are a lot of birds in the garden, they are probably getting some of the seeds. After the first few weedings, there are hardly any weeds in the beds. Companion planting seems to be helping a lot. 
       Water conservation is good for me because I often forget to water.  Heavy mulching and letting weeds grow around the bed seems to help a lot.  I've planted near a few fruit trees, on the sunny side.  Close plantings of vegetables, which start small and grow large after a few months, surrounded by greens. Greens become bitter the more you pick from them and as the season warms up.  By keeping lots of life in the garden it takes longer for the water to evaporate between watering.
       I'm working on potatoes right now, I'll clear the area of weeds and plant on a shallow layer of harder aged compost.  I'll bury them with a mixture of mostly dried grass (like the hay method) and some soil.
      Cooking has been something that also comes in handy when growing a vegetable garden.  Some things really aren't that good straight from the garden.  I've got Swiss chard and kale growing.  They can use light cooking with some olive oil. Things like fruits can be cooked in many ways; juice concentrates, fruit strips, or even made into sweet sorbets. When I had a lot of lettuce growing, Ceaser salads were a staple in my diet. 
      The healing power of gardening. Digging in the dirt with your hands is healthy, it draws toxins out of your hands.  Having a safe and peaceful place to go lowers stress levels greatly boosting the immune system.
       Growing lettuce is very difficult. It is sensitive to heat as it has a small root system.  A balance of some shade seems to allow more full flavored greens. When cutting I would switch off cutting every other plant allowing an extra close planting. Saving and replanting seeds can save a lot over buying starts. Especially because these are short lived plants. I recommend planting varieties separately both to make cutting faster and to keep the seeds more true to the original plant.
      I went Wwoofing abroad last year. It was a wonderful experience filled with adventure.  It brought to reality how much opportunity there is to help communities worldwide through agriculture.  I got to learn many thing from olive oil processes to using herbs in many dishes. I got to help plant a huge vegetable garden and was able to share things I've learned in the past while learning new things about building irrigation systems.  I was met with great kindness everywhere I went.  It was terrifying when I got off the plane, because I quickly realized I couldn't read anything and not that many people spoke more than a few words of English.  I made up for it by taking things slowly.  There were times I felt uncomfortable, was followed, and didn't have plan. 
     My primary means of transportation was by foot. After three days with a relatively light pack, my feet were blistered so bad I was having trouble walking.  So I found a pair of flip flops.  It helped a lot.  Another time, I had just enough budgeted for a hotel that night.  When I got there, those rooms were sold out. So I dug through my bag and had just enough to pay for the next one up.
    One thing that left me speechless was, I sat down to roll a cigarette, when a group of kids near by came up and gave me a cigarette.  That created a huge shift in my mind to realizing I was finally in a safe place. Then I was able to get where I was headed easier

New Garden

     Spring is arriving. I've prepared a small garden area.  The greenhouse is under construction as you can see in the photo.

Greenhouse being built

The pile of fairly fresh compost which will be buried under the soil.

I left cardboard over an area of lawn for a few months.  This killed off most weeds and got the soil much easier to dig.
I then dug up all the weeds and separated them from the soil.  Dug down again, raking all the dirt off to the side of the 3x6ft

Adding a lot of fresh compost below will help block weeds.

Then the heavier soil is added on the pile.

This is sifted compost. It's what I use to plant in.  Basically sift your compost through a metal screen around chicken wire or a bit smaller.  What I get is soft and nutritious(worm filled!) soil. 

I add this on top of the soil after raking it out some.

I then measured it out and raked it out to 2'6" x 5'6". As the soil settles it will expand back out to 3' x 6'

Here is the raked out and ready to plant soil. I was lucky to catch a nice day to plant, it has been raining often.

It's important to water both the plants and the plot heavily before planting.  Roots don't like to be dry especially during the stress of transplanting.  The roots also don't like sun, so dig the holes before taking them out of the 6 packs.

These are the things I am planting now, also a red sail lettuce. (forgot to get pictured)  In our area there is likely to be mild frost for another 2 months.  All of these are frost hardy.  I have found red lettuces to be able to tolerate cold better than green.  There are a few arugula and romaine. The arugula is about to bolt because I wasn't watering often enough. 

Here is the finished garden bed.  I started by spacing the broccoli and Swiss chard further apart then filling in with the lettuce.  The lettuce is sorted by variety with the green lettuce closest to the near plum tree.  This may help deter heavier frost.   Good luck planting all.