Archives for category: permaculture
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The straw came!

May 3, 2012 //

Awesome. Blue Seal dropped six bales off this afternoon. (Yeah, I know I should cultivate a local relationship, but then the driver was local, and we talked about gardening.)

Straw, seedless, and not hay, with seeds: We want to suppress weeds, not encourage them!

The straw is oat straw, unlike last year’s wheat straw (which Blue Seal says is hard to get right now). I don’t know if that will make a difference or not; the driver said no. So now all I have to do is promote some newspaper by May Day, and I’ll have the whole garden sheet mulched before I plant a thing.

And as I was looking for the photo, I had a horrible mental image: The bales covered with snow. Let’s hope this post exorcises that possibility!

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Categories gardening, permaculture, sheet mulch

Milk jug sprouting pattern data

April 26, 2012 //

This isn’t data as a scientist would understand it — though I guess I could take that approach, after I get done shoveling the seafood compost onto the beds — but I’m getting a sense of where seeds tend to sprout in the milk jugs: Either from cracks in the soil, or near the edges of the jug. A crack provides a seed with light, water, and heat, so it’s natural for the seed to sprout there. The edge of the jug would provide heat only — sunlight concentrated by the translucent jug.

To do a real study, I would have had to control for more factors; which would mean making my process even more consistent. Each jug gets nine seeds in a grid pattern, but I did not control for seed depth, soil composition, soil depth, or the amount of water added to the jugs. Nothing was done randomly, exactly, but none of it was controlled, certainly. Then I would put out the jugs, number each one, plot them on a map, and put the results into a spreadsheet. And take readings on a consistent basis. (The plot would also specify the movement of the sun, and possibly temperature, so those factors could be controlled for, too.)

That sounds like work. Do I really want those results that much? Not really. What I’d really like to know is not where seeds sprout, but why some jugs fail. Since my squash have not yet sprouted. Even though they are always late, I’m worried about them…..

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Categories permaculture, winter sowing

Warm rain

April 23, 2012 //

One of those early spring days where it’s cooler inside than out, so the windows are steamy on the outside.

weather.com, in its usual hysterical fashion, had predicted driving rain, but what we got was steady light rain with a lovely mist. I figured this was perfect weather to seed some new white clover around the borders of the garden, so I weeded out the dandelions and a little quackgrass, and did that. (See here for the stacking functions of clover.) The earth was cold on the fingers, but there were lots of worms. (I took pictures, which I’d share if I could find the right USB cable to get them out of the camera.) After I scattered the seed, I mixed up the earth a little with a rake, so that the rain didn’t just carry the seeds away.

And now three days of warmth. More tiny shoots are appearing in the hitherto dormant milk jugs, giving me hope that I’ll still get a decent yield.

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Categories gardening, mulch, permaculture, water

Title change: “The Lazy Gardener”

April 13, 2012 //

Because that’s what I am, and I’m not ashamed of it. I’m proud of it!

I don’t like work. More subtly, I don’t like work that I shouldn’t have to do. I want the maximum yield for the minimum effort, defining yield not just as food, but as pleasure: Simply sitting in the sun in the lawn chair, listening to bees bumbling by, and spotting the occasional hummingbird counts for a lot, or would, if we could count pleasure. Why would I want to be working if I don’t have to?

That’s why I like sheet mulch. No weeding and very little watering. Weeding is work; it is, in fact, “stoop labor.” Why would anybody want to do it if they can avoid it? Peasants by the millions leave the country for the city to avoid it! Ditto watering (which if you’re not capturing it also costs money).

And that’s why I like winter sowing. Put the seeds in the milk jugs, set the milk jugs out, wait two months, boom. (Not to tempt the evil eye: No more milk jugs than yesterday’s have sprouted!* Still, it’s not really warm yet [crossed fingers]). No grow lights (money). No peat pots, or any other kind of pot (money). No trays (money). No moving trays about the house and then out in the garden (work). You get the idea.

I hope throughout the growing season I’ll have many more opportunities to explain how lazy I am!

I’m still “The iPad Gardener, though.” Using the iPad, for me, is all about learning to see. It’s not about using garden software to help me make decisions. I think I’ll make good decisions — that is, decisions that help me avoid work — only by really seeing what’s happening on this patch of land, and garden software, at best, operates at the level of climate zone, and not even micro-climate).

NOTE * IIRC, the rule of thumb is that 75% of milk jugs germinate. In past years, I have done much better than that.

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Categories gardening, permaculture, sheet mulch, winter sowing

We have ignition: Milk jug pole beans

April 12, 2012 //

Well, pole bean, singular. But still!

Here we see the same cracks in the soil inside the milk jug that we’ve seen outside, in the beds; I’m guessing cracks open up in the final stage of the freeze/thaw cycle, after the frost beneath the soil has disappeared completely, since since ice takes up more volume than water. That final cycle, or the cycle previous, will also have cracked the hulls of any seeds in the soil, initiating germination. Then water, air, and above all sunlight penetrate the cracks, so it’s natural that seeds would sprout there. Just a guess! Or a good story.

Also, a what looks like an evil Norway Maple seed blew into the jug through the slit in the side. These beans are going to be acclimated to their environment for sure!

This time, I centered the iPad’s camera lens right on the pour hole, right where the cap would be, so I could get a 360° birds-eye view of the interior. In Skitch, I added a circle to signal the view was from the top; I don’t know if that was successful or not.

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Categories beans, permaculture, winter sowing

Lilacs pushing ahead to spring

March 30, 2012 //

Two days of snow and a bit of cold didn’t harm the buds at all. Though they didn’t make any progress, either; they’re the same size as last week. Then again, maybe they’re as big as they get, and now some internal, enflowering, process takes over. I guess we’ll see! Which is the nice thing about taking pictures every day; it sharpens the vision.

Yeah, “haybale ties.” Orange, petroleum-based. Ick. I think they’re straw bales, actually, for sheet mulch (no seeds). But “hay bales” are what we call them, straw though they may be… Anyhow, I cheat: I order mine from Blue Seal!

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Categories gardening, permaculture, snow

Straw without bricks

March 28, 2012 //

Here’s the straw layer of the sheet mulch I laid down over the new beds near the sidewalk I’m going to plant this year, when I figure out what I want to plant. Despite being near the traffic, it’s in good shape.

I didn’t border these beds with bricks because bricks are pricey, and I haven’t discovered any chimneys being demolished around town, which is where I got the last batch from. But logs do the trick!

Notice how the Norway Maple Leaf is disfigured with cancerous dark-colored spots. That tree is a disease vector I should cut down, dry, and then heat the house with, although I do use the leaves to bank the house and mulch the beds. Trade-offs!

And I don’t know what that seed pod is; I grew some snow peas last year, but this looks like a pretty big pod for a snow pea. Maybe I’m being sent a message about what to grow in the new beds!

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Categories gardening, path, permaculture, sheet mulch

A natural experiment in stacking functions with leaf mulch

March 12, 2012 //

Today I noticed that inside the woodchuck fence, the ice had mostly melted, and outside, it had mostly not. Why?

I’m guessing that inside the fence, the beds are covered with leaf mulch, and outside, the earth is covered with dead grass. The dark mulch absorbs heat, but the pale green or straw-colored grass does not. So, after fresh snow, the inside and outside snow pack start out even, but as the melt proceeds, the layer between the earth and the snow begins to show through. When that happens, melting accelerates where heat is absorbed. Confirmation of this idea comes from inside the fence: The icy areas are stone dust paths, which are not mulched, and are light-colored.

The effect shown in the image demonstrates the permaculture principle of stacking functions: Not only does leaf mulch improve the soil by (1) rotting and (2) capturing moisture from the melt, it also (3) raises soil temperature (which should extend the season, if only slightly). Leaf mulch for the win!

Oh, we see, once again, how water instruments the land.

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Categories mulch, permaculture, snow

A farewell to arms?

March 9, 2012 //

Time to stack the shovels for the year? Heading toward 40 today, up here in Maine. And 50 next week. Of course, the weather could be fooling us, luring us into relaxing before slamming us with more snow, or even a cold snap. I just hope the seeds and the seedlings are smarter than we humans are.

Last year’s sheet mulch will get layered over with this year’s. Forty or sixty days from now. Sigh.

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Categories gardening, permaculture, seasons, sheet mulch

Build the path to follow the feet

March 5, 2012 //

My whole front yard is problematic, starting with the herbs I put there and then never pick because they aren’t close enough to the kitchen (permaculture zone 0). And I’ve planted the herbs inside one lobe of a curved flagstone path that is shaped like a dragon (which seemed like a good idea at the time, and was, if having a path shaped like a dragon is the goal).

So, herbs that nobody picks and a path nobody walks on; not a success!

I’m going to take up the flagstones and use them elsewhere, probably on the new path out to the street between the rosebushes. And I’ll make a new path on the front lawn with stone dust that people will actually use — from the front steps across the lawn to the driveway. I don’t know what I’ll do with the herbs yet.

Notice also that yet again snow instrumented the land. Again, using the iPad sharpens the eye. What else do we look at and not see?

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Categories gardening, path, permaculture, snow
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