The Snarky Gardener built raised beds using hugelkultur
The new bed joins 3 previously prepared beds. The green plants are a cover crop of turnips with a volunteer dill plant in the foreground. South is to the left of this picture.Same beds a month later.Same hugelkultur beds the following March. This is the first area in the garden to shed its snow mulch and will be planted with peas, onions, and spinach before anywhere else. Note: the south is to the right of the picture.
Hugelkultur is the German term for garden beds made with buried wood. The wood breaks down over time, providing garden vegetables with nutrients and moisture (as in you don’t have to fertilize and water as much, if at all!). The wood does not have to be brand new as rotted wood is actually better is some ways.
This fall, I decided to utilize this technique to build four 8 foot long by 4 foot wide by 3 feet high raised beds. In general raised beds are beneficial as they warm up earlier in the spring, keep humans (but not my dog) from compacting soil, and allow plants better drainage. Usually raised beds are built with a frame around the soil, but my beds have no borders. After completing each bed, I planted cover crops (turnips, spinach and clover) to minimize winter soil exposure. My long term plan is to convert more of my garden into hugelkultur beds, but wanted to perform a trial first, as putting these beds in is labor intensive, with all the wood gathering, moving, and burying.
Started with a dug out bedThe middle of the hole is filled with heavy logsBranches, and bark fill in over the logsDirt from the surrounding area is put on top of the wood
The Snarky Gardener writes an abundance of words about abundance. Imagine that.
Too many snow peas? I think not.
To the Snarky Gardener, abundance means having plenty (even too much) of a thing. Often people are concerned with what they can’t grow or what’s not doing well because of pests, lack of sunlight, or poor soil. But if you take this “problem” and turn it on its head with abundance, your mindset totally changes. The question, “What can I grow a boat load of?”, offers up all kinds of possibilities. I believe food growers should build upon their successes, with new and experimental plants taking only a small amount of total resources, and removal of those that produce poorly. At Snarky Acres, that means growing more sunchokes, turnips, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, peas, kale, garlic, onions, greens, zucchini, corn, Swiss chard, comfrey, and herbs (especially perennials like mint, lemon balm, oregano, and sage). It also means growing less (or no) broccoli, watermelon, peppers, eggplant, spinach, and beets. It’s hard to stop trying with those fruits and vegetables we love to eat, but not everything grows well everywhere, even in the same relative climate.
Too much mint or not enough mojitos?
How to create abundance:
1. Grow a lot more of what grows well.
2. Look for alternative resources (weeds, trees, native species)
3. Create environments where abundance happens naturally (perennials and self-seeding plants)
4. Save seeds, plant extra starts (tomatoes, etc), and start new plants from cuttings.
5. Grow in non-optimal spaces (shade, poor soil)
6. “Invasive” also means “Abundance”
How to utilize abundance:
1. Find trading partners (food swaps, seed swaps, time banks, neighborhood barter systems)
2. Learn to preserve (canning, freezing, drying)
3. Find other uses (dynamic accumulators, medicinal)
4. Learn to create products from your produce (extracts, salves, pesto)
A nice sunny spot with just a little afternoon shade and lots of leaf mulch
1. Chose a nice sunny spot
Spend some time to observe your chosen spot. You are going to want at least 3 hours of direct sunlight a day with more than 6 preferred. If you can’t get the minimum 6, then look for plants that will be OK with a little shade, like lettuce, herbs, Swiss chard, kale, spinach, turnips, and mustard greens. Another option is to plant in containers and move them to the sunny spots throughout the day.
Next to the house, a small shade herb garden (mint, chives, etc) which only receives a few hours of direct sunlight a day.
2. Start small
Don’t go hog wild with a giant garden first thing out. Keeping it small will allow you to learn what grows best in your area without a lot of investment of time, money, and effort. Containers or a 4 foot by 4 foot raised bed would be a good place to start.
Zucchini, corn, and beans (around the corn) – three of my favorites to eat3. Grow what you like to eat
Sounds straight forward, but I’ve known a few snarky gardeners to grow things before they know how they taste (like me with my sunchokes). If you think you want to grow it, buy it from the store first.
Easy peasy peas
4. Grow easy stuff
Some vegetables are easier to grow than others, by a significant margin. Talk to people in your area to learn what grows well in your area. For instance, in Northeastern Ohio (my neck of the woods), cherry tomatoes, beans, peas, onions, zucchini, potatoes, and turnips do well with little trouble. Broccoli, watermelons, Brussels sprouts, peppers, and eggplants are much harder to grow, to the point I’ve given up on some.
The lawn sweeper makes gathering leaf mulch simple
5. Mulch a bunch
Mulch is anything that covers the ground around your plants. Straw, grass clippings, newspapers, wood chips, and leaves (my favorite) all make good mulch. You can also use plastic mulch, but it won’t make your soil better over time like organic materials will. Covering the ground is important as it will keep weeds from overtaking your edible plants plus it holds in moisture which will keep you from having to water as much (or at all!)
Snarky Acres in the fall
6. Visit often
Gardens are probably ruined by neglect more than anything else. Visit a few times a week to keep up with the weeds, watering, and ready to pick food. Think of it as that exercise your doctor keeps telling you need to do. I find the garden as a quiet place to get away from it all. Also, try to plan around the weather (early or late on hot summer days, etc).
7. Learn about food seasons
Turnips love the cold.Turnips at Christmas in Northeastern Ohio
Some plants can tolerate and sometimes prefer cold (like spinach, turnips, onions, peas, potatoes) but don’t like heat and others can’t handle frost (tomatoes, peppers, corn, beans, squash, pumpkins, okra) and love warm weather. It still surprises me that this isn’t common knowledge (it wasn’t for me when I started). Your frost dates (last frost in the spring and first frost in the fall) are the most important gardening times. They tell you when you can plant certain vegetables and when they need to be reaped. Too early or too late and you’ll be sad, sad gardener.
The wild and allusive Toy Fox Terrier digging up my gardenGroundhog making a run for it.
8. Watch out for critters
If you notice animals in your neighborhood, know that they may think of your garden as a free meal. A small fence (2 or 3 feet tall) will keep out rabbits, but you will need a taller fence (6 feet or more) to deter groundhogs, raccoon, and deer from invading your space. There are also garlicky sprays and fence clips that will deter them some. Most animals don’t like strong smells, so planting herbs and garlic/onions on the outside of your garden is not a bad idea. Also, keep an eye on your plants for damage, as even the best fencing can be leaped over or dug under.
Cherry tomatoes inside the house – 12/22/2013
9. Think outside the box
There are a lot of different ways to garden besides the standard “till up the backyard and plant in rows”. Indoor gardening can be done with systems like the AeroGarden. Containers or individual planters work well for situations where you can’t plant into the ground (apartments, limited sun, etc). If you don’t have a tiller or want to go to the trouble of tilling, you can build gardens on top of your grass, whether it be raised beds, straw bale gardening, or lasagna mulching. And don’t be limited to your backyard. Front yard gardens, if done tastefully, are a possibility as long as there are no prohibitions where you live (like city ordinances or home owner association rules).
Good luck and happy gardening!
Have any questions about your first garden? Please leave a reply.
Purple Top Turnips and Corn Salad – 12/22/2013Corn Salad – 12/22/2013
On 12/22/2013, we had a Winter Solstice miracle with temperatures in the 60’s with just a little rain. This allowed the Snarky Gardener to check out his garden to see what had survived. The mustard was a dried out brown, as the previous week’s lows in the teens killed it off (as expected). Next year’s potato patch will appreciate the extra biomass, fumigation and sulfur the mustard will provide. What did survive was the purple top turnips and the corn salad (pictured above) plus onions, leeks, and thyme. I picked through the turnip greens to thin them out then covered the remainder with leaf mulch to protect them until mid-March (like I did earlier this fall for the spinach, rosemary, and peas). Leeks and thyme were also pulled before the weather turned nasty again the next day.
Even though I’ve been fall gardening the last few years, I’m always amazed at what survives through the cold. This winter has been early and often with plenty of ice and snow. But out in the garden the greenness and deliciousness continues. And March is just around the corner.
Washing the corn salad – 12/22/2013Thyme and leeks – 12/22/2013
This fall we’ve had serious snow twice so far (several inches each time) here in Northeastern Ohio. While most people have not even thought about their gardens since the first freeze back in October, the early snow had me worried. Many of my fall duties were incomplete, including digging up and bringing in my rosemary herbs (they died out there last winter – sniff). Also, the fall leaves I gathered into big honking piles did not get as distributed as I would have liked. I found out this summer that some plants (lettuce, spinach, kale, turnips, peas, corn salad) could be covered with mulch 5 or 6 inches deep in the fall to “overwinter” them. Then in mid-March, you just pull off the leaves and viola, they will start growing again. Nifty trick having food producing plants when other unsnarky gardeners are still planning for the summer. Anyways, I was finally able to finish these tasks on 12/4/2013 with most of my fall babies no worse for wear.
If you look at the pictures below, you will notice some of my plants didn’t do as well by December (especially the sad Swiss chard in the middle foreground). In the back left, my mustard is going to seed, which is good because I needed more for cooking and next year’s crop. But you will also see that there’s quite a bit of green considering it’s December in Ohio. On the right foreground, my purple top turnips are looking great. I will thin these out (yum) and mulch the rest in the next week or so. Also, near the Swiss chard, you should be able to make out bright green areas near the ground. That’s my corn salad and onions, all ready to eat. We used them plus mustard greens, carrots, and kale to make a wonderfully fresh salad (again, in December in Ohio).
P.S. I don’t think “unsnarky” is a word, but with use it will soon become one.
Snow on 11/12/2013Snow on 11/12/2013Melted snow on 11/16/2013Snow melted on 11/16/2013Snow again on 11/30/2013Snow again on 11/30/2013Melted snow again on 12/04/2013Snow melted again on 12/04/2013
In case you have Jerusalem artichokes (aka sunchokes) and don’t know what to do with them, here’s what I decided to make with my own turnips, Jerusalem artichokes, leeks, onions, and garlic. I made a few modifications, including adding turnip greens and not peeling anything (I’m lazy if not anything). I would make this again so, but alas, I’m out of turnips for now. Could always buy some at the local farmer’s market.
Ingredients
1 leek, trimmed
1 small onion, coarsely chopped
1 garlic clove
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
Fine sea salt
2 1/2 cups water
2 1/2 pounds turnips diced plus greens
1 1/4 pounds sunchokes, diced
2 tart apples, cored, and diced
Coarsely ground black pepper or Aleppo pepper
Medium-coarse sea salt
Instructions:
1. Cut leek lengthwise in half and rinse well. Finely chop leek together with onion and garlic.
2. Heat oil in a large Dutch oven or other heavy pot over medium heat. Add leek mixture and cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables begin to soften, about 3 minutes. Add a pinch of salt and 1/2 cup of water. Bring to a gentle simmer, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook until water is almost completely evaporated, about 15 minutes.
3. Add turnips, artichokes, apples, and remaining 2 cups of water. Cover and simmer until apple is soft and flavors have blended, about 30 minutes more.
Knobby sunchokes – 11/23/2013Turnips (including greens)Local apples
4. Puree soup using an immersion blender until smooth. Add salt to taste. Serve drizzled with oil and sprinkled with a grinding of pepper and with salt, if desired.
This year we got lucky here in Northeast Ohio and didn’t get our below freezing weather until late October. But I wasn’t worried about it (OK, maybe a little) because I already had my fall gardening plan in play. Back in August and September, I prepped several areas (including my summertime potato/pumpkin patch) and planted some fall crops, including purple top turnips, peas, onions, carrots, mustard, spinach, and corn salad (aka mache). All of these can handle and even thrive in cool temperatures and occasional frosts. When you add in my already growing Swiss chard, Jerusalem artichokes, leeks, and various herbs, this fall will be delicious right up to Christmas and beyond. Makes me feel a little sorry for those gardeners who till up their gardens in the fall and wait until next May to plant again (like my next door neighbors).
Garden as of November 1, 2013Garden as of 7/29/2013Turnips, Peas, and Corn Salad – 11/4/2013Dragon Tongue Mustard going to seed – 11/4/2013
This spring, I let my overwintered corn salad go to seed, spreading some of the spent plants all around my garden during May (call me Snarky Mache Seed). This August, I noticed little corn salad plants growing all over, as some chillier weather woke up the seeds just as my summer plants were winding down. Corn salad is probably the most cold weather adapted crop I have in my garden and will be available for eating all the way into January. My evil plan this year was to get it established so it would just come up on it’s own year after year. I just love perennials (even when they aren’t technically considered as such). My logic is that if I’m going to have “weeds” come up in my garden, they should be edible.
Nice examples of corn salad in my garden – April 2013Corn salad spontaneously growing around corn – 11/4/2013
Besides the planting and harvesting, I also have one other major garden activity – leaf mulching. I bought a lawn sweeper last year so I could fill my garden with them (including some new areas that had previously been lawn). The effort was quite the success as my weeds were down (except in the back where the leaves were scarce) and my soil seemed to get better. This year I’m making concerted effort to pile the leaves around as evenly as possible so I can spread the wealth, so to speak. I even piled them up on my new garlic bed, located outside the fence to the west of my garden. Even the groundhogs won’t bother garlic so it made no sense to grow it inside like I did this past year. And of course, unlike last year, I remembered to split up the bulbs into cloves and only planted the biggest.
Fall leaves soon to be garden mulch – 11/4/2013Lawn Sweeping on 11/9/2013
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