New Plants

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Last post I showed you some new plants we bought from Companion Plants.  We are slowly finding homes for them and others that have been waiting for attention for a little while.
One of the homes for several plants is the finished compost pile I shared with you in an earlier post.  Here is the pile now:

It's hard to see, but there is a species (wild) rose: Rosa sancti-andreae (syn. R. villosa?) at the top of the pile.  It will get rather large: 6ft tall and spread; and have small pink flowers.  While this plant will be beautiful in its own right, we are also growing this for its hips that will emerge after the flowers fade. Rose hips are high in vitamin C among other things. Surrounding the rose are small clumps of Roman Chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile) that we are hoping will spread all around this pile. I think most people are familiar with Chamomile tea. Once the plants start blooming, you can collect the flowers and the leaves to make a soothing cup.  Ideally, when the hips on the rose form, we can collect the hips and the chamomile to make an even more nutritional tea. The final plant in this arrangement, to the left and bottom of the pile, is Sweet Woodruff (Galium odoratum) that Iz collected from my most gracious parents who have too much of it. It likes moist and shady places and we hope that the shed next to it and the Paw Paw behind it will give it enough shade in the hot summer months.
Sweet Woodruff is used medicinally for stomach ailments as well as in culinary applications such as to flavor teas and juices.  It is also used to flavor May Wine which is a punch made with Woodruff infused white wine, oranges, pineapple and sugar. This is only one example of May Wine as apparently there are other versions with different flavors. We are really looking forward to making herbal teas from the garden once again. There is nothing like gathering a bunch of fragrant herbs and making a nice iced tea with honey to drink on a hot summer evening. Perhaps that will be a blog topic in the near future!

Since the taking of this photo Iz has added more to this bed: Lemon Verbena (Aloysia citriodora) (another delicious herb in tea or putting under the skin of roast chicken); Codonopsis (Codonopsis pilosula), Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria), and Meadowfoam (Limnanthes Douglasii)

In other plant news Iz planted the Goji Berries (Lycium chinese or barbarum). It is also known as Matrimony Vine.  The folklore attached to this plant states that one must not plant this vine near the home as it may cause "marital discord".

This is Iz planting the Goji in one of the beds at the front of the house, and with my permission, near the house! While the folklore is charming, the best place we have for the Goji is near the house. We promised to move it if we start lashing out at each other for no reason.  This is a vine and Iz added some stakes next to the plants to give them something to climb on.
I better end this now, we have more additions but I will leave that for later! I shall leave you with a little honeybee that was visiting our tulips. Bzzz Bzzz!

Cover Cropping It

Since my last post was about working with your soil to get it healthy and nutritious, I thought I would continue on the theme and talk about growing cover crops.  Generally this is done after your last harvest of whatever you have grown for the season or if you are planning on leaving a plot empty for a season or two. This publication will give you a lot of specific information on choosing which plants to grow and all the benefits or growing cover crops and green manure.

I found a few good passages to put here to give you a better idea of what I am talking about.

"Green manuring" involves the soil incorporation of any field or forage crop while green or soon after flowering, for the purpose of soil improvement. A cover crop is any crop grown to provide soil cover, regardless of whether it is later incorporated. Cover crops are grown primarily to prevent soil erosion by wind and water. Cover crops and green manures can be annual, biennial, or perennial herbaceous plants grown in a pure or mixed stand during all or part of the year. In addition to providing ground cover and, in the case of a legume, fixing nitrogen, they also help suppress weeds and reduce insect pests and diseases. When cover crops are planted to reduce nutrient leaching following a main crop, they are often termed "catch crops."

A major benefit obtained from green manures is the addition of organic matter to the soil.

Cover crops will also aid in fixing nitrogen into the soil. provide a healthy ecosystem for beneficial bacterial and aerate the soil.

Iz and I chose to add some winter cover crops to our large raised bed last fall. We sowed seeds for winter rye, red and white clover, dandelion and alfalfa.  Since this was the first year for this raised bed, which is sitting on top of plain old Ohio clay soil, we wanted to try and break up the soil beneath the bed and encourage the worms and other nutrients to travel up into it.

It looks a mess but will be incorporated into the soil as it decomposes

A winter cover crop is planted in late summer or fall to provide soil cover during the winter. Often a legume is chosen for the added benefit of nitrogen fixation. In northern states, the plant selected needs to possess enough cold tolerance to survive hard winters. Hairy vetch and rye are among the few selections that meet this need. (From the ATTRA Publication)

We turned over the plants two weekends ago and found that the plants did a good job and rooting deep and providing some organic matter to build the soil as it decomposes.

Look at the tap root and root system of this red clover!

The nice thing about having dandelions in the mix is that you can eat the greens and dry the root for tea instead of turning them into the soil. They just might be the first edible crop you harvest from your spring garden! Enjoy!

Start with the soil

Spring is officially here! Iz and I took advantage of the warmer weather and the break in rain showers to clean up the yard and prepare some beds for sowing seeds.  We have three compost piles at the end of the main garden that we started in the fall last year. Basically we just throw all kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, egg shells, some paper (think cardboard coffee sleeves), and a bunch of leaves from the fall into the piles and turned them a couple of times over the season. This is a very informal way of composting, but this is an ideal way to compost for us for a few reasons. 

• The piles are pretty close to the back door so we just throw the scraps in the pile as our compost bowl fills up.

•  By composting in the garden, you are keeping all the good bacteria, worms, other bugs etc. that have been living in the compost piles in the garden-creating a more cohesive ecosystem. You are encouraging multiple generations of organisms to live in the soil of your garden.  

• This helps build the soil naturally, allowing for less tilling, and more nutrients to stay in the soil.  If you are in an area where you have heavy clay soil, like we do, I think you will understand the desire to make a more "fluffy" or less dense soil for your plants.

I am not saying that everyone should compost like this, this is still an experiment for us and is working...so far. If you want to know more, we suggest the following books:  Start with the Soil by Grace Gershuny and One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka.  I think I will devote a later post to a few more books that have been wonderful references for us.

There is some good stuff under the straw!

After checking out the soil, Iz started sowing a few seeds: Diakon Radish, Chicory and Mustard Greens.  All of these are happy to germinate in the cool soil.  As I am writing this, I am thinking of other ideas for later posts. I will talk about where we get our seeds why we like seed banks such as Seed Savers and J.L. Hudson over commercial brands such as Burpee. In addition, as things go to seed, I will show how to save seeds from your plants so you don't have to buy any the next year!

Take a look at some photos below. Some of this stuff may seem boring to some people, but once you get a whiff of nice fresh soil, you will be hooked!

Sowing Poppies in the Spring. They like to germinate in the cool earth and bloom when it is warmer.

Daikon Radish from Baker Creek

Directions

 

Iz preparing a spot for the Daikson radishes, mustard greens and chicory. All are good to sow in the very early Spring.

Breaking up the soil lightly

Tiny seeds will grow into large plants!

Diakon Radish Seeds

Chickory Seeds

After sowing, give the soil a little pat to tamp the seeds in.

After the seeds are in the ground, make sure you keep the soil moist as they germinate.  In the Spring it is nice because we usually get a decent amount of rain. Just keep an eye on the soil and water appropriately. Of course I will update with photos when they come up!