How Did Your Garden Grow?

Redneck Garden...

Well, another season officially over...

Out with the warmth of summer and into the doldrums of winter.  To be honest though, our family has really enjoyed having a few less responsibilities outdoors.  The garden is tilled under and mowing is dormant for now.  We've had an incredibly rewarding year, but also so busy that often we'd meet ourselves coming back!!  The huge garden that I posted about in the spring was a tremendous job.  If you don't remember refresh yourselves on that endeavor:  http://yahbless.blogspot.com/2012/05/garden-musings.html

The major issue was those pesky weeds!  Not anything ABnormal for gardeners, but we had some MONSTER weeds.  Come to find out, from my expert, green-thumb mother that the luscious dried horse manure that we transported from the barn to the garden housed thousands of dormant clover seeds.  Oblivious to yours truly, those little seeds were just waiting for a little sunshine and watering.  After sowing our produce seeds and letting nature taking it's course, we began to have sprouts of all sorts of things!  At first, the growing clover proved to be beneficial as they served as natures pest deterrent.  All the bugs seemed to prefer it over the edibles.  Decided to let them grow together with minimal weeding.  UNTIL... the clover grew to the height of my oldest daughter, then I knew we had a problem.

Instead of meager pluckings of weeds periodically, I resorted to the heavy duty weed whacker to cut the timber to a manageable size so that my plants could at least get a little sunlight, ugh!  It was a real mess and disappointing to say the least.  Live and learn, right?

Despite the odds, we still had a great crop.  Our butternut squash, cherry tomatoes and cucumbers were prolific.  Strawberries were a bust, yielding only a few good berries.   We tried growing pole beans with corn letting them grow up the corn stalk like the Indians did...ours ended up choking the corn.   We had beans though!  All the greens did well until the weather became too hot and the herb garden did fantastic.   I was able to dry quite a supply for the winter months.

All in all, for a first year garden at this home it was a success! Rather than try a winter crop we decided it best to start over for next year.  Our goal is to work smarter and not harder, with the help of a revolutionary gardening method our homesteading friends from South Dakota implemented this year.  They moved to a new property and began their gardens on fresh, unfertilized soil and had (and are still having) AMAZING results.  The key is in using layers of wood chips, much like composting and mulching concepts.  Takes a few years to really work the soil, but once you have about a foot of wood chips built up the gardening is pretty much done, except for the seeding and harvesting and a little watering.  Weeds that grow are usually top layer weeds blown in from trees.  They have a shallow root system and are simple to pull.  The layers kill any present weeds and are constantly breaking down, nourishing the soil.  The results are amazingly huge and well nourished plants.  You have to see it to believe it!

The concept can be learned from a man in California who has perfected the process in a documentary called Back to Eden backtoedenfilm.com.  His gardens are out of this world...definitely an Eden experience.

We are waiting on our wood chips to be delivered so we can begin the process.   A rather exciting endeavor and can't wait to get planting this spring.  I was about to give up after our weed infestation this year as the work- by- the- sweat- of- the- brow experience was elevated to a new level.  Decided that if we had been in a survival situation, we'd most certainly would starve to death.

In the meantime, lots to look forward to over the winter.  Pursing some neglected indoor projects, personal goals and spending more time together are the plans for this season.