Fall Garden

Roots and Leaves

This year we've put a lot more effort into the fall garden and its paid off wonderfully. Kale, peas, lettuce, turnip greens, beets, carrots, and broccoli are all doing well and really extend the fresh vegetable flavors at the table. I've had a little green caterpillar working on the greens, broccoli, and cabbage but only the cabbage appears to be really suffering for it. Picking the devils off by hand is surprisingly quick and is keeping them under some semblance of control. The boys are perfecting their "caterpillar stomp".


The seasonal mulch collection has begun again as well. Can't get enough organic material!

Compost Pile

M- I decided to build my compost pile right in the middle of the garden so all I have to do next spring is spread it out and plant. I started with a load of bark mulch from our local sawmill. I would have preferred some older, more rotted, bark, but the fellow at the mill could not get to it the way they had piled the bark. I had a few frozen hides from our lambs and hog that no one wanted, so I put them at the bottom of the pile and proceeded to unload the mulch on top of the hides. Every 10-12 inches, I stopped and spread a high nitrogen fertilizer on the pile and watered it in. This, in combination with the hides, will supply the nitrogen necessary for the proper nitrogen/carbon ratio to really compost the bark well. I would have preferred all organic nitrogen, but it is a little hard to come by as more and more folks are hanging on to their livestock manure these days. A few days after the pile was built, it heated up and steamed for quite some time. We should have good compost come spring!

Garden Work

Until now, we have never mechanically tilled the garden. Over the past two and a half years, pigs have done it all. However, our pig that we raised in the garden last winter did a great job of rooting up the garden early on, only to pack it down tightly after a long wet spell. We planted in the packed dirt, only loosening a small spot for each plant and hoped that putting a layer of wood chips over the hard packed soil would help the worms do their job. As far as growth goes, the garden did just fine (we just had rain and insect issues). After the garden was done, we dug down through the woodchips to find that the layer of hard packed dirt was still there. Although it probably would have been fine to leave, we decide to till the garden. Even the tiller had a tough time cutting through the packed clay, so we traded some favors with our neighbor and good friend Jamie to bring over his 1950's Ford tractor and run his plow through the garden a few times to break things up a bit. The plow probably ran 12 inches or so deep and was able to break up in a few minutes what would have taken our 5hp front tine tiller several hours. After plowing, we ran the tiller around a little just to break up the clods and get into the corners where the tractor could not go.

We were very happy to see lots of rich dark dirt coming to the surface, even from 12 inches down.

After Plowing

Just a little of the red clay we started out with came to the surface.

After breaking up the clods with the tiller and raking a bit it looks pretty good. The plan now is to get several trailer loads of tree bark compost from the local sawmill, build a pile in the center of the garden which will be used to compost other materials through the winter, then spread over the garden before planting next spring.

Woodchips

We use a lot of woodchips around the farm for mulching plants. They help retain moisture during our hot summers and add organic material to the soil. We also use it to bed the pigs we have raised to keep odor down. We have several sources for the chips/mulch. The city of Morganton mulches yard waste and sells it for around $10 a truck/trailer load, but it is a good 20 minute drive from the house. We have purchased a few loads from the city, but we prefer begging tree companies to dump their chips! No hauling and they are free because it saves the tree company from paying fees at the dump. There is also a sawmill only a couple of miles away that sells their bark the take off the logs. We have not hauled any from them yet, but they have some old bark that has composted down nicely that we are hoping to get a few loads this winter for our garden. The pile below came from a tree company owned by Nate's teacher's husband. The pile heated a little bit when we first got it, but has since cooled off.