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| Whitey naps in the most unusual places to avoid autumn chores. |
We've been searching for the perfect way to put our garden to bed this year (i.e. the 2015 growing season), whether we rough it up with animals, cover crop it, or prepare a semi-lasagna garden bed for spring. We need, desperately, to add some fertility back into our soil and kill as many weeds as we can find so next year won't be nearly as rough on us. Next year, like this year, we have dreams, and dreams mean work; work that might not have the ability to get done if we need to spend too much time on the garden. It's a delicate balance, and leaning too far in one direction might tip our entire lifestyle on its side, leaving it kicking for a while as it tries desperately to stand back up again.
We've been intrigued with a number of mulching, fertilizing and winterizing ideas throughout the past year on the variety of blogs I view on a near daily basis. The one that caught our attention the quickest was entitled Create an Instant Garden with Sheet Mulching from Homestead Honey, which shows how the lasagna technique worked for her and assisted in keeping the weeds at bay as well!
Since we already had a garden area, and weren't starting from scratch we skipped over the first layer of cardboard and/or newspaper by accident and went straight to everything else after we tilled the area that was planted the previous year. After finding the mistake the next morning, and figuring we probably needed the extra barrier between the two, we decided instead of undoing and redoing all of our work to use this as an experiment: keep the part we had done on the first day as is, and then put the newspaper layer on the rest of the garden. If the weeds end up being especially thick in the first part, then obviously we needed the newspaper layer. If there's no to little difference, then going through the hassle of spreading newspaper in the wind for days on end, can be avoided in future years. In most of the new section of the garden, we didn't bother tilling first, but figured we'd lay the newspaper across the grass that needed killed, and see if it worked.
There's three options to make this less of a windy mess for you: (1) Wet down the newspaper with a garden hose so it becomes heavier. (2) Layer heavier layers on top of the newspaper quickly. (3) Use cardboard instead of newspaper as it's heavier to begin with; however, wetting it down still wouldn't hurt.
Cost to us: $0 with a lot of stock piling
Our second layer would be leaves, another readily available source to us. Our leaf-coated trees were still, well, leaf-coated, when we started winterizing the garden; however, my mother and her neighbor were eager to assist our gardening efforts (especially since it meant less raking for them)! The composted leaf pile at my mother's house from leaves of autumns past was the first truck load, and a heavy one at that. The second, a very compacted truck bed of leaves from the neighbor's yard. The loads would continue to be alternated throughout the project until we finally got enough for the garden. My original estimate would be 13 loads for the garden; however, it appears we were right on track (or close to) that estimate.
Keep in mind if you're spreading fresh leaves in a wind-swept area (like ours), some, or all, are bound to blow away unless you weigh them down. Even the simple idea of soaking them to the bone just won't do. Water dries, and once those leaves are even semi-dry, they're stuck in the bushes and hanging out of the neighbor's fence down the way. That's where layer three came in especially handy.
Cost to us: About $1.75 a load in gas (we made about fourteen loads, and managed to somehow rake up a lawnmower dump trailer load from the lawn to add even though all of our maples' leaves were still green at the time!)
Our third layer was manure, and a lot of it. Although we have chickens, their manure would have to be heavily composted before we could safely use it for growing any plants without the risk of disease or burning the plants with too much fertilizer, and since our now Phase 2 compost bin was not working out the greatest (that's another project that needs to go onto Phase 3, just as soon as we get "spare time"), we couldn't take the risk of spreading fresh, highly concentrated chicken manure on the garden. We needed to outsource.
Fortunately, someone on Craigslist had aged horse manure a few towns over and that became our first source for the smelliest of layers. (I actually turned the corner to take a few pictures of our handiwork the one afternoon and went phew someone spread on their fields! when the smell from the garden hit me. Oh, wait it was us! It smells a lot more satisfying when you're the one to spread, and since it didn't smell like the chicken or pig manure that most of the farmers spread around here, I was really sold on the idea!) We had to shovel it and pitchfork it into the bed of the pickup by hand from their pile as they had no other way to load it. It may have been a bit of backbreaking labor, but it was free.
After taking one glance at their pile; however, we realized there was no way it was going to be enough. So we started looking for a second source. We didn't have to look too far as the landlord had a pretty decent stockpile on the next farm up. Having both sheep and cattle, there would be plenty to go around there, and he had offered us some the previous year. The offer was still good and we ended up with two loads from him as well.
Cost to us: About $1.50 a load in gas for the horse manure (we made three loads)
Cost to us: About $0.25 a load in gas for the sheep/cattle manure (we made two loads)
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| The first step of our journey was tearing out the weeds and remnants of the plants that were in the garden. Unfortunately that also meant my beloved marigolds in their beautiful fall colors had to go. |
We've been intrigued with a number of mulching, fertilizing and winterizing ideas throughout the past year on the variety of blogs I view on a near daily basis. The one that caught our attention the quickest was entitled Create an Instant Garden with Sheet Mulching from Homestead Honey, which shows how the lasagna technique worked for her and assisted in keeping the weeds at bay as well!
Since we already had a garden area, and weren't starting from scratch we skipped over the first layer of cardboard and/or newspaper by accident and went straight to everything else after we tilled the area that was planted the previous year. After finding the mistake the next morning, and figuring we probably needed the extra barrier between the two, we decided instead of undoing and redoing all of our work to use this as an experiment: keep the part we had done on the first day as is, and then put the newspaper layer on the rest of the garden. If the weeds end up being especially thick in the first part, then obviously we needed the newspaper layer. If there's no to little difference, then going through the hassle of spreading newspaper in the wind for days on end, can be avoided in future years. In most of the new section of the garden, we didn't bother tilling first, but figured we'd lay the newspaper across the grass that needed killed, and see if it worked.
Layer One
Our first layer (after our original mistake) was newspaper as it was something readily available to us, and something we already had piled ready for recycling (in a variety of ways). Having had a mess with newspaper in the past, I'm still skeptical on this as last time we used a newspaper base in the garden I had to pick it out of the neighbor's fence up the way as we're in a fairly wind-swept area.There's three options to make this less of a windy mess for you: (1) Wet down the newspaper with a garden hose so it becomes heavier. (2) Layer heavier layers on top of the newspaper quickly. (3) Use cardboard instead of newspaper as it's heavier to begin with; however, wetting it down still wouldn't hurt.
Cost to us: $0 with a lot of stock piling
Layer Two
Keep in mind if you're spreading fresh leaves in a wind-swept area (like ours), some, or all, are bound to blow away unless you weigh them down. Even the simple idea of soaking them to the bone just won't do. Water dries, and once those leaves are even semi-dry, they're stuck in the bushes and hanging out of the neighbor's fence down the way. That's where layer three came in especially handy.
Cost to us: About $1.75 a load in gas (we made about fourteen loads, and managed to somehow rake up a lawnmower dump trailer load from the lawn to add even though all of our maples' leaves were still green at the time!)
Layer Three
Fortunately, someone on Craigslist had aged horse manure a few towns over and that became our first source for the smelliest of layers. (I actually turned the corner to take a few pictures of our handiwork the one afternoon and went phew someone spread on their fields! when the smell from the garden hit me. Oh, wait it was us! It smells a lot more satisfying when you're the one to spread, and since it didn't smell like the chicken or pig manure that most of the farmers spread around here, I was really sold on the idea!) We had to shovel it and pitchfork it into the bed of the pickup by hand from their pile as they had no other way to load it. It may have been a bit of backbreaking labor, but it was free.
After taking one glance at their pile; however, we realized there was no way it was going to be enough. So we started looking for a second source. We didn't have to look too far as the landlord had a pretty decent stockpile on the next farm up. Having both sheep and cattle, there would be plenty to go around there, and he had offered us some the previous year. The offer was still good and we ended up with two loads from him as well.
Cost to us: About $1.50 a load in gas for the horse manure (we made three loads)
Cost to us: About $0.25 a load in gas for the sheep/cattle manure (we made two loads)
Conclusion
I'm very interested to see if this will actually work come spring. The composted leaves from my mother's house started sprouting around mid-November due to a warm snap we had, and hopefully that means all the seedlings in there will die in the extra brisk temperatures we are now experiencing (on some days), and the 30" of snow that we ended up getting at the end of January, just as we put our "autumn" garden to bed for the winter.
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| A "winterized" garden and greenhouse in January |
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