Evolution of the garden

This year Bill and I tried to green up our thumbs. It was our first attempt at growing a garden (other than the hanging-tomato-plant on the porch variety). The garden was built over about a 12 month period, and is still a work in progress. Our soil here is clay and rock...lots of rock. Our garden went through several variations during the planning period, and impatience and frustration ultimately led to some poorly-thought out decisions, as well as some purchases we probably could have done without. However, we are happy with the final result: we grew some stuff!

Before we moved to Blue Cloud, I read Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle". I've always liked the idea of self-sufficiency and local food dependence, but her book really made me look hard at how we live and decide that we could do it. I have a picture of a "vegetannual" on my kitchen wall, a visual concept Kingsolver discusses in her book to describe the growing season progression. Here's a beautiful interactive rendition of the vegetannual.

We started breaking "garden" ground in October 2010, when we moved here. We originally planned on a modest plot, but with all this land, we couldn't contain ourselves and ultimately measured out a 1400 square foot space. We placed it with full southern exposure, and it sits right in front of our house. We wanted to keep it easy walking distance from our front door, so as not to dissuade us from walking out to take care of our plants or of making daily harvests.

As noted before, our ground is full of boulders. We spent three days digging out grapefruit- and pumpkin-sized rocks and piling them up outside the plot. I ruined a shovel in the process, and Bill flared up his tennis elbow.

The next thing I concentrated on was building up our soil. I never formally tested our soil pH, but our well water is about 8.0, so I think I can safely assume the soil is pretty basic. As mentioned before, our top soil is thin and compact, and heavy on clay. One of the methods of soil-building that I became fascinated with was sheet mulching. The idea is to quickly build soil and suppress weeds. The best information and how-to guides I got my hands on were found in Toby Hemenway's "Gaia's Garden" and Bill Mollison's "Introduction to Permaculture".

My method of sheet mulching was bare-bones. I didn't add any soil supplements, and I really just relied on whatever bulk materials I could scrounge up. I hit up my friends, hardware stores, and local farmers. I must have made 10 trips with the truck to gather and load up my supplies.

I first watered the garden area heavily. Then I applied large sheets of cardboard, gleaned from recycling bins and from hardware stores. Next I applied a layer of cattle and horse manure about 1-2 inches thick. The manure was fresh, but I applied it in the fall, to allow some aging before we planted. I was nervous about inadvertently applying manure with herbicides, but ultimately, I just trusted my suppliers and went with it. That probably could have really burned me, but I think I survived unscathed.  Next, I threw on any materials I could get my hands on: leaves, grass clippings, topped with a thick layer of straw. The mulch averaged about 9-12 inches thick. I covered this with deer netting to keep it from blowing away. Lastly, I watered and waited.

The construction of our garden fence was meant to be deer and bomb proof. I think we succeeded. We ended up with a 6-foot high, mesh-wired fence, running along T-posts, anchored with corner posts in cement. Little did we know, the deer don't really frequent our yard here like they did in town. When we lived in Helena proper, the city deer would frequently hang out on our deck and eat everything; in the mountains the deer are more scarce. Mostly, I think, our deer fence just serves to keep out our dogs.

Over the winter I had time to plan our plot. I went through several sketched out editions and then stumbled across this gem of a planner from Mother Earth. The M.E. garden planner has a yearly fee, but I think it's worth it, not only for the design efficiency, but also for the entertainment value. I spent many nights tinkering around with design ideas, and trying different arrangements of vegetable companion crops.

We decided to implement some raised beds, to extend our growing season and make gardening a little easier on our backs. Bill and I crafted 13 boxes, using this basic design provided by Sunset magazine. We used fir, even though it will break down quicker than ceder. However, the price was right, and our drought-like climate will give our fir structures extra longivity. We're hoping for at least 10 years.

When spring came, I started to worry that the sheet mulch would not yet be ready for planting. I panicked and ordered some top soil from a local garden supplier: 5 yards dumped in our front yard. To stretch out the soil, I combined a straw-bail garden technique I've read about. I first applied 6 inches of straw into each bed, added bone meal and blood meal, then covered it up with just a few inches of top soil. Surprisingly this worked really well. I'll need to add more soil to the boxes next year, as things have certainly compressed, but even my carrots grew great in this arrangement.

We did half of our plantings in raised boxes, and half in the sheet mulch. The sheet mulch turned out mixed results: cucumbers were non-existant. But overall, were impressed with how the sheet mulching turned the compact soil into something that looked like quality garden black gold. The corn and squash thrived in it. The raspberries loved it, and the sunflowers took off.

One of the interest elements of building the garden was creating an herb spiral. The idea is to create mircro-climates for different herbs (oregano on the sunny south side near the top, parsley on the wetter side, near the bottom on the north, etc.), and to grow a large amount, in quantity and variety, in three-dimensional small space. In a five foot wide mound, you can grow about 30 linear square feet of herbs. To build my herb garden, I piled up some top soil, and used our boulders to make a spiral design, outlining the growing pattern.

Another interesting growing technique I learned from a fellow off-gridder, who lives in conditions with poor soil, involves straw and potatoes. (I had no idea how useful straw is; I've used it routinely throughout this whole process). To grow our potato crop this year, I placed the potatoes on top of my sheet mulch, and covered them with straw, about 6-8 inches. I was a little skeptical, but this method worked amazingly well, and the straw kept them from drying out. Best of all, the spuds were easy to harvest; all I had to do was pull back the straw, and there they sat. No digging!

When the days got long and hot, we were forced to face our watering conundrum. Our well produces 10 gallons per minute, but our off-grid, solar-efficient well pump produces far less than that. For most of the year, an undersized breaker caused the pump to shut down any time we ran more than one sprinkler at a time.  A little research fixed that, but we are still limited to two impact sprinklers at a time.  We also struggled with the constant wind, which blew away a lot of our water from the overhead sprinklers. A lot of the initial watering was with buckets or hose, by hand. Eventually we installed a cheap drip system which was a disaster from the start. If you're going to "go drip", put some money into it. Finally, we settled on a system of some overhead sprinkler and some hand watering. As a result, our watering was inconsistent and our produce showed it. Eventually, we'd like to like to incorporate a gravity-fed/rainwater system, but for now sprinklers are the cheapest and easiest solution.  We'll tackle it again next year.

My favorite things to grow included a dwarf blue curled kale variety. Also, the straw potatoes were a satisfying experiment. Another favorite were the beets; they grew like gangbusters. (For something delicious and new, try this beet recipe. It's Bill's favorite. He modifies it a little by subbing maple syrup for the brown sugar, and by doubling the glaze to beet ratio. Yummy.) 

Other than our disastrous cucumber crop, my biggest flop surprise was the strawberries. Only three plants survived my huge plot. I also planted a strawberry barrel, using this design, which did OK, but not as well as I'd hoped. One more puzzle to work on next year... 

Improvements in the Works: 

1. Wind was a big factor for us. We're in a perfect corridor for our wind turbine; but it sure sucks for the garden, especially the tomatoes. We'll implement a wind block (fence for the short term, but we will be planting trees in the coming spring for a more permanent solution). 
2. We're making plans for a greenhouse/chicken coop. The idea is to someday implement a solar hot water system to keep it warm. More to come later...
3. Bees! Adding a hive or two to our farm would sure benefit our garden and orchard. I'm still getting up the courage to invest in these amazing, but finicky, creatures. 
4. Indoor seedlings were a problem for us. Grow lights weren't realistic, given our limited energy in the winter and spring. We have great southern exposure windows, but as the sun got higher in the sky in the spring, we just couldn't get enough solar energy to grow with much success. I think next year we'll stick with just growing from seed, buying local plant starts, and perhaps implementing some cold frames. 

We still have a long way to go before reaching our desired level of self sufficiency, but we're motivated and working on it.