Posts Tagged gardening
Garden Layout
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Food, Homesteading on January 25th, 2010
I’ve finished a first pass at my garden layout. You can view it here (you’ll need to click on the “layout” tab at the bottom of the page).
The beds are 30′ by 3′ each. On the spreadsheet, they’re one on top of another, but in reality, what I will have is a four-by-two grid of 30′ by 3′ rows. Hence, the first two beds, which are labeled “1 north” and “1 south” will actually be end-to-end with each other. It’d just make for a lot of scrolling to actually arrange them that way on the spreadsheet.
Coming up with the layout was pretty challenging, especially because there is conflicting advice as to what compliments what and what plants should rotate with what. I ultimately settled on an arbitrary set of advice and left it at that.
You might notice that row 1 north and south are awfully similar and likewise for row 2. Why not combine the plants into blocks? Two reasons: first, separating them might keep pests from migrating between them as easily. If pests find one batch of plants, perhaps they won’t find the other. This is an organic pest-control technique I’ve read about. Second, the south half of my yard gets more sun than the north half, and I’m curious to see the difference in planting the same or similar stuff in both halves.
The peas / corn / squash setup, I’m pretty confident about, as the Native Americans have done it that way for a long time. Usually, beans are used instead of peas, but I haven’t planned for any pole beans this year, and peas are also nitrogen-fixers, so I figure I’ll give it a whirl.
I read that onions can cut down on squash bugs, so I plan to interplant onions, leeks, and shallots around my zucchini and yellow squash. I’m sticking lettuce in there too, mostly because there’s room. I don’t think I need as many onions as it would take to totally fill in around the squash.
In the map, the sweet peppers and the hot peppers look like they’re on top of one another, but like I said, the rows are actually end-to-end, so they’ll be about 32′ apart, to prevent cross-pollination.
The melons at the end of row 1 take up a lot of space, and I could probably get away with planting something quick like lettuce over there, before the vines get too big.
Row 2 starts with a variety of tomatoes. I’m planting two each of slicers, roma, cherry, and tomatillos. These are surrounded by various root crops such as carrots, parsnips, beets, and radishes. The other end of row 2 contains brassicas like broccoli, spinach, collards, bok choy, and kohl rabi. The remaining space is taken up with potatoes.
Crop rotation guides say to plant nightshades (tomatoes and potatoes) and brassicas separately, but I just don’t have enough brassicas to really fill up a row, and I can’t see leaving half the row fallow each year. I figure if the potatoes suffer somewhat from their proximity to the broccoli, well, I’m growing a lot of potatoes. And if the broccoli suffers… it’s broccoli… I mean, come on. Acceptable losses.
Not present on the diagram are all the herbs that I will be or already am growing in planters, as well as garlic, which I started this fall, and will start again next fall, also in planters. I just don’t want to do the work of fitting garlic’s odd schedule into my rotation at this time. Also, I plant to dedicate an entire bed to strawberries, which don’t rotate.
Any advice from gardeners reading is welcome.
Planting Garlic
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Homesteading on January 18th, 2010
Update: January 18, 2010
Update: Novbember 1, 2009
Original post: October 24
Veggie Order: Placed
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Food, Homesteading on December 23rd, 2009
Placed my Seeds of Change order today. Will be starting the earliest plants, the onions and leeks, in late January, so I figured it’s time. When I originally posted my gardening plans, some people suggested I “start small.” Given my aspirations, this is starting small!
Harvested Carrots
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Food, Homesteading on November 6th, 2009
In late August, I planted a second crop of carrots, spinach, lettuce, and collards, all of which I think are crops that do well in the cold. Carrots, you can even leave in the ground over the winter. Natures own refrigerator!
This morning, I pulled a few. The little stubby one on the top/right is from one planter, and the longer, more “normal” looking ones are from a different planter. I’m not sure why the difference between them. I’ve actually only pulled one from the “stubby” planter, and a total of three from the “normal” planter, so maybe the “stubby” planter carrot is just a fluke.
Issa bites one and says, a little bemusedly, “Tastes… like a carrot.”
“What else would it taste like,” I ask. But I understand her reaction. Growing our own food is still new enough that it feels something like a victory when what comes out of the ground not only lives up to, but exceeds our expectations from store-bought food. It’s as if there’s this underlying assumption that only the Machine, or at the very least, some kind of esoteric guru, can produce food that’s any good. Us mere mortals can try it as a cute little hobby, but we’ll definitely fail.
Which is, of course, the exact opposite of reality. To plant these carrots, I literally dumped some seeds on the dirt of a planter and then made sure they had moist soil and sunshine. They did all the rest. No esoteric knowledge required. Which is not to say that some knowledge isn’t required to garden successfully, or that any batch of carrot seeds dumped on any patch of dirt will produce food. Just that plants want to grow and home-grown plants have the potential to far-exceed their store-bought counterparts. Even if the lack of expertise of the home gardener decreases the quality of their produce, the fact that it’s pulled fresh from the plant right before use often more than makes up the difference.
How Much Manure Does A Pig Make
Posted by Joshua Bardwell in Food on September 25th, 2009
In my previous post on composting pig manure, I discussed the type of composting system Issa and I plan to use. A fundamental question for us in choosing a system was how much manure we could expect our forthcoming pigs to make. A system based on 55 gallon drums would be a hassle if the pigs could fill them in too short a time.
Issa found one site that stated that a 200 lb pig would produce about 13 lbs of manure a day. That’s all well and good, but unless you know the density of pig manure, it doesn’t tell you the volume you’ll need to contain it.
I found a site that stated that pigs would produce between 0.5 and 0.75 cubic feet of manure a day, per 1000 lbs of pig. For a 200 lb pig (close to market weight), that’s 0.1 to 0.15 cubic feet of manure. That gives us a density of about 87 to 130 lbs per cubic foot, or an average density of about 108 lbs per cubic foot.
A 55 gallon drum is about 7.3 cubic feet. If a 200 lb pig produces 0.1 to 0.15 cubic feet of manure a day, it will fill a 55 gallon drum in between 73 and 49 days. We plan to keep two pigs, so cut those numbers in half: 36.5 and 24.5 days. Granted, those numbers are for full-weight pigs. The pigs will produce less manure when they are smaller.
A 4-H site I found said that a healthy pig will gain approximately 1.6 lbs per day. According to that site, 50 lbs is a typical starter weight. Market weight is between 200 and 250 lbs. Based on the previously-given numbers, here’s a graph of the estimated total manure production of a pig from 50 lbs to 250 lbs:
The red line is the high estimate, based on 0.75 cubic feet of manure per 1000 lbs of pig, while the blue line is the low estimate, based on 0.5 cubic feet of manure per 1000 lbs of pig. You can see we end up with approximately 9 to 14 cubic feet of manure produced per pig. (For perspective, again, a 55 gallon drum is about 7.3 cubic feet.) This is estimated to weigh approximately 972 to 1512 lbs.
Here’s where things get a bit fuzzy. That manure is going to shrink down when it composts. A typical ratio given for compost shrinkage is 50% volume. That means we can expect to end up with approximately 4.5 to 7 cubic feet of compost, solely from pig manure. Bulk finished compost is estimated to weigh in the ball park of 800 lbs per cubic yard, or 30 lbs per cubic foot. That means our final compost will weigh only 135 to 210 lbs! That’s a heck of a lot of matter that left the system!
Realistically, though, the pig manure will not be the only input to the system. Pig manure has a high nitrogen content relative to carbon. This means that an appropriate quantity of high-carbon material must be added out to balance out the ratio in the final compost. The actual amount of material depends on the type of material added, and a consideration of this factor is beyond the scope of this post. The bottom line is that there’s going to be a bit more compost than the pig manure alone would produce.
The final question, then, is whether the two pigs we plan to keep will provide enough compost to fertilize the garden plot we plan to keep. I have estimated that the garden will start out at about 350 square feet and will probably grow from there. A common guideline is to till 1″ of compost over your entire garden. Based on this, a 350 square foot plot will require just about exactly 1 cubic foot of compost. Yeah, looks like we’re good to go, with compost to spare!
I have some water jugs that are almost exactly 1 cubic square foot. It’s hard to imagine that small amount of compost going over 350 square feet! Maybe it’s more compost than it looks like, though. After all, it’s certainly more water than it looks like!
Actual results will, of course, vary, but it’s still a fun thought exercise.
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Love Live Grow- These are the Fat FAQs May 17, 2012I just couldn’t resist that title. Say “Fat FAQs” fast a couple of times! Thanks to those of you who replied in the “rude questions” thread. I’ve taken ideas from that thread, cleaned up some of the concepts from the rude comments the other night, and pulled ideas from other conversations I’ve had and questions I’ve been asked privately. I’ve strung them all […]
- Why I Call It Fat-Hate Plus An Invite to Ask Rude Questions May 9, 2012When I talk about various topics related to fat acceptance, I often use the phrase “fat-hate” to refer to the harmful attitudes that people have. Some people might think that’s a bit hyperbolic when it seems like the topic on the table is just dieting, weight loss, nutrition, health, etc. It seems clear to me, though, that the public opinion on those topics […]
- Sheep Make Stupid Chickens May 8, 2012It’s popular to comment on the presumed intelligence of farm animals. People like to say, “Chickens are stupid,” “Sheep are stupid,” or “Pigs are smart.” I’ve seen chickens do some really smart things. They are experts at finding food in their environment, for example. I’ve seen sheep be pretty smart, too. They are extremely adept at using their speed and […]
- These are the Fat FAQs May 17, 2012
