Out here in the fields...

I don't need to tell you that we had our work cut out for us today. On our list:

Clear out last year's leftovers
Till
Fertilize
Form our rows

And, no fools we, our experience from last year taught us that if you don't mulch on the same day as you do all of the above, your rows will be washed away and weeds will takeover by the time you actually plant. So, we added the following to our list:

Mulch within an inch of our lives

Another lesson from last year: don't be afraid to actually purchase mulch. I think we spent more time looking for free mulch last year than we did actually mulching. So, this year, we brought bags of leaves with us to the farm (free) and bought 6 straw-bales ($40 total).

















Next, we cleared the plot of all the large plants and pieces of roots. We thought we'd be able to till the smaller bits of plants into the ground but that didn't really work. So, we did something we thought we'd never do. We burned it:


It is amazing what we are reduced to because we don't have the time or resources to do things the way we'd prefer. The way we'll do things when we have our own farm: no tilling, permanent beds, permaculture. But all of that is for another day. In the meantime, we tilled, formed our beds and then mulched.

Behold, this is the neatest you will ever see our plot:



And then we fertilized. I have no idea what all is in our fertilizer mix this year but I do know it is all vegan. Among other things, there is corn and alfalfa. Adam will have to tell you the rest.

To do list:
PLANT!

UPDATE: I lied. I do know what is in our fertilizer mix - the ingredients were right here on our blog! It has just been so long since I gave any thought to it that I forgot.

Manure: Push it Out

Some time ago, a friend sent me this link on vegan farming. It is an article on CNN.com about vegan farming...the "next level" of organic farming. I personally think this is not only a great idea but a necessary one. And not just because I'm vegan/vegetarian.

Because, "organic" doesn't necessarily mean "good." People will discuss the practices of conventional farms until the drug-laden cows come home but I've never heard a discussion about appropriate technologies for organic farms.

Albeit, some of the practices used by organic farms, both large and small, were okay 50 years ago when farm animals weren't being raised in cramped conditions and more susceptible to diseases like salmonella.

But things have changed and organic farms have failed to change with it.

And the truth is, organic farmers need to be intentional about what they are doing. Organic produce has enjoyed a boom in recent years but I get the feeling that "we" are still under a microscope. If one or two big mistakes are made, the conventional farms and their supporters will jump all over it.

And the argument that organic produce is better and safer will fly out the window along with any market advantage that argument created.

Remember that e.coli scare with raw spinach? Although the spinach in question was not organic, the FDA finally concluded that the likely source of contamination included "the presence of wild pigs, the proximity of irrigation wells used to grow produce for ready-to-eat packaging, and surface waterways exposed to feces from cattle and wildlife."

Proximity of produce to animal feces? Doesn't that sound like one of the tenets of modern organic farming? The truth is, the use of manure in organic farming is so ubiquitous as to be unquestioned. But it needs to be questioned.

I used the word "intentional" earlier and I think it is an appropriate word to describe what organic farming needs. What do "we" really want to encourage. What do "we" really want to support. This doesn't just apply to vegan/non-vegan but sustainable methods too.

There is an organic farm in the Portland, Oregon area that uses butane gas to burn weeds. So, instead of interns walking around with hoes to pull out weeds, they walk around with gas packs strapped to their backs and burn the suckers. And yes, it is a great idea in that it would not only kill the weed but any weed seeds.

But shouldn't we be looking at the big picture? And does the big picture really include butane gas packs? Or, for that matter, chicken manure from the chicken farm down the road because they "aren't using it anyway and its a good way to "recycle" the waste?"

Organic farms shouldn't just do something because it is convenient. Or because it is perceived to be cheaper. Or even because it may produce a higher yield. All of that sounds a bit too much like a conventional farm to me.

Every method employed should be examined. And, although here are negative ramifications to everything, we can surely come up with the best possible practice.

After all of that, I'm here to tell you that Adam and I are not "veganic" farmers.

Yet.

I never said it would be easy, after all. After a brief foray into fish emulsion, we are now making our own fertilizer out of the following ingredients:

alfalfa pellets
corn gluten
green sand
rock phosphate
dolomite
earthworm castings
sea bird guano
fruit bat guano

The final two ingredients are obviously NOT vegan. But they AREN'T derivatives of factory farming either, so I think that's a step up.

And I'll have to get Adam to do a post on the benefits of the other ingredients. Needless to say, it's all about that sacred balance of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium.

And with all that said, I'll go farm now. It is hard to farm while standing on a soap box.

Out, out damn weed! (And other adventures)

Our mission this weekend was to rid our garden of weeds.

Or, as many weeds as humanly (and non-chemically) possible.

Which means a lot of hand weeding. And a lot of mulch. Luckily, we heard about some free mulch that would be available to anyone with enough gumption to shovel the stuff and not enough sense to know better.

This particular mulch was made from the debris left by the spring tornadoes. It was good to know that a tragedy (or, actually, several tragedies) can become something positive for everyone.



We brought a box of garbage bags and loaded them with mulch. This mulch was great and seemed to consist mostly of downed trees. While we were shoveling (or, I should say, while Adam was shoveling and I was holding the bag) we would see a piece of siding every once in a while that would remind us that some of this mulch wasn't just from trees. Some of it was from people's houses.


And did I mention it was hot? Not just the air and the sun but the mulch itself. You could feel the heat radiating off of it as we (again, Adam) shoveled it into the bags.

We took the mulch back to the garden and got a lot of use out of it! We were even able to mulch our seating area, which seemed rather important since we plan to spend an evening or two out there with wine bottle(s) in tow.




If you think the transformation in our seating area is dramatic, you should see the rest of the garden! I only hope we did it in time for our bush beans, which are looking pretty haggard.

After we weeded and mulched, we fertilized everything since it had been at least 3 weeks since the last time we added fertilizer. We did this with the same water-diluted fish emulsion fertilizer as before.

I'll do a farm-photo-catch-up post tomorrow!

Product Placement

I've been talking a lot about the organic liquid fertilizer we use whenever we plant so I thought I'd give it some props here.

It is called John's Recipe and is distributed by The Lady Bug Brand, a division of The Natural Gardener. It contains a blend of seaweed, humic acid, molasses and fish emulsion. So far it's been working pretty well. We dilute 1 Tbs in 1 gallon of water whenever we plant so it goes a long way.

There is a drawback, however. It is our intention to farm organically and, many organic farmers, use animal manure as fertilizer. However, since at least one of us is vegetarian, we shy away from animal manure-intensive farming.

Taking a cue from the Indians, who put a whole fish in the ground with their corn seeds, we thought we'd try this product to start our plants growing because it gets its nitrogen primarily from fish emulsion. Fish emulsion is made by taking the waste products from the fish industry, grinding them up and mixing them with water. Since it is a by-product of the industry, the industry itself does not profit from its use.

And, unlike cow/horse/pig/chicken manure, it does not contain the many antibiotics, pesticides and other chemicals that course through factory farmed animals every day of their lives.

It does, perhaps, contain mercury. And other heavy metals.

That is a concern for us.

We've been looking into it and, from what we can tell, it contains negligible amounts of mercury, if any at all. The term "negligible" is cold comfort but we take what we can get.

In a previous garden, in a somewhat more progressive city, we used a vegan fertilizer that worked wonders. We are on the lookout for a similar product here in the great city of Little Rock. Living in a small apartment with no backyard, we obviously cannot keep a compost or worm bin. So in the meantime....

We do what we can. And, as I've said before, this farm plot of ours is an experiment. A dry run for the future farm of our dreams.

We will see what works and what doesn't work.

We may change our mind about what we support and what we rebuff.

For those of you who are looking for the "perfect" fertilizer, check out these websites when doing your research:

Washington State Pesticide and Fertilizer Information Page
Extremely Green's Organic Fertilizer Guide
Wikipedia's page on Nitrogen-Fixing Plants

Potatoes and Onions

Potatoes

I'm not much of a potato person - except for when it's in the french fry or sweet form. However, being married to an Irishman, I guess it was inevitable that potatoes would be a part of our garden.

Turns out, planting potatoes is easy! Here's how we did it:

1. We bought some potatoes with every intention of cooking them. But we forgot about them and, when we next looked in the paper sack, we saw they had many, many eyes. So, we decided to plant them.

2. We cut up the potatoes, ensuring that each section of potato had some eyes on it.




































3. We prepared the potato beds with a compost/peat mixture and then dug holes about 4-inches deep.


4. We planted the potatoes (eyes facing up!) in the holes and covered with dirt.



5. We watered around each potato with the organic liquid fertilizer mixture. Then we mulched with leaves and watered some more!


UPDATE: Adam tells me that the potatoes did not have eyes. They had eye-buds. Eyes are normal on a potato but when those eyes start sprouting buds the time to eat the potato has passed. When the eyes start sprouting buds, it is time to plant!

Onions

If planting potatoes was easy, planting onions was practically mindless.

First we prepared the bed by raking over it to break up any clumps. Then Adam made "rows of holes" by sticking his finger into the ground. I went along behind him and dropped an onion into each hole.

We covered the holes with dirt, fertilized with the organic liquid fertilizer mixture, watered the whole bed and called it a day.

First Planting!

While Adam worked on re-tilling our rows, I set about preparing the "round mounds" that would be the home for our squashes, melons and cucumbers. The soil may look hard and cake-y on the top but it is so soft that working it with a shovel and hoe is no problem.

First of all, I broke up the ground surrounding our previously formed mounds. I took this dirt and added it to the mounds. (We have 4 mounds in each section x 4 sections = 16 mounds.)


After forming the mounds, I then sifted through the dirt by hand and pulled out the grass weeds. This sounds a little crazy, but it was actually a lot of fun! I always loved to play in dirt when I was a kid and not much has changed since those days. Plus, I got a good look at all the little bugs and critters living in our dirt.

At the end of the day, I had a bucket o' weeds.





Before I continue, I should say that I'm not a crazy weeder. It isn't something that I necessarily enjoy and it isn't something I think is always important. Overall, I don't think weeds are "bad" and Adam shares this sentiment so I can't see us spending a lot of time weeding. However, our little zucchini and melon plants were raised from seedlings and weren't doing too well....so I wanted to give them the best chance possible.

All that being said, this garden is, in many ways, an experiment for us. We certainly don't know everything there is to know and we hope to learn a lot along the way. By mid-summer we could be reformed anti-weeders with an arsenal of Round-Up at our disposal.

But I doubt it.

After preparing our "mounds" with a compost/peat mixture, I gingerly put our little plants in the mounds. As I said before, these had been raised from seedlings but had started to get weak and spindly in recent days, despite being put out in the sun for a good part of the day. I planted them pretty deep so that their weak bits were under the dirt. A storm was coming in a day and I didn't want them to be torn to shreds.

We made little zucchini "volcanoes" in the middle of the mounds and watered them with a mixture of liquid fertilizer (organic) and water.

Then we wished them luck and headed home.



Next up: Potatoes and Onions!