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“Do Good Things”

In this episode we’re talking about Spring garden planning.

I wanted to start the podcast with our motto.

This is not some karma thing, this is not religious, although it is moral, and it does come from my faith.

This is about being a positive influence in the world, and keeping my priorities where I can actually affect a change.

I think it was Stephen Covey who wrote about your circle of influence vs. your circle of concern in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, (of which I am not one of those people by the way)

He suggests that our time is best spent in our circle of influence, and to put aside our circle of concern. I may be concerned with rising acidity levels in the ocean, and the pollution of the world’s streams and lakes. But I can’t effectively influence what happens 2000 miles away from me.

I can change my own backyard. I think we would all be happier and bring about more meaningful and lasting positive changes in the world if we worried first and foremost about what happens in our own homes, and in our backyards. Lets do good things! How does that work? Well If I am doing something, it is inherently in my circle of influence, because I am doing something about it!

It’s my wife’s flowerbed, it’s my son’s drawing that I’m praising, it’s the goats that I’m milking, or the chickens I am rotating through pasture or forest.

I’m sure we’ll talk about this more in the future, but I wanted to set the tone at the start. I am all about doing good things. Because it leads to greater freedom and liberty in my life. And I hope you will come along with me on this journey, because it sure isn’t a destination.

So with that said, Let’s talk about doing something good!

Spring Garden Planning

It’s January 1st, the start of a new year and even though it’s cold outside, I have been bitten with the gardening bug. I already ordered my seeds because believe it or not folks, I will be starting seeds in 3 weeks. Yep, at the end of january I start pepper and tomato seeds.

And ya know what, it really helps me to stay focused and on task when I’ve worked up a schedule of when things need to happen and in what order. So I want to talk about Spring garden planning for the current season!

So lets break things down into the core components. If you know me, you know I’m all about getting to the root of something.

We need several things:

Soil
Mulch
Fertility
Protection from the elements
Last and least – Water
Why is water the least important thing? You’re probably thinking “but plants die without water Nick” yep, they do, but of those 5 things, water is the last on my list, and I’ll tell you a little bit about how I have successfully gardened through D4 level droughts for years with no irrigation whatsoever.
Plants or seeds to put there
Seeds for direct sowing
Plants
Seed starting ingredients? You know, pots, soil..
So let’s think about this from the persepective of “I’m new to this property, or I am starting a new garden plot. What do I do? Where do I start?

First of all, you really want to start close to your house. We want to stay close to the house because it will be a lot easier for you to remember to get out there and tend to your garden, you’ll harvest more often, and be more prone to pay attention to it. And I’ll tell you a little secret, having a green thumb is a myth. All it is, is paying attention to details, and dilligence.

So you’ve found a likely spot close to your home, or so you think. How do you know what a good place is? Well I bet only a few of you know that most garden vegetables only need 4 hours of direct full sun. That means if you put your garden in the middle of a field, it’s going to bake like an egg in an oven.

What I tell my clients, when selecting a site for your garden, if you are in the south, it should be up against the east facing wall of a building or forest edge. You want that space shaded from noon, till sundown.

If you are in a more northern climate, or a cooler climate with mild summers, then you might instead select a location on a western facing or south facing wall. That helps you to trap more warmth in the springtime and get plants growing and healthy sooner.
So we have a location that is going to help shelter our garden from harsh solar rays, or one that helps warm things up sooner in the springtime.

The next thing most people are concerned with is soil quality, I have clay soils, I have sandy soils, I have rich black deep beautiful soils, or I have 2 inches of soil then rock. My preferred method works for all of them and you don’t have to worry about it!

Ok, this is what I want you to do, find contour on your land. Google it and look up how to find contour on youtube if you don’t know what that term means.

Mark out some lines on the ground on contour, and make each line 6 – 8 feet apart. Then take a shovel and cut along that line facing uphill deep enough to cut through the sod or weeds that make up your native soil, generally about 4” deep. Take that shovel full and place it to the downhill side of your line. Keep going until you have a 2-3′ wide ditch on uphill side, and a 3-4′ wide bed on the downhill side. The idea here is to make a grass or weed sandwich with all the topsoil, and form up some garden beds on contour. You can make those beds as wide or narrow as you like, and the same with your foot paths. I like to make this initial step a 4′ wide path, and a 3′ wide bed. Then when I build some soil and add mulch, I end up with a 2′ wide path and a 4′ wide bed, the perfect double reach size for me.

If you aren’t able to do this type of manual labor, apply the same instruction to a mechanical means, and form up your beds with a machine. I prefer to not chop up the sod and mix it up, so don’t use a tiller if you can help it, but I say any garden is better than none, so use a tiller if you don’t have anything else.

Alright, we have our beds cut and formed, now it’s time to build some soil! Since it is winter, this step is not as valuable for those of you who are in more northern climates, but in the south it’s just fine to do this now.

Find some sort of seed meal, anything that was ground up plant or seed should be fine. I have used rabbit pellets, laying pellets, alfalfa pellets, horse pellets, cottonseed meal, corn meal, old wheat flour, I’ve used them all and they all work.

The idea here is that we are finding some worm and bacteria food and putting it on the bed.

Then get some bone meal, enough to lightly cover the surface of the garden bed.

And some manure, rabbit, goat and sheep are best for this, but cow works as well. Do not use Horse, Pig, or poultry manure unless you put it through a hot compost process. You will regret it! I promise!

You’re going to take the seed meal, or pelleted food and lightly cover the whole surface of the garden soil, and do the same with the bone meal, and manure. You should have no soil surface showing after putting down the pellets or seed meal, bone meal, and manure. Next I like to water this in until damp, don’t use a lot of water, we want it to stay put and not wash away.

Then I go to the forest and find some nice forest floor duff. That’s the decomposed leaves, sticks, rotten forest floor stuff. Don’t take a lot from one area, I rake a 4′ wide section of leaves back, and go maybe 10 or 12′ and scrape that up into a wheel barrow and put the leaves back on top, then do the same in a few other areas so I don’t wipe out a section of my forest ecology. The idea is to harvest from abundant areas, and use that as seed stock to replenish your garden soil.

I’ll take my forest floor soil that is hopefully full of earthworm castings, eggs, and earthworms, and I sprinkle this liberally on all the beds.

Next, we cover with mulch! You can use lots of different kinds of mulch. I prefer chopped hardwood leaves (you can find these in abundance in the city in the fall when foolish people pay men with lawn mowers to come suck them up, chop and bag them. Then they leave them on the curb to take to a dump. When I used to work in a city, I’d drive down the nice neighborhood streets and collect bags of chopped leaves, and leave town with a pickup bed staked high with trash bags.

Now I use my own lawn mower to suck up all the leaves that fall on my driveway and I also use wood shavings from a local cabinet maker.

You can use wood chips from a municipal waste operation, or a tree trimming service.

Those are my favorite sources of mulch, hardwood leaves, wood chips, wood shavings, and organically grown straw. (not hay)

Don’t use sawdust, rubber mulch, pine needles, or hay. Each one of those has problems with it that we don’t have time to go into today.

Conclusion

So lets recap our Spring garden planning:

We formed raised beds that are about 3 to 4′ wide, and our foot paths are at least 2′ wide
we broke up the chunks of soil, so it’s relatively uniform
then added our seed meal or animal pellet food, bone meal, and manure, moistened
then we added forest soil
and covered with mulch, when I say covered with mulch, I mean minimum 4″, 8″ is the most you should need
If you can’t do one of these things, skip it. Don’t get stuck into the mindset that this is an exact science. I love what Joel Salatin said “Anything worth doing is worth doing wrong”. So do it even if you are afraid you will do it wrong! Nature is forgiving and very resilient, Just do it!

If you are afraid of GMO’s in the pellet food, stop letting perfect be the enemy of good! If you do this, and build some good soil, grow your vegetables and eat them, you will have food that is so very much more healthy than anything you would buy in a store. Use this method and get started, then you can worry about perfecting your organic gardening over the next 20 years.

Now, we have our garden beds established, and I think we are about out of time for today’s show. Tune in next week for part two! I’ll be talking about when and how to start seeds or buy plants to put in those beautiful new garden beds.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s show on Spring garden planning, if you have questions or show suggestions, please email them to me at [email protected].

I hope you have a wonderful day, God Bless, and “Go Do Good Things”