Winter Garden Update: Manure, Compost and Lazy Garden Bed Prepping!

We had a few weeks of snow, finally here in Southern Oregon! Its been a joy and a blessing. The snow seems determined not to stick around for too long and if we have clear days its below freezing at night but just warm enough to melt some snow during the day.

And so a few weeks later the snow is melted enough that I can just make out our garden beds. You can see my primary manure machine in the distant background. But I am supplementing her prime manure with truckloads of some composted manure from a local organic dairy.

Here are a few of the beds I've been moving manure to. At this point the soil is so soggy that I am not bothering to weed it much. I am just piling the manure on thick, perhaps some of the weeds will be knocked back, perhaps not. In any case the manure won't be worked in until the soil dried out more in the spring. I am just getting a good head start!

Here is one of my "lazy" garden bed preparation methods. Several weeks ago (before the snow) I gathered wheelbarrow loads of the horse's manure. I started piling it thickly on top of the grass. I hope by late spring, early summer, when its time to plant out some of the summer crops that the sod beneath the manure will be composted. Here

I am making beds alongside the garden fence and will probably end up planting squash or beans. I did this in several different places, identifying where the soil may be less compacted and the sod not too thick. I'll probably move much of the manure to a compost pile or to other beds and expose the rich soil below for planting.

In this case I just dug up the grass and weeds along side the fence. You can't tell from the photo but I identified a place where much horse manure had accumulated in past seasons next to the fence and there is a rich planting area that won't take much preparation. I decided to pull back the sod from the other side of the fence (in the garden) and knowing it has been influenced by manure I won't be doing any further prep - I will be planting peas here very shortly. In the spring I will be planting both sides of the fence.

Here is another lazy garden bed preparation method. Here are 3 compost piles. The middle one was created from the sod that was pulled up last year to prep last year's corn and potato beds. It has reduced in size significantly and we added more to it over the winter. I started the other two beds recently with layers of corn stalks and horse manure. I built them up thick enough so far that they will kill the grass beneath them. In late spring or early summer I will move the compost piles and I expect I will find rich soil ready for planting below them. Then I can move the compost to one or more new locations in the grass which will become new garden beds! So easy - I won't even have to dig up the grass or rent a tiller!

Here is another one of last year's compost piles that was started on thick grass. This was a round pile 4 feet wide at the base and 5 feet tall. I alternated layers of grass clippings and horse manure. Over half a year of sitting it has melted into this small pile. I look forward to using it in our garden, and when take up the compost I will have a new, rich garden bed below.

Well, it seems that we'll have a lot of kale this spring, thanks to last years kale overwintering nicely!

The perennial fruit, nut and flower seeds that we potted up earlier this winter are happily stratifying away. Luckily we haven't had much rodent/squirrel problems so I haven't felt the need to cover them yet. Just the occasional bird scratch here and there. Knock on wood!

That's it for now! I am off ;)

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