First Spring at EarthSong Retreat!

Here we are, end of May, 2012. The aircard is renewed and it's time to post an update and some pictures of what's going on here at EarthSong Retreat. 


As you can see above, the wildflowers have been in full swing for some time now. Below is another shot of that field. The bees are loving it!

The stick you might see standing near the middle of this shot indicates the location of the new mulberry tree that is planted there. That field also has an escarpment black cherry, a paw-paw, and a couple of comfrey plants. This is a sort of narrow patch of land between a small tree belt and the larger field where our new orchard is located. 

Speaking of the orchard, above are two shots of the new hugelkulture swales in progress. Swales are berms or ridges made along a contour line. They slow down water flow and let it soak in to the soil gradually. Water in the soil is down where the plants need it, and doesn't evaporate so quickly. The swale above is near the high end of the orchard. A ditch is dug, limbs, sticks, logs are placed in the ditch. Dirt is thrown back onto the stack. The woody matter adds organic matter back to the soil. sequesters carbon, adds water retaining material, and allows you to make a somewhat higher berm with less soil. Plus, it gives us a nifty way to dispose of limbs and trees that died last year. The main idea, though, is to keep the water here where we can use it and not let it run off.

While we're on the orchard subject, the nearly ripe peach on the left is on one of our new trees we recently planted in the orchard. The picture on the right is a grafting experiment I am doing. A cutting from the tree on the left has been grafted to the tree on the right. As you can see, that tree also has a peach. 

This tree was a volunteer, arising from the roots of an old, dead tree on the property. Usually, that doesn't necessarily produce a very good tree. Root stock is most often a more "native" strain of fruit that is hardy but perhaps doesn't make the best fruit. However, we had a lot of these volunteers, so they were free. Regardless of the fruit, they will have blossoms, and that means it's good for the bees. Therefore, I separated a lot of the volunteers so they had more room to grow, replanting a few in different spots. Those transplants seem to be doing well. We'll see what happens in the fruit department. Like the one above, several have set fruit. Worst case scenario, I'll have sturdy trees to graft onto! The volunteers are scattered around the rest of the property, many near the beehives. 


The pecan, apple, peach, pear, and persimmon trees we've planted in the orchard area are doing well also.

At right is another addition. One of several fig transplants I rooted and set out. I'm not a huge fig fan myself, but several in my family are. They are also pretty easy to root from cuttings and grow.

At left is the array of bathtubs that will make up our greywater/wetland setup eventually. I'll post more pictures as that develops. I was set on getting three tubs and it seemed to take forever to obtain that last one!
Not too visible behind the tubs are new grape vines planted along the fence to the left, and berry vines along the fence across the back. This fence runs down the back yard. A long wicking bed garden will run there as well to make use of the treated greywater.

The same backyard hosts our solar clothes dryer, also known as a clothesline. This was constructed by Michael and Silas. 

I've mentioned our hens before. The adopted rooster that we had got nabbed by something one night. The hens are carrying on without him. One of the hens also died mysteriously on the nest one day. The other twelve are fine and doing their chicken thing. Here they are starting the day. I let them out of their coop (remember the coop?) into the pen as soon as I get up. Around noon I release them to roam the rest of the property.  I feel this minimizes their laying elsewhere since they seem to do the majority of their laying in the morning. We're averaging about 5 eggs a day from the twelve, so it's possible one or two are still sneaking off somewhere. Oh well, keeping them penned is NOT the agenda. 

One of the hens became broody and got argumentative when we came to collect the eggs. The rooster being gone, the eggs were no longer fertile. We got six fertile eggs from a friend for her to incubate. The required time for hatching passed and no chicks! We went to our nearby feed store and bought five baby chicks to place under her. Between that morning and dusk when we put the chicks in, three of the eggs hatched. So, we now have 8 baby chicks. Here is the brood all snug in the brood house. Since then, the mama got rambunctious and I put her back with the other hens. No more broody, and the chicks are doing well. The new chicks are a mixed bag including Rhode Island Red (my pick) and Americauna. We're figuring that at least one will be a rooster, too. I didn't intend to have a rooster, but that other one adopted us and we sort of missed him after he left. I named him Lord Popinjay. He'd walk me to the pen and we'd talk while I let the hens out.

The current manifestation of the garden is coming along as well. At left is one of the two 6x4 "square foot garden" raised beds. Visible are squash, broccoli and beans. The squash is HUGE after our rains! There is still room in the beds to add plants. The picture on the right shows a pair of "three sisters" tire gardens. They have sweet corn, beans, and squash planted in them. Looking good as well, although the corn in the farthest one hasn't come up. Re-planting that.

Here to the left is another tire garden, this one with strawberries. We've already picked a few from it. Sweet!


I'm still making beehives for sale, and planning to build a few top-bar hives as well.

Somewhat Late Gardening

We finally got our garden in today. We're in a rented space, and with efforts out at Sherwood Forest Faire and other such we got a late start on our garden. However, we found that, by the moon, today was a good day for planting most things, besides, last frost here usually lands around March 15, and this year was no exception. So, we weren't necessarily THAT late! 
Soil here is red brick clay, I  mean literally! They make Elgin-Butler red bricks from it just down the road! It really does not lend itself to gardening directly in it.
In the past I've enjoyed gardening with the Square Foot Garden method in raised beds, and that is what was called for here.
Last year we were looking for sand for the Sherwood booth on Freecycle and were given a 6' x 6' sandbox made from 2x8 lumber. We had also been given a lot of 2x4x8'-0 lumber that was used for shipping crates by UPS. I cut several of those in half, combined them with the 2x8x6'-0 lumber and made up two 4'-0x6'-0 raised beds. Cat and I sat down and decided what we wanted to plant and made a plan for the two beds. One more thing, we are both totally committed to gardening organically.
We went over to Bastrop Gardens in Bastrop and got some of their garden soil to fill our beds. Cat also picked up several of the plants we needed. We got organic plants there, and organic seeds at Home Depot and Whole Foods.
It took two trips to get enough bag-it-yourself soil to do the job. The first trip yielded some very sandy loamy garden soil mix. Through some misunderstanding the second trip brought almost straight compost. I mixed the two together and made up a pretty nice mix of garden soil. It really wasn't worth bagging it back up and making another trip, and I think it worked out pretty well. I also put down a layer of pasteboard from some old boxes under the beds to keep unwanted weeds from sneaking in from underneath, as well as keeping the good soil on top.

This bed holds lettuce, sugar snap peas, cucumbers, onions, Swiss chard, Kale, bell peppers, corn, spinach, summer squash, broccoli, carrots, cilantro, and nasturtiums. You can see the strings I ran to mark off the square foot sections. Notice the difference in that soil!

.This one has lettuce, purple pole beans, corn, garlic, egg plants, summer squash, carrots, spinach, nasturtiums, cilantro, chives, and broccoli. I love the raised bed, square-foot system, as nobody walks on the garden soil and it stays loose. No tilling required! Most of the time you don't even need a trowel, just poke your hand or finger into the friable soil to make a hole for the seed. Soil compaction is a huge problem in any garden, or farm for that matter.

Both together look like this.  I planted large bamboo poles to hold up green plastic fencing to keep out four legged critters, mostly our own cats, chickens and the occasional bunny. This pic makes it look rather weird, but it's more substantial than that. We can just drop the fence to pick or work the garden and pull it back up again afterward. If it looks a bit temporary, well, it is!

We also make use of several tires to plant tomatoes and a few other things in. We took old tires from our pickup, cut off the side walls, and filled them with dirt and compost. For several years we've planted tomatoes and onions in them. These three have four types of tomatoes, sage, basil and bunching onions from last year in them. I've found that tomatoes work just as well or better planted elsewhere than in one of the "community" beds. They take up a lot of space on their own, and benefit from being accessible from all sides as in the tires.
Location-wise, the tires and beds are on the north side of our mobile home and a storage shed. They get full morning sun. I feel they will be protected from our hot afternoon sun this way, as well as the drying, scorching effect of the hot south winds we get all spring and summer. I'm convinced those hot south winds are a major factor in gardens getting dried out and too hot too soon around here. We'll see how that works out. I'll also be mulching everything tomorrow to keep that moisture from getting away.
We still have a few more tomatoes to obtain and plant, but that's it for now!
Garden organically! It's important for all of us, and not just because we need to stay away from GMO foods the corporations want to shove down our throats! Organic is better for us, and the planet.