Digging It

This is a hopeful picture of our comfrey which made a heroic comeback after the grasshopper invasion. In other news...

Most permaculture food gardens are made from no dig beds. These are heavily mulched and planted year after year either with seeds or seedlings started in the green house. At their best they are also laid out on contour. The theory goes that because they are never turned or disturbed the soil gets more and more rich over time. The plants feed the soil and the soil feeds the plants. Our food garden is different because we have four raised beds. We chose this configuration for several reasons.

1. Our soil is clay, heavy and dryish, hard to work in the spring, impossible in the summer, impossible in the winter.
2. Many plants do not like this type of soil.
3. I am not a patient person. I wanted to get learning about food gardens asap.
4. We have no existing perennials, no shrubs, no trees, nothing to provide shade or even green matter.
5. The soil has dark humus matter approximately 1-2 cm in depth.

Our beds are 4'x10'. There is room for four more. I would like to make the rest of the food garden more like conventional permaculture mulched garden beds. This will require much more input initially but will be more sustainable in the long run. My current beds have several drawbacks. They are difficult to dig in. With the bamboo frame around the top, I hit my head sometimes. They dry out faster than in ground soil.

Today I spent an hour or so digging out the roots of the cabbage family, corn and tomatoes. It was so hot earlier in the month that when I cut the food garden down I didn't pull the roots. Now I must. Its amazing how tenacious they are! And now I discover the reason you don't leave potatoes in the ground. The ants got to them. Devoured many very good sized ones. So live and learn. Also I let the potato beds dry out a bit since they don't need the water and the ants prefer this drier soil.

I have already started our compost heap near where the next beds will go. This way I won't have to haul the compost anywhere when its done. I got the idea for this from the book The Complete Compost Gardening Guide by Pleasant and Martin. Permaculturists sometimes neglect to emphasize compost but to my mind its a integral part of the garden system. And since we don't have chickens yet to eat scraps, its a necessity for waste cycling. Since you really shouldn't compost meat without special steps, we are very careful to eat all our meat and not make more than we can eat. Spoiled meat is the worst and avoided at all costs. Forcing ourselves to be accountable for all our garbage has been really eye opening. Those little stickers on fruits and veggies are so annoying!!!!