Patrick's Rants

When we first started discussing the idea of growing a large number of our own vegetables there were three couples present. My wife and I, J&A and T&L. I originally thought I was the resident expert but soon found out that everyone has an opinion and advice.

When I was a kid I read the newspaper front to back – except the sports section – and Ann Landers once wrote that advice should be offered when asked. Otherwise, she said, keep your big mouth shut. Apparently not everyone read that column in the late 80s. Before we even dug our first shovel full of dirt I was told that sheep manure was better than horse manure by T with L backing up his opinion stating, “he knows what he’s talking about.” Well, T&L get to make their own garden if they feel like, but they’ve only tossed a couple of shovels full of dirt in our garden mostly out of novelty it seems. Now, I’ve heard the manure declaration a few times. Sheep manure is better than horse manure, and even that we should find llama manure because that’s even better. And when I called to find out if we could haul manure the guy on the phone told me that I wanted cow manure and that I should wait until late spring to early summer to get it from them. Here’s the thing. We’re ready to start now, not in the spring. I know where the horse manure is, I don’t know where the other types are – they are mostly privately owned. And the boarding center is about 1/4 mile away and will gladly give us the nearly trailer full that we can haul any day that we want it. Convenience, availability, and the fact that it can be used as a fertilizer are all important factors. Sure, if we can get any of the other manure types we would probably jump at using them. But I’m not sure that we could get sheep or llama manure in anywhere near the same quantities. For now, we’ve dug three deep rows that we’ve managed to fill with the 6″ layer of fresh manure – three trailers full of the stuff.

We have the potential problem of prairie dogs and the very real problem of rabbits. We bought rabbit fencing that we dug in 6″ down and 6″ folded over into an L-shaped barrier. It then sticks above the garden about a foot. Good ol’ T stopped by and said our fences were too low. What did Landers write again? For now, we are leaving the fencing alone, but we may find that the larger holes in the top half of the fence are too large and make some changes later. My wife and A both said something about fencing the whole garden in. J and I looked at each other and decided “no”. The thing is we would want to trench in the bottom edge of any fence and it’s really a beast to dig around that much ground. I’m thinking that T needs to keep his mouth shut.

The deep digging and filling the bottom of the “pits” with manure results in rows that are 6″ or so above the surrounding ground. Add a little fencing like we did and the rows are nicely raised with deep loose soil. Of course A’s mother told A that we need to have borders or we would lose our soil due to rain and wind erosion. While I agree that borders would be nice to have, J and I discussed it deciding that we would go with free or something close to it using boards from old pallets. Who cares if they rot as they were free? The wives decided to check pricing on border materials at Home Depot – they get an idea and glom onto it. Fortunately the pricing scared them and they’ll leave us to our methods. Unfortunately A has been chewing on this border idea like a dog with a new toy and the squeaking is starting to bug us, mostly because it takes us nearly a whole day to just dig each row while A&M stand back asking why the borders aren’t done yet. Now as to the borders we have dug so many rocks out of the rows that the outside border will end up being stone which is fine.

We haven’t finished the borders but we do have have three deep dug rows 4′x18′ with 1′ walkways between them. And we’ve started planting. We planted garlic down the middle of row 1, three different kinds of onions down row 2, and started planting potatoes down the middle of row 3. The wives also bought a couple of seed starting trays and there are a large number of seeds starting in there, plus there are a lot of plants they bought that we aren’t ready to plant. There are strawberries and asparagus that are itching to be in the ground. I should be starting the asparagus trenches this week and the strawberries are going to have to go into a row that we were hoping to put annuals in.

The next piece of advice was that we needed to start a worm farm or worm bucket system. I have no problem with a vermicomposting system and it will hopefully work out. The thing is the worms were suggested by my wife’s boss so there was no research on my wife’s part. When the first bucket set was built I took a look at it. It has tiny holes all around something like 1/16″ to 1/8″ which are extremely small vent holes. Everything that I have read recently suggests 1/4″ to 1/2″ holes at least in the bottom. Since the beginning labor on the buckets is free and the worms are free I’m humoring the setup. When I get the second set though, I’m likely to redrill the bottom holes and modify the system to have three buckets and a “spacer” which is a bucket with the top half cut off that lifts the top bucket a few inches above the next lower bucket for harvesting the castings. Of course I can experiment since I’m getting five gallon buckets for free from a local Burger King. The one piece of advice that I’m throwing completely out about the worms has to do with spreading them in the garden. I originally thought this would be a great idea until I read that the “right” worms for vermicomposting have to have high levels of organic material and live best in compost or manure piles. That kind of rules out the minimal organic material that exist in the garden beds.

Now, if you have any advice at all post it in the comments. I may not implement all ideas, but I am actually asking for advice.