Saturday, March 16, 2013

Garden Planning and Hopeful Planting




The rhubarb, chives, marsh marigolds, and crocuses have poked their heads out, and the blueberry buds have swelled and beach grass is coming up. Hopefully the plants haven't called spring too soon. Though it is only 20-30 degrees out, it feels so warm since it's actually dry out.








 My garden map for the year is filled out in pencil with plans of what to plant where. I completely geek out with the garden map and make it to scale on grid paper and color code things. This is the third year I've made a map, and this year I'm stepping my record keeping up with an extra database to make tracking crop rotation easier. I made rock number labels for each raised bed. Now I can simply look in my database and see that bed #1 had kale, then lettuce, then peas in it. Crop rotation is important for both nutrient and pest management.

I have 46 raised beds, with more on the way!

Basil
Kale
 
I started a few flats indoors. I can't figure out how to prevent legginess.....I have my lights within centimeters of the lights but they all just want to reach up, up up......do I just not move the lights when the plants touch them? I wish I had more room to experiment with starts!




Potential Peas

I planted a packet of peas under row cover, in a hoop house, outdoors on March 12, and of course the temps immediately dropped to 20 degrees. Peas will sprout and grow in surprisingly low temperatures, but 20 is pushing it. People always wonder how I can plant so early and make it work. #1 is having dry, covered beds that warm up on sunny days. #2 is that many times many things don't work! It's a gamble to plant early, but at $2.50 a seed packet, it's not really risking much if something doesn't sprout. I stick to peas, onions, kale, spinach and lettuce for super early crops. If something doesn't sprout early you can always replant. If seeds haven't come up in a couple of weeks it's usually safe to say it's a bust--don't wait and wait and wait to replant just because you know the seeds are there. Now if the snow that just started falling would stop, I'd say "Get planting!"




Friday, March 15, 2013

Sustainability in the Barn

I mentioned many months ago that I wanted to stop using purchased straw in the chicken coop. At $25 a bale, I tend not to keep the barn floor as clean as I'd like. My current floor space of 8x12 feet requires quite a bit more straw than my old 3x8 coop. I also wonder about where the straw comes from--what kind of pesticides am I adding to my compost pile by using this mystery straw from down south? Is it from GMO wheat? Also, the thought of having something trucked and barged up here just so my chickens can poop on it seems a little extravagant if you really think about it.



Thanks Nicole!
When you need to find something it seems like you can always count on Freecycle! I posted an add for bulk shredded paper and had a response within a day. A friend at the Dept of Labor has been graciously calling me when their "file consolidation" pile stacks up.

Of course I'm always skeptical--even of my own ideas. I was worried about the shredded paper matting in the coop. And when on the first day the chickens had paper sticking to their legs, I envisioned them eventually becoming entirely covered in paper mache. But, after a month of using solely paper for the bedding, it's worked out even better than straw!




Over-flow
A couple of times a week I fluff things up with the pitchfork and occasionally toss in tote-fulls of new paper. The only down side is that it is a little unsightly in the pasture. Like straw, it spills out the doorways when it sticks to chicken feet and boots. Another concern is the toxicity of ink and bleached paper in the compost. In my research on composting paper, it's hard to find definite answers. In some instances it seems as though the composting process has the ability to cleanse toxins from the heap, which would be desired when using either paper or straw. For now, I'm simply hoping that is the case.  I plan on getting my finished compost tested for toxins and for nutrient content in the near future.


To me the pros of eliminating straw from the barn far out weigh the cons. 
If you need bedding for your critters, consider networking with a local office for their shredded paper!