Last week, we discussed squash and I promised I would do an article on getting ready for next spring. This method of preparing a garden bed works great at this time of the year and can be used to transform any piece of land into a fertile garden, or at least, more fertile. It is also a useful technique to renovate a weedy garden bed.
We started doing this when we became too old and tired to dig garden beds and to our surprise, it was a much more effective technique than digging. When we dig a garden bed, we disturb the thin layer of organic matter at the top of the soil and it gets buried deep where no tender little roots can find it. Digging is also very heavy work and hard on the back if not done with great attention.
To make a new garden bed, the first thing I like to do is to trim or flatten the weedy growth down. It is all good organic matter so don’t worry about hauling it away. I then lime the area until it is white with lime. If this is a new bed, you can scarcely put too much lime on as our soils are very acidic from the winter rains. Rainwater is slightly acidic but we get so much of it it turns our soils acid and leaches out the nutrients. Acidic soil is infertile soil.
Next, if the soil is a heavy clay, I like to add a couple of inches of sand. Sand is also good to add to gravel soils. Now, for some odd reason, gardeners are taught that sand plus clay equals concrete. I challenge anyone holding this view to come see the black, fluffy concrete in my garden beds. Farmers know the best thing to lighten heavy soils is sand. But, I hear you ask, do we not have to dig the sand in to get a good effect? I say no! Leave it to the unhired help!
After the lime and sand, I layer the beds with stable waste, leaves and seaweed that is sustainably harvested. The seaweed is important as our soils need to be refreshed with the many minerals and trace elements found in seaweed. The seaweed also holds the leaves in place during storms.
Once you have built up the beds eight or ten inches high, the unhired help has lots of food and shelter and places to rear their babies. You will have created an ecosystem. The worms will proliferate in these conditions and they will eat all the tasty goodies you have put down and they will tunnel from the goodies into the soil.
This tunnelling into the soil mixes in the sand and the lime as well as the organic matter from their manure. The worm tunnels add oxygen to the soil and allow rain water to seep deep into the soil, replenishing the groundwater we pump out for domestic use.
Once the spring comes, I like to plant large seedlings into the thick mulch. In a year where there are a lot of slugs, I will use organic-slug bait for a couple of weeks before I plant out my seedlings. This will reduce the level of damage done by slugs. The slug bait I use is comprised of little bits of pasta with a lot of iron in it. The level of iron is toxic to slugs but does no harm t other creatures and releases a trace of iron into the soil which is not a bad thing. If a snake eats a slug poisoned in this manner, no harm comes to it.
If I want to plant potatoes, I can push the potato down into the mulch and cover it with more mulch. I find I have to be vigilant in adding more mulch over time. If I fail to do this, the potatoes begin to peek out of the mulch and become exposed to the sun, turning green and becoming unfit to eat. For this reason, we dig trenches for the potatoes, fill the trench with stable waste and more sand and plant the potatoes, pulling a cover of soil over the filled trench and then covering the soil with more mulch. This is about the only crop we dig for. We often find huge cobblestones in our clay soil and these are useful around the farm for building cairns which act as shelters for grass snakes and other creatures.
This technique works great for flower beds too. Perennial flowers love the mulch and it keeps down the weeds and conserves water in the dry summers. I grow annual flowers in little pots and plant them out where I think I have some room. The ferocity of growth in my flower gardens means they usually get away from me but that is just because I don’t have enough time and energy for all I try to do. The flowers are worth it all. I asked a flower judge once how competitors could do better at flower shows and she said, “Fertilize your flowers!”
