Establishing Roots
Photo by Christian Joudrey on Unsplash 
My small scale puttering has given me enough encouragement that I’m planning a LARGE garden plot when we finally arrive at 5 Dog Farm South. But what method to choose? Square Foot Gardening. Back to Eden. Permaculture. Raised beds. The list goes on...
My first attempt on our rental farm in Wisconsin. I tried a bit of everything.Well, like any good beginning you must have a solid foundation, so I asked myself “what’s the foundation of gardening”? I replied [as I’m inclined to do since the dogs won’t] that the answer is:
Nothing else will make my beginnings successful like a good soil base. Fortunately, I found out composting is enjoyable! I know. Weird. Taking all those bits of food, bills pieces of mail, chicken and rabbit poo and tossing them in my composter is so satisfying [it’s not that weird is it?]. I think it’s the chemistry of it all. If done right there are no flies, no smell and really no fuss. Ok, you guys may freak out when I start to discuss our plans for a humanure composting bin. There’s a deep satisfaction I have that our little farm is doing its part to bring goodness back to the soil. Good old dark, nutrient filled soil to give my oddball heirloom varieties a running start.
So now that we have a foundation, we need a method. As I mentioned above there are many to choose from. Too many to list here. I’ve tried straw-bales, raised beds, containers, mulching, and Square Foot Gardening all with their own success and failures. This time around I’ll be employing a combination of Permaculture and Back to Eden. They resonate with me.
And this is where the foundation and method meet. In other words: soil meets system. Back to Eden is all about the soil prep and mulching. We’ve covered the brilliance of soil prep. Mulching saves watering as it holds the water in like a sponge. Permaculture is centered on a whole systems approach relying on understanding the ecosystem around you. I could go on about Permaculture but let’s just say the whole concept makes sense to me.
Both these methods seem like a perfect fit for our farm but only time will tell. Like most things in life, nothings perfect.
The good news is you’re free to change your mind or switch things up a bit. Using a moon calendar will help me with daily to do’s. Or so it promises, we’ll see. But that’s what all this is about! Laying down a solid foundation so we can establish roots and then having the freedom to explore different ways to grow…wait… am I still talking about gardening?
What are your favorite gardening methods?
We have raised beds, but this year we are adding on about 5x more than last year. I'm still learning about soil and researching the best ways to go about it. We have tons of cow, goat, and chicken poo, but figuring out that perfect combo alludes me :(
We don't have cows yet and goats aren't in our future but we will be bringing in chickens. For chickens you have to let the poo sit ( you probably already know this...) it's considered "hot" and can burn your plants if you just plop onto your raised beds or garden area. I just toss it in the compost pile along with their coop shavings & the rest of our indoor compost items. I also want to have earthworms and am researching the best way to take care of them.
I loved my raised beds and may consider creating raised beds for my medicinal herb garden. I haven't solidified my plans yet but I'm giving serious consideration to having my medicinal garden in my own backyard and not part of the shared area. I can see myself going out to this particular garden daily so I'd like to have it in my Zone 1 area (which means things that you check on daily... should be close by to save steps & time).
Last year I started my first go at a greenhouse. Now that the soil I used is well spent, I need to beef it back up before I try to use it again. We have a spot we put all the animal litter and I plan on scooping out of that for my soil. It will be full of chicken poo, a little cow poo, vegetable scraps, and wood shavings. It's been sitting and slowly getting things added to it for almost 5 years now. One year it was covered in rogue tomato plants! That was quite a learning experience.
Thanks for sharing with us! Good luck! Do you have trouble with the dogs digging in your dirt? Ours broke into my greenhouse right after the season was over and dug through my containers!
Thank you! I created a pallet compost bin and fenced it. The dogs actually had no interest in it but we did have some rouge plants as well. The birds do enjoy poking about in the piles. We had a really big watermelon grow out of the pile. We just let it do it's thing!
Full Permaculture is the goal of our small farm to provide our family with all of our food needs for the future. Best to work with Mother Nature she always wins.
Absolutely. Once I learned about Permaculture all the puzzle pieces fit. It completely resonated with me. There will be some areas that I need to cultivate, for financial reasons, quickly but on the whole we want to work with our land to ensure it's viability and health for the future.