Organic gardening is more than just not using chemicals on your garden. To be successful, you need to create a healthy ecosystem. On February 12th, Carondelet Garden Urban Farm is offering a class on Composting and Rebugging the Garden. Come on out and check it out at the Carondelet Branch of the Saint Louis Public Library.
Class Handout:
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February 12th, I’m teaching a short class on insects in the garden at the Carondelet Branch of the St. Louis Public Library. Right now I’m working away at the handout and boy have I learned a lot putting this class together!
One of the main things I’ve learned is that to be a successful organic gardener, you need to do more than just stop using chemicals. There are several things that come up again and again to create a healthy garden that doesn’t need chemicals.
According to Wikipedia, “Ecosystem restoration is the return of a damaged ecological system to a stable, healthy, and sustainable state, often together with associated ecosystem services.”
Our yards are a small ecosystem. Chemical agriculture upsets the healthy functioning of that ecosystem on the promise of making our jobs easier. The sterilization of that ecosystem actually takes away the benefits of it’s healthy functioning.
Steps to Good Garden Management:
1. Choose the right plant. Each cultivar of plant responds to the environment in it’s own way. Save seeds, and swap seeds with neighbors. Seed saving allows us to grow plants that are specially in tune with our neighborhoods. Ordering seeds with special resistance may also help. After several generations of saving that seed, the seed will be even more attuned to your yard.
2. Rotate Crops. Insects go through a life cycle. Generally this means, egg, larvae, pupae, and adult. Each of these stages require different places to live and grow. By rotating crops, you break the insect life cycle by disrupting their tidy circle. Additionally, if you have a serious infestation in a season, insects that overwinter in the soil may be stopped by tilling that soil before planting a different crop in it in the spring.
3. Plant and harvest at the right time. By planning the planting and harvesting at the optimal time, you allow the plant to be healthier. Healthier plants resist diseases and predators more efficiently. Some plants may be planted in timing with the expected hatching of an insect to allow them to gain as much growth as possible before they descend upon the plant.
4. Remove plant residues. Plant residues harbor parts of the insect life cycle. They may also harbor pathogens. Remove these residues and compost them. Keep dead leaves cleaned from beds. Composting will raise the temperature during the decomposition process and kill many of the organisms in there.
5. Use proper amount of food and water. Don’t over water or over feed. Too much water can create an environment that allows pathogens to breed and multiply. Too much water also increases the salt deposited in the soil negatively impacting the soil health. Soil amendments may also impact the ability of the plants to grow effectively.
6. Preventative devices. Sticky traps, Foil Rings, Row Covers, and other innovative devices can work to your benefit. Things that crawl need paths to crawl on, by understanding your insect, you can help deter them from filling their needs to thrive.
7. Improve the soil. Healthy soil is the foundation for plants to grow and thrive. Test your soil. Use compost. Soil needs not just good organic matter, but a replacement of what has been taken from it by the plants. Compost your garden waste, kitchen waste, animal waste, etc.
8. Mulch Mulch is an amazing thing to increase water retention and over all soil quality. I use straw. This has radically changed the strata in which I grow my food. Mulch cuts down on my need to water and weed. It is a double edge sword however. While it allows beneficial insects to complete their life cycle, it also allows pests to as well. I tend to turn it under every other year and that seems to be a good solution for me.
9. Understand the insect life cycle. Know your enemy! Know your friends! If you know what they need, you can break the life cycle or encourage it. Also, if you know what all the stages of an insect look like, you can help yourself not eliminate something beneficial. A couple of years ago I found a fascinating bug in the garden. I had no idea what it was and I thought it was a spider. Come to find out it was a stage in the lady bug life cycle. Thank heavens I left it where it was.
10. Plant Borders Borders allow insects to complete their life cycles as well. Beneficial insects like flowers with spikes, umbrells, and daisy like heads. Because they are omnivorous, they lack the long mouthparts needed for large deep flowers. By inter-planting mints, queen anne’s lace, and echinacia like plants, you can keep the beneficial insects near your crops and increase the likelihood that they will be there to stop your pest.
11. Keep your landscape plants in good shape. Keep your landscape healthy and cleaned up. This will allow your insects that need it to utilize it to complete their life cycle. This will also allow other creatures to use your landscape as well. Native plantings will work better in your little ecosystem than exotic ornamentals.
12. Monitor for insect damage. Know when you have an infestation. Know what is in your yard. Use IPM to tweak everthing to your advantage.
13. Keep bird feeders in the garden. Feed your local birds. Build birdhouses, anything to attract them. Birds will not only eat the seeds, but come into the garden and help you clean it of insects. Between plantings, I allow my chickens to go through and clean in the garden. They aren’t allowed there all the time because they also love greens, but they do a great job getting grubs. Your native wild birds will also pick those pests off and help you just the same.
14. Try to encourage amphibians and reptiles. If you see a snake, leave it. If you see toads, leave them. These will also diminish your populations.
Try to keep things natural. Don’t give into marketing tactics that promise an easier time of it. Many of them are short term solutions and not long term. If you are going to do one thing from the list first, my recommendation would be to mulch, mulch, mulch. It has made it possible for me to garden without going crazy. I hate cultivating. I hate weeding. Good luck!
Posted in Edible Landscaping, Gardening, Insect control, Soil Improvement, Vegetable gardening
Tagged city gardeining, city gardening, garden, garden plan, gardening, Integrated Pest Management, ipm, organic gardening, urban chickens, urban farming, urban gardening, vegetable gardening, winter gardening
Anxiously awaiting for the cold to break drives me crazy every January. The cabin fever resulting from being indoors gives me a chance to plan and plot for the coming year’s garden. It also makes me horribly anxious to get planting. So anxious, I felt it wouldn’t hurt to get a jump start on some herbs. Things I can grow in pots on my windowsill. The herbs have sprouted and with them my hopes for the garden.
This is the month to plant cole crops if you want to push the season, but the best plant in my opinion is Mustard. Mustard is an amazing plant to me. I get giant leaves and after it goes to seed, I find mustard growing in every nook and cranny around the yard by fall. I have some in a pot on my porch that have survived the cold of winter. I noticed one yesterday in the cracks in my brick sidewalk. So easy to grow and excellent for cold weather. Tasty too.
Mustard can be harvested young for salad greens, or for sauteing or stewing. Large leaves should be cooked in a good stock or with a ham bone. Flowers can be used as edible garnish. The seed can be ground to make your own homemade mustard.
Plant mustard in flats or in rows 1/8th inch deep. Mustard will last quite a while before bolting in cold weather. In warm weather, it can bolt in as little as 30 days.
Varieties:
This is by no means a complete list, but it should be enough to send your imagination soaring. I tried not to include hybrids, please forgive me if I did. Kitazawa Seed Company seems to have the biggest selection of greens out there.
If you want to try something different, make your own mustard. There are many recipes out there for mustard sauce. I have had a lot of luck with this one that I redacted several years ago for a food festival. Amounts of everything are really flexible. If you want to start with the ground mustard seed and experiment with the amounts of other ingredients you will probably find interesting combinations that suit your pallet more than this one.
Medieval Mustard
Toast mustard seed in a dry cast iron skillet until it begins to pop. Grind it in a mortar. Add honey, wine and vinegar to make a thick paste. Thin as desired with more wine. If you prefer a sweeter mustard, add more honey. Substitute vinegar and wine as desired to alter flavor.
(Based on recipe in “The Forme of Cury” ca. 1390 Lumbard Mustard)
I read A LOT. It occurred to me that it might be helpful to pass along some of the things I have on my bookshelf. Last summer my brother sent me a copy of “The Vegetarian Myth” by Lierre Keith. What a fantastic book. The information is astounding and seems to be well researched.
The book is set up into chapters based on all the different arguments you hear when you are a vegetarian. This author has apparently heard them all and remembered them. I spent time as a vegetarian and I never felt better. It is part of my discovery of my love of food. Being a vegetarian opens you up to so many things out of necessity. I don’t feel like there is enough time in the world for me to eat everything I want to eat. Getting married and having children caused me to rethink and incorporate meat back into my diet. All these arguments covered in this book were said to me at one time or another.
These are the major chapters:
What was I? I was a vegetarian because after moving into the city I started having horrible skin conditions. It took me a long time to figure out that I react poorly to meat additives. I like meat, I love sausage. I can’t stand fake meat. It wasn’t that I was opposed to the morals of eating things with eyes, I was opposed to being sick all the time. Eating a locally produced organic diet serves me just as well. Many of the points covered in this volume emphasize this understanding.
I enjoyed this book. The writing style often belabors the points being made, but there is good information available to the reader. I also like the endless resources to back up the authors claims. It’s an easy read and doesn’t take long. If you are interested in food security issues and diet this is an excellent read. Bear with the author, the journey may seem a bit long at times, but overall the areas of thought that are opened up are well worth the time.
People interested in Geoff Lawton’s permaculture and Joel Salatin’s ideas will also find this fascinating reading.
Happy Reading!
Click on the link above to purchase this book and support this blog!
The side yard went through some radical change last week. Two of the principle players of the Carondelet Urban Farm, Mark and Handy Dan came over and set up this lovely functional pig pen in the side yard. The farm has a pair of pigs at another location breeding for food.
In about an hour and a half, Spiderpig was in his new home! What am I going to do with him you ask? I don’t know. My main concern was a constant source of manure. The rabbits and chickens just don’t provide enough.
He’s a neat little guy, a micropig. We feed him restaurant scraps and help the community be more sustainable. He couldn’t be easier to take care of and he is enjoyable company. I keep straw for his bedding which keeps the smell down and look forward to cleaning out the hog floor for the garden.
The chickens like him too.
Adding livestock to the garden increases the output of vegetables and makes gardening a more satisfying experience overall.
This is what I am reading this month. (Click on the picture to buy and help support this blog!) Hopefully I can get a review out soon. It’s really geared to raising regular hogs in a hog operation, but I think it will provide useful information to having a pig in the yard.
One of the topics that seems to hang most people up about gardening is how to go about planning it. Last night at Iron Barley, I spoke to a packed house on this issue for the Carondelet Community Urban Farm. It was a blast, but unfortunately we did not make enough handouts to meet the demand. To rectify that for those that were there, here is the handout:
We had a lot of great questions last night and hope to be able to go more in depth in future installations of our Urban Tech series. Stay tuned for more classes! If you have any questions about garden planning, or would like some time with a consultant please contact us at the garden on facebook and we will see what we can do. This is all volunteer and we will be able to help as we have time.
One of the main pieces of advice I can give you is know yourself and start small. Make a list of common vegetable you can eat. Start with the easy ones. Find a style of gardening that works with your mental state. I don’t like a lot of work but don’t mind putting in some effort to get it off the ground right so I choose biointensive planting. I really hate to water the garden. Some people hate to dig more than water so Lasagna Gardening might be the way to go.
This is the time of year that seed catalogs come in daily. Sit down with them and fantasize. In addition to a few standards, pick something that looks fun. After you get the basic garden planned out, think about crops that might fit in the beds before the tomatoes are out or after you harvest your broccoli. But remember each step adds complexity, don’t get carried away.
Keep a journal. Hobby Farm has a great printout available on line to help you in that endeavor. When the season is over, think about how much you can comfortably expand next year, try to keep it small enough to be fun and not overwhelming.
Good Luck.
Click on the pictures below to purchase helpful books on this topic (and help support this blog):
Perfectly good chicken coops and where do they roost? On the roof. Never mind the perfectly good and plentiful roosts.
Posted in Chickens
We manage to enclose the two coops today. It took a while to get the chickens from the tree. Head pounding apples and chickens who roost higher and higher are not a good combination. I’m leaving the coops open so they can work out their new spots themselves.I’m particularly proud that we managed to catch “Satan” the rooster.
Now for a much deserved cider and then on to give the rabbits their treats.
Put the old hens in with this years batch. That should be interesting in the morning. Fat Mama is by herself with her eggs in the A-frame chicken tractor. I put down 6-10 inches of straw in case the bumbles actually hatch and need to bounce. Tomorrow might be day 20 on an egg or two. One looked like it would be about day 12. Don’t know if there will be any success with the hatching but it’s pretty riviting to watch. I’ve already learned a lot even if no chicks come of it.
Posted in Chickens
This morning my neighbours called frantically after scaring a hawk off of their coop. Apparently it swooped into my yard from there. I have a pretty awesome rooster, so I have high hours that the girls are ok. Hawk attacks are my least favourite. They take the heads and drop the bodies. Very gruesome.
If you haven’t been keeping up with the blog, because of the heat, I have been letting the chickens stay out at night. This can be good and bad. Today is an example of potentially bad. I have provided the chickens with plenty of cover so it’s hard for me to do a hess count when they are freaked out.
There are some hiding. What worries me are these pics:
On the plus side, yesterday I candled the eds under the broody hen and found 50s with babies in them. I don’t need mitre chickens, but the temptation to see the prices overwhelmed me. Well she be a good mom, I don’t know. She is a retired later I picked up last year and was slated for the chopping block at her next molt. By the end of the day she will have a chicken tractor and fresh straw all of her own. All the eggs that are fertile come from my one year old turken who bred with a redcap rooster and a lakenvelter rooster. The candle at around 10 to 18 days development. Should be interesting.
My husband is close to completing a new enclosure for the rest. If it is done by the end of the day, new importation will be starting tonight. There are two new coops in the enclosure so lots to choose from. Mama gets to keep the chicken tractor she is in. lots of straw will be added because even though even though my brother assures me bubbles bounce, I don’t want any little babies falling out of the best, I definitely want to give them something soft to land on.
If she works out, I hope to use her to hatch cochins for the neighbour so they don’t have to buy an incubator.
Another piece of good news is that I will soon receive some restaurant leftovers to supplement all their diets. My husband is off on an adventure starting tuesday where he will work outside the country in an effort to get us caught up financially. 6 months of unemployment have taken their toll sadly. Without him here, I won’t have the kitchen scraps I normally do. My kids hate food apparently. If I make something good to easy there just won’t be the normal waste we have when cooking for four.
Wish us luck! There was rain last night, I can only take that as a sign of positive things to come.
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Here are our new turkeys. They don’t get to roam free, but the turkens are working hard to dig them out. Sweet little guys currently. Hope I can fatten them up in time for the holidays. It will be an interesting experiment to see how they do in this setting.
Notice all the apple carcasses? We are always overrun with fruit flies in the summer because of all the fruit trees. This year, the chickens are doing a good job keeping up with the dropped apples. Boy are the eggs good right now. As an added bonus, we don’t feel like the fruit flies are going to carry the house away. This is pretty great in my mind. I feel bad because we like to take the dropped apples to my brother’s pigs, but their share will definitely be smaller this year. There are still plenty of bird picked ones on the trees.
Posted in Small stock for the City
