Winter Cover Crops

During the winter, Tom plants "cover crops" on the fields.  Cover crops serve two purposes.  First, they keep the soil from blowing away in the wind which is definitely a problem here in Oklahoma.   And, second, they add nutrients to the soil.  Here is a picture of one of our fields where Tom planted a cover crop this winter.

There are actually 2 different cover crops interplanted on this field, rye and Austrian winter peas.   The rye is a cereal grain that is suppose to secrete a substance that inhibits the growth of certain weeds and can also help in nematode control.  The Austrian winter peas are "legumes" whose roots contain nitrogen-fixing bacteria that add nitrogen to the soil.

Here is a close-up picture where you can see both types of plants.  There is some henbit in there, too.  Just forget that is there.  Obviously, THAT is not one of the winter weeds that rye is suppose to kill!

In the early spring, Tom tills the cover crops under.  You can see an example of this in the top picture.  The solid green in the foreground is the part of the cover crop that has not been tilled.  Then there is a strip of land where he has run the roto-tiller over a section of the cover crop.  He does this 3-4 weeks before he plans to plant the field.  This gives the plant material time to disintergrate somewhat so it does not interfere with the planting process.

Mulching to Kill Grass

All the gardens I have ever had have "evolved" over time.  Rather having a plan, I tend to pick a spot for the garden and dig up an area, starting small and enlarging it each year.  Sigh.  I know this goes against all the garden books and magazines, but that is just the way I work best.  It is difficult for me to "imagine" what something is going to look like until I actually get the area worked up and put plants in it.  If something doesn't work out, then I can always dig it up and put it somewhere else!

To me that is the great thing about gardening.  It is like an oil painting.  I've heard that underneath certain paintings by some of the great artists, they have discovered areas that have been painted over.  So, perhaps even da Vinci and Rembrandt made mistakes or changed their minds and had to redo their works.

Anyway, to get to the point, this past weekend, my garden experienced another evolution.  There is an area between the raised beds that is covered in grass and is difficult to get to with the riding lawnmower.  So, we have to use the push mower to mow it and it just did not get mowed as often as was needed. 

All winter, I pondered what to do about this area and decided to try to smother the grass out with mulch and newspaper.   Here is what it looked like about a fourth of the way into the project.

I had a stack of newspapers I'd saved over the winter.  And, Tom had some bags of leaves he collected last fall that he was willing to donate.  I laid a layer of newspapers 5 - 6 papers thick on the ground making sure that I overlapped them at least 6 inches.  Then I dumped bags of leaves on top of the papers.

I figured out pretty quickly that I could only work a small area at a time.  Otherwise, the papers would blow away, even with just a light breeze, like this:

I used bricks and whatever I could find to weight the papers down to keep them from blowing.  It took a couple of hours and here is the finished project.

There is still a small strip at the far end I want to cover with mulch and I haven't quite figured out what to do as an edging between where the leaves end and the grass begins.  But, that is something I can ponder on this week and work on next weekend. 

Like I said.....a garden is a work of art in progress.

A Tribute to Kelsey Dog

This blog is mostly about our farming adventures, as well as my own attempts at recycling and sustainable living.  Since we have pets (2 dogs and a cat currently), I sometimes include stories about them, too.  They provide us with many hours of companionship and enjoyment.  Maybe they fill a hole left in our lives when our kids grew up and left home.  At any rate, they are very much a part of our lives.

About 6 months ago, one of our older dogs, Kelsey, died.  She had been having health problems for a year or so and I knew it was time to let her go, but it was difficult, none the less.  Shortly after she died, I wrote this tribute to her that I have decided to share here because I'm sure others have gone through the loss of a pet and have felt the same way.  Here is a picture of Kelsey and her story follows.

The first time I saw her was at our local Humane Society. It was summer, probably June or July, and she was lying on the cement floor of the kennel panting. She was a long-haired, matted mess of a dog, and you could tell she was hot and miserable.


I was there because I had decided to become a volunteer. I was in my late 40s. My kids were all grown and this seemed like the perfect time to volunteer for a worthy cause.
So, here I was and here was this dog. In those days, the shelter was terribly overcrowded. I was supposed to take the dogs out and walk them and this dog certainly looked like she could use a walk. So, I put the leash on her and off we went. You could tell that she was happy and thankful to be out of the pen. But, she didn’t pull and strain on the leash like most of the dogs. She bounced around and kept looking back at me, waiting for me and seeming to enjoy my company.

I went back a couple of times that week. Each time I checked in on her and took her for a walk. I worried that she would not be adopted because she looked so bad and smelled even worse. Finally, I asked the shelter manager if there was any way we could get her cleaned up and groomed. He said there was a groomer in town who would groom the dogs for free; we just had to find transportation to take them there. I told him I would be happy to take her to the groomer. So, he arranged an appointment and I took her to be groomed.

When I went back to get her, I could not believe my eyes. Here was this beautiful dog with long silky hair that smelled wonderful. It was getting late and the shelter would be closing soon, so I used that as an excuse to take her home with me to spend the night. I insisted to myself that I would take her back to the shelter the next day. And I did.

However, they had already placed another dog in the run where she had been. So, I had to leave her in one that did not have access to the outside. I hated to leave her there again as she looked at me with those big brown eyes. I knew it was only a matter of a few days until she would be a dirty, smelly mess again.

I can’t remember how long it was before I went back to check on her. It may have only been a couple of hours, but for sure it was less than 24. At any rate, I took her out of the kennel and into the shelter office. The manager asked if I was bringing her back. I told him NO that there had been a complication. The complication being that I wanted to adopt her. He wasn’t going to charge me the full adoption fee, but I insisted on paying it because they needed the money and she was definitely worth it.

Her name was Kelsey, or at least that is the name they had given her at the shelter, and it never occurred to me to change it. So, Kelsey she was. Her background was sketchy. She was a young dog, probably less than a year old.  She was a mixed breed, but a little research quickly revealed that she was “mostly” Keeshond, thus the long hair and the spectacles around her eyes.

She came into a household that already had 2 other dogs. Lucy Dog, a little rat terrier mix, ruled the roost. She was a stray who had followed our son home from school one day, won our hearts and stayed. And, Cardinal, another shelter dog we had volunteered to foster, and who we eventually adopted as well.

Kelsey was the youngest one of the dogs and had the most energy. She used to lie under the wind-chime and chase the reflections that it cast on the ground in the sunlight. We found that she would chase flashlight beams as well. She never quite knew what to do when she actually caught the light, but she liked to play these games for a couple of years until I guess she outgrew it.

Our lives get busy, life goes along and slowly slips by. You begin to notice things about your dogs that make you realize they are aging …. a graying of hair around the muzzle, they no longer are able to jump up on the bed or the couch, they need help getting in and out of the car. You wonder how this has happened without you being aware of it. Where has the time gone?

Kelsey died last week. She was 13 or 14 as far as we could tell. Lucy and Cardinal preceded her in death.  But, Kelsey’s death kind of marks the end of an era. The “era” being the time of my life between when my kids left home and the age at which I am beginning to think about retirement.  Maybe this is what is making Kelsey’s death so hard for me to accept, the fact that with this dog’s passing, I see my own life slipping by as well.

I know there are people who would not understand my sadness at losing Kelsey. I also know that these people have missed one of God’s special gifts to humankind, the gift of loving and being loved by a pet.

Start Your Own Seeds

You don't have to be a professional farmer to start your own tomato and pepper plants.  It is easy.  Here's how you do it.

1)  Save one of those clear plastic boxes like cherry tomatos come in at the grocery store.

2)  Cut some newspaper to fit the box.  I use 2 layers of newspaper in each box.  Trim the corners and cut slits in them so they will not bunch up in the corners.

3)  Put the liner in the box.

4)  Add potting soil to the box and sprinkle a package of seed on top.  Be sure to make a tag to identify the seeds. 

5) Cover the seed with a little bit more potting soil and water well.  Then, close the lid, cut a slit in it for the tag and place the box on a heating mat under a light.

6)  After a few days you will see tiny plants poking their heads up through the soil. 

Once the plants begin to get their second set of leaves, you can gently separate them and plant them in larger pots.  Then, it is just a matter of keeping them watered and watching them grow!

Mint in Herb Garden - Bad Idea

If you have been reading this blog, you know that I started it in January 2010, about 9 months after we moved from our house in town where we had lived for over 25 years and which sat on a small city lot.  We moved to our 5-acres where we grow vegetables for our local farmers' market.  (See post from January 19, 2010.)

At that time, I grew a variety of herbs in our backyard in town.  So, in addition to moving our furniture, we also moved most of my herbs.  But, by the time we got to the herbs, we were running out of time, as well as energy and stamina.  So, for the most part, we just dug them up and put them in pots.   As I had time that spring, I would grab a couple of pots, take them out to the raised bed that Tom had prepared for me to use as an herb garden and plant them where ever I could find room.  There was not much planning that went into it.

They say "haste makes waste" and that saying came home to me this past summer.  Unfortunately, one of the herbs I had planted right in the middle of the herb garden was a pot of chocolate mint.  Now, if you know much about herbs, and mint in particular, you know you should contain mint with some sort of barrier, or else plant it where it will not bother other plants as it spreads.   That first year it seemed innocent enough and I actually worried whether or not it was going to survive because it looked somewhat sick for most of that first summer.

What I failed to realize was that it was using all its energy to send out runners underground.  I didn't know how bad it was until this past summer when it became apparent that it had taken over a good portion of the herb bed!  I didn't have time to deal with it at the time, so I just tried to keep it from spreading any more. 

Finally, last week during a spell of nice weather, I bit the bullet and began digging it up.  Here's a picture of what it looked like when I was about a fourth of the way finished.

All of that dead-looking stuff to the right of the shovel is the mint.  It looks dead, but I can assure you that it is very much alive because underneath that dead material is a sea of green runners just waiting to break forth for another assault in an attempt to consume the rest of the garden! 

As I dug it up, I put it on my garden wagon and trucked if over to an area beside the shed where Tom had roto-tilled a strip of ground for me to replant it.  It can spread as much as it wants to there without interfering with anything else. 

I worked on it an hour or so and ended up calling in the "big guns" (Tom) to help me.  But, we finally got it all removed and here is the result.

I know we probably missed some of the mint runners, but I'll dig those up as I find them this summer.  I'm just glad to have the mint gone and will try to be a bit better at planning when it comes to where I plant things!

Soil Temperature Thermometer

A handy, inexpensive tool to have for a garden is a soil thermometer because, as it turns out, different seeds sprout best at different soil temperatures.  There are many resources on the internet to help you determine what to plant at what temperatures.  For example, the link below takes you to a chart that lists many of the most common vegetables along with the minimum and maximum temperatures at which their seeds will sprout, as well as the optimum temperature.

http://www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/A/ANR-1061/ANR-1061.pdf

We have a soil thermometer that I used last week to determine the temperature of the soil inside our hoophouse (also called a "high tunnel".... basically an unheated greenhouse).  Here's what it registered:

I was amazed to see that the soil temperature was almost 60 degrees, especially since just the week before, we had recorded an all-time record low temperature of -20 degrees!  So, I decided to see what the soil temperature was outside the hoophouse.  Here's what I discovered:

That is 15 degrees difference between the soil inside versus the soil outside. 

Now compare these temperatures to the chart pointed to in the link above and you'll see that many seeds can be planted outside even in mid-February.  Spinach and lettuce seed will germinate at 35 degrees, just slightly above freezing, while beets, cabbage, carrots, radish and swiss chard will germinate at 40 degrees.  However, the optimum range of temperatures for germination for most of these starts at 45 to 50 degrees.  Since the temperature inside our hoophouse is 60 degrees, we are able to jump-start most of the cool season seeds listed in the chart in our hoophouse.

You can accomplish the same thing on a small scale with an inexpensive "cold frame", like those shown below.  (You can see our hoophouse in the background.)

You can find plans for making these on the internet.  But, I'll post directions for building the ones we have here in a later post.

Recycling Bedding Pots

My last post showed the results of the blizzard we had on February 1.  It was a huge snow storm for Oklahoma and I was off work three days!  Then this week, we had a repeat.  Another snow storm dumped snow on us.  This storm did not have as much wind as the first one, but it brought really frigid temperatures that broke records for the coldest temperatures ever recorded in Oklahoma.  And, I was off work yet another day.

Tom and I stayed inside for the most part and made ourselves useful by washing some of the plastic pots that we saved from last year's bedding plants.  Every year we set out a couple of hundred tomato, pepper, basil and other herb plants.  We save the plastic pots that these are grown in and recycle those that are salvadgeable.  This keeps them out of the landfill and also saves us quite a bit of money to boot.

Here is my pot-washing setup:

I have the perfect place to do this in a small bathroom just off our laundry room that has a shower.   I fill a large plastic tub with warm water and add dishwashing detergent along with a small amount of bleach.  I use a long handled brush to scrub the pots.  Then I set them on the bottom of the shower and rinse them with clean water using one of those shower heads attached to a hose, as you can see.  Tom usually stacks them for me on towels that he spreads out on the floor and vanity.  It is a tiny bathroom, so there really is not much room.  And, after 45 minutes or so, we have every available inch of space covered!

It is a good way to make use of time when we cannot go outside.  So, pardon me while I go wash some more pots!