North Texas Vegetable Gardeners Forum
General => Show Us Your Garden => Topic started by: Daniel Wood on June 29, 2014, 08:16:26 PM
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Alright well we are just finally getting settled into our new place and now the garden is next in line. Found out the yard has not been fertilized in over 5 years (which is awesome for me) and started planning on what is the best spot for garden. After I found out the path of sun I started cleaning up the yard racking old leaves and dead grass and mixing with the fresh grass I just mowed. Collect spent coffee grounds from Starbucks about 3 wheel barrows full and about 5 wheelbarrow loads of horse manure layered up like lasagna and cooking hot. I have the area that is going to be a garden just pinned off to keep dog out and letting "weeds" and grass grow to condition the soil. Put down a nice heavy dose of Azomite to let that break in. Should be able to have a nice fall garden set up in time for broccoli and such.
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This at first was just yard clippings and left over leaves I ran over with the mower to get them nice and torn up. Then I started collecting coffee grounds from Starbucks and horse manure from a friend wit horses and layered it like lasagna dry grass and leaves, manure, coffee. Should be some good stuff. My goal is to not spend any money on compost and only money spent for soil is some azomite and Mycorrhiza.
This is 4 foot tall and 6 foot wide.
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and also were I live I can get as much free mulch as I am willing to shovel into a trailer. So what I am going to do when my compost is done I am going to dig up where my rows are going to be and put about 6 inches of mulch down put coffee grounds on top and then put horse manure over that then mix my compost with the top few inches of dirt of row and place back over the mix.
Do you have any thoughts on this being good or bad idea? I know the mulch can hold onto nutrients but I figure at 18 inches deep it should not be an issue and feeding with compost on the top layers should keep all the nutrients my plants can handle. This should make a nice place for the mycorrhiza to live and make some real nice lower soil over a couple years.
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Started some Squash seedlings they say you can direct seed in 4 weeks (August 3rd) but I figured I would try this. In each pot I put 3 squash seeds, 3 marigold seeds, 3 dill seeds, and 3 oregano seeds all in there own holes. Trying companion planting from the start and lets see what happens.
There are multiple varieties of squash: Sugar Baby Watermelon, Cantaloupe, Cocozelle, Zuchinni, Prolific Straightneck, Pattison Pancake, and Spagetti.
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Stopped by the nursery today and got some tomato and bell pepper starts.
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California Wonder Bell Pepper
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Left to Right Cherokee Purple, Red Cherry, Solar Flare tomatoes
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San Marzano Tomatoes
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I saw that Don Lambert uses his walkway rows to make compost in his community garden. Every x years, they go through and harvest the compost under the walkways and put in new mulch(wood chips).
I'm curious how your idea will work. In hugekultur beds, they use large pieces of wood (logs) and bury them with 2 foot of soil. Your mulch will have lots of surface area and lots of nitrogen, so maybe the composting action will be much faster?
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love all the pictures by the way! You will come across these again 5 years from now and remember all the fun again!
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These are the first sprouts Cocozelle Squash, Cantaloupe, and Prolific Straightneck Squash.
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Going to make a screen out of 1/4 hardware cloth and separate out all the fine material from chunky material. Then going to bury the chunky stuff about 2 feet deep in my garden rows and mix the top 5 or 6 inches of fine compost with native soil to make garden bed. Should be some good stuff.
http://s1243.photobucket.com/user/mitocondriac/library/Compost-Mulch%20day%207-4-14?sort=4&src=pb&page=1
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Squash 2 days after sprouting.
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I only made 3 rows of my hugulkulture experiment and may go to a raised beds in the front side of my garden next spring.
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love all the pictures by the way! You will come across these again 5 years from now and remember all the fun again!
It took 10 years but here I am looking back at all of this.