Our Little Plan
Gardening not by the book

OK, maybe I don't know everything. But this I do know: Those to whom we have left the decisions have not done a very good job. The reason does not matter; I do not trust them for the food I eat or the water I drink.

Since the consequences are the price I have to pay, then the mistakes should be mine as well.

Follow our silly little plan and see what you think.

Humans eat soil. That's the bottom line, and that is where the study began. There are a myriad of books that will tell you about pH and soil amendments.

It's a wonder that anything survived without the hand of man, and we are doing a fine job now.

Let me simplify: If you use it, don't waste it. What you don't use, put it back, or let it be.

This applies to soil, water, and the air we breathe. Put back the grass clippings and the potato peels, (if you are that picky); the plants will replace the air. By keeping the soil active with a constant supply of fresh organic material (mulch) soil moisture is conserved, and the soil balance will be just as the Creator balanced it.

Chickens are our gardeners. Buff Orpingtons are our choice, as they are the color of a gold watch, lay golden brown eggs, and are good company.

They mow the lawn - or at least they will when I move the new flock out. They will prepare the next seed beds by removing the grass and lightly fertilizing the soil beneath.

The seeds are placed on this hot and ready ground and then covered with mulch. We grow our own mulch in the form of buckwheat, clover, and alfala. We save the seed from small patches to replant. We do not buy hybrid seed of any kind.

Herbs are a study unto themselves and we have begun with a couple of dozen. Teas and poultices are the main focus, but also pennyroyal as a mosquito repellant (it works!) and - oh, why not - here is our beginning list:

Sweet basil, caraway, coriander, sweet marjoram, parsley, St. John's wort, cumin, (love that chili) horehound, chamomile, peppermint, lavendar, dill, English thyme, summer savory, borage, (for courage) spearmint, arugula, purple coneflower. The yucca sits proudly on the pump house/root cellar. We still need feverfew and several others.

See the preservation links page for info on these. There are a few newsletters from very knowledgeable and helpful people.

We also grow barley, wheat, millet, amaranth, grain and sweet sorghum, oats, soybeans, and Navajo and Hopi corn. We grow mangel wurtzels (a kind of sugar beet that weighs 10 pounds) for the chickens. Ten chickens take a whole day to mangel one wurtzel.

Grasshoppers are 70 percent protein, and those that escape the chickens will make great munchies.

Before I go further I should tell you that we only have about one-half acre of usable ground, so our grain beds are small. We are not going to mess with grinding these all day long, but are growing them for our seed banks, some to sprout, and some for chicken scratch.

If we do decide to try baking bread, it is good to know that the dusty looking stuff on grapes is actually yeast - and a little leavens the whole lump.

A chicken will eat a bushel of grain a year and this would use one-twentieth of an acre, so our little flock of ten would use every bit of our food growing space. The paths between the raised garden beds will supply clover to fill this gap.

We use a reel pusher mower (remember those?) to mow the areas we can't let the chickens on at certain times.

We have 3 pear, 2 apple, 3 cherry, 1 plum, 2 apricot, a plethora of mulberry, and 1 persimmon, Also 5 blackberries and 3 grapes.

Buckwheat and clover grows in the orchard and the chickens are let on this to clean up any fallen fruits and any pests that may have developed in them.

As an aside, chickens will eat potato bugs, but will not eat potato plants. Ha.

The alfalfa is on the front parking and the county kindly mows this for us.

The garden crops are as you would expect, with peas, potatoes, and grains going in early. Our first experiments with starting seeds in the greenhouse attached to the house have not been exciting, but we are learning. The difficulty is regulating the temperature with a wood-burning stove.

At this time we also have propane, but we have our doubts about the continuing availability of this.

We do not plant any more in our spring garden than we can readily use.

In the fall we plant our main crops of corn, winter squash, beans, (The Three Sisters) and the Anglo version of storable crops: potatoes, onions, and carrots.

All of the above foods can be kept without canning or freezing. The root crops can be left in the ground by mulching heavily over them, but we need the space for winter wheat and rye. We will also need our mulch to protect the berries through the winter.

Wise people have said that if you have two dollars spend one on bread and one on flowers. Two lilacs and many bulb plants for early spring, with the expectation of a summer display of everything we could think of.

By the front door - which is actually the back - we await the season to plant morning glories, four-o-clocks, and moonflowers between and around the lilacs. Gardenias and night-blooming jasmine are on the wish list.

We hope to have days with nothing to do but watch this succession of opening and closing of these pretty little brothers and sisters. Good work if you can get it.

As the place becomes more critter friendly we are visited by rabbits, quail, cardinals, and if we are really good maybe that house wren will settle in that old stump by the mulberry tree.

This bird is an orchard guardian, she will not eat the fruit - only the insects - and she will not allow any other birds within 50 yards of her nest. I wonder who thought of such a thing?

The southeast corner of this (total) acre we have put aside as a wildlife refuge. Branches trimmed from our firewood are piled up and the rabbits and birds use this little motel. Each year in the fall we break the branches that are by now dried - to use for kindling - and start a new pile.

We are planting a small grain belt across the corner and some berry shrubs to help the cardinals through the winter. The activity is picking up down there and a feeling of peace grows.

The mason bees that I stupidly sprayed are beginning to return - God is kind - and they will be our main pollinators of the orchard. These look like bumblebees, but are gentler and will keep the wasps in abeyance.

The house and store have a combined roof area of 3,000 square feet, and rain comes off this in a torrent. One man's ceiling is another man's floor - so said Paul Simon - and this runoff will be a blessing when I get the water tanks in.

For now, we are grading the ground in a gentle slope to help drainage away from the house. Does anyone know what a mattock is? It is faster than a rototiller and works up a raging appetite. Good for the serratus magnus and latissimus dorsi, also.

Strategic planting of sunflowers are part of the drainage system, with their thick stems acting as siphons under the eaves and around the leach field area - hopefully isolating the greywater soil from the garden.

As an extra precaution we plant the chicken grains in the next strip out from the sunflowers. This breaks the vector in the food chain from soil to human.

We have begun with a simple solar system, and are adding double pane glass all the way across the south side. The optimum spacing between glass is 1 1/2 inches, so you might consider the relative effectiveness of those factory units with only 1/4 inch or so. I do not recommend them.

And while on the subject, aluminum loses heat at 70 times the rate of wood. A single pane greenhouse kit with an aluminum frame is like pouring your money down a rathole.

For wood heat in the store we are building a barrel stove - double kit - and you can find the info on the links page. Instead of the short stove pipe between the bottom and top barrels, I will extend the stove pipe through the attic and put the top barrel up there.

Since the top unit is airtight, it will be a radiator without any smoke leakage. The bottom unit I will encase in the firebrick from the chimney I had to remove.

This passive heat storage will be augmented by a rank of water heater tanks - inner tank only - that are arrayed vertically at the north of the plant growing area.

The idea is to take advantage of the daily solar "flywheel." Sun stores heat in the day, then a small wood fire to augment the payback and carry the plants through the zero nights.

Though rabbits will contribute 25 per cent of the heat to the space in which they live, (those are not just ears, they are heat fins) we have decided against them.

We are gradually getting away from power tools and sawing a board with a hand saw is a satisfaction that must be felt to be appreciated. So is playing in the dirt.

Since we are only seven miles from town, the bicycle goes into use when the weather is better, though I have walked to town before - took 2 hours and 20 minutes - so I was doing three miles per hour.

The bike should cut it down to about half-hour and it's a pretty trip.

That's enough - I think you get the idea. Again, I recommend the preservation links page, as there is still the handling of waste to consider, and the refinements some would be interested in, such as electricity.


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