Spring Runnings-Around

It's that time of year when suddenly everything is bursting into busy-ness and also the contents of my garden are growing like crazy! It makes for a busy life trying to keep up with work, school, impending graduation and exams, and also launching my garden into the summer! I've been feeling a bit scattered, wishing I was able to blog in a bit more comprehensible and frequent fashion, but you'll just have to deal with my tangential meanderings for a little while longer. Thanks for sticking with me :)

Here are some things that have been happening lately:

I had to get rid of my worm bin, and release the poor worms into nature. They were having a hard time for quite awhile, and I tried and tried to change the environment in their bin, without success. Last week it was getting to the point where six or eight of them would escape every day, and I felt bad for them and also got tired of cleaning dried-up worms off my kitchen floor--ewwww. So I am now making peace with having to put all of my food scraps in the trash, with no other means to compost where I currently live. I just have to remember that I am being conscientious about it, and I won't always live here. 

I finally took down the lights under my kitchen table, so foot room has been restored. On Sunday I took my tall teenage tomatoes to the garden and got them in the ground- the first ones in the entire community garden! I always jump the gun on tomatoes, but I'm doing better than last year, when I was planting them out in mid-March. As it is, we're past the last frost date and this whole week is forecast to be sunny and 75 degrees, so I think they'll acclimate just fine. 

I finally did some of my community service time (all garden members have to do a certain number of hours of work on communal spaces like paths) and weeded and re-mulched the path on the north side of my plot, which was a veritable quack grass patch. It all looks so much nicer now. 

 The remaining starts from under the lights have moved into my east-facing window. These are all basil- two kinds, standard sweet basil and Siam Queen Thai basil.

My peppers did not germinate well- I planted six but only two actually came up, and the jalapeno (on the left) is pretty stunted. The other is an Aci Sivri, the gorgeous red chilis that I loved so much last year. I'll just have to buy starts for the rest. I'm guessing the seed has gotten too old at this point, and I'll have to get new seeds next year. 

I now have four pots of flowers and herbs outside my front door. I planted chives, sage, parsley, dill and mint, plus some pansies from the garden center and zinnias and nasturtiums from seed. I can't just pop out to the garden for fresh herbs, so this is my solution. There's just no substitute for fresh herbs when cooking, and if these can manage to grow on the north side of a building then I'll be content. 

Elsewhere, I've been trying out my new camera, which seems so small compared to the lovely big Pentax I've been using for the last three years but which is not actually mine. Simplify, simplify. One of my goals for the summer is to take a real photography class, but in the meantime, it's fun to experiment with my new toy:

 Massive artichokes a couple plots over from mine.

 Spring garden so full of potential.

 I love living so close to the river now. Another version of the greens and blues of spring.

Spring sky! 

I am now less than 5 weeks from completing my Masters. It is all closing in on me at an alarming rate, but it is also very exciting. I think this means I have to be a grown-up now or something. Somewhere in the busyness of everything else, I need to find time to start looking for the first job of my public health career. My two years of graduate school have absolutely flown by, and I can hardly believe it's almost over. This year is full of new beginnings for me, and this transition will just be another one, and it will be good.

Meet my Worm Bin!

I'm absurdly excited about the latest addition to my little home: 1,000 red wiggler worms! At this apartment there is no way for me to compost, not having any outdoor spaces and not qualifying for the city's curbside food scrap collection program. I can't abide the idea of throwing biodegradable food scraps in the garbage, so I decided to do what many green-minded apartment-dwellers before me have done: set up a worm-composting bin!

I did a little internet research, and discovered that I already owned everything I needed, apart from the worms themselves. So I went to work on an old rubbermaid bin with a hammer and a big nail, making air holes according to the specifications I had read about. It made an awful racket, but, not owning a drill, this was the next best option.

I put air holes around the rim of the bin, and in the lid, and drain holes in the bottom of the bin. It sits on another non-punctured lid, which catches any liquid and keeps it off the floor.

The basic layout for a worm bin involves a layer of damp shredded newspaper, then the worms and food scraps, then a layer of drier newspaper.

I ordered my worms online, and had them shipped to my office. I only have a tiny mailbox at home, and no porch or stoop for the postman to leave a package on, and anyway it's been so cold that it would be no good for a box of worms to sit outside for even an hour or two. They have to be taken out of the package, watered and put in their new home as soon as possible, having been packed in dry peat and in the mail for three days (they came from the east coast). Since I only work part-time, I put my coworkers on alert that I was expecting a shipment of live worms (thus simultaneously horrifying them) and asked them to call me if the package turned up when I wasn't at the office. As it turned out, I got the call early on Wednesday afternoon, when I was at my field work and in the middle of my busiest day of the week, when I am going non-stop until I get out of class at 9:30 PM. So I ended up on the bus back to my office at 10 PM to pick up my new friends, and finally got them into their new home at 11 PM that night!

Wetting down the newspaper- I put more in later, turns out this wasn't a sufficient amount.

Bag o'worms

Heap o'worms! I'll admit, there was a little squeamishness involved at this particular stage. Once they're all dispersed through the bin, it's much less apparent how many of them there are!

Leaving the bin in a well-lit area for the first 24 hours encourages the worms to spread out through their new home. 

There was some weeding of the gene pool during the first couple days, as about a 15 of the worms decided to go exploring, and were later found dried to the floor (Ew. Ewewewewewew!). My sources say that this is totally normal, and that there are always a few "dummies" who don't have the sense to stay where their food is. I added a bunch more newspaper (thank you, free Portland newspapers available on many streetcorners...) on top, and that really helps to discourage them from climbing up the sides of the bin too. 

Now, whenever I have food scraps (everything besides meat or dairy, which I still have to throw away, but I don't eat much of those things anyway), I can just pull back the top layer of newspaper, stick them in, cover them back up, and the worms will get to work!

You can see all the nice dark brown castings (worm poop) stuck to everything. It makes the best fertilizer there is, once it builds up a bit. 

Sources differ as to whether it's okay to give the worms citrus, because it can throw off the pH of the bin. I eat a lot of citrus, especially in the winter, and I hate to think of it going to waste, so for now I'll keep adding it, but monitor things closely to make sure the worms stay happy. 

The bin lives under the table/island in my kitchen, where it is easily accessible for me to throw scraps in. There haven't been any escapees in three days, so I think they're settling in well, and I'm very happy to have them here!

Garden and Sun

What do you do when the first Saturday of your spring break is sunny and breezy and the first warm day in many weeks? You spend every waking minute outside, of course! Truly, I think I spent about seven hours outdoors today. As the clouds rolled back in in the evening, I'm really glad I did!

First thing in the morning, laundry was hung on the line in the backyard, for the first time this year!

I've missed this sight all winter!

We had planned to plant potatoes last weekend, but were thwarted by the fact that it was snowing...this morning we actually got to put our spuds in the ground- All Reds, Austrian Crescents, and Yukon Golds.

 The potatoes went here, in the border around our front lawn. Last fall, this was barren, compacted dirt. Six months of mulch, rabbit droppings, several trips around it with the turning fork, and a final dose of compost from our heap later, I have visions of this soil bursting with potatoes, tomatoes, chard, and flowers this summer! I was so excited by the soil quality around the front yard that I couldn't hold back- three broccolis and one cabbage went there, and in addition to the potatoes we put in a short row of beets, another of chard, and some radicchio.

My broccoli, cabbage, and onion starts have been hardening off all week on the front stoop, and finally moved into their new homes today. 

I had to re-start most of the onions, and the second batch are just now sprouting under the lights upstairs. I've never had great luck with onions. Next year I might go with sets from a nursery.

All of our garden beds have had a big batch of compost tilled in recently, and Matt added a layer of rabbit manure for another tilling. That stuff is amazing- high in both nitrogen and phosphorus, both essentials for growing veggies.

The brassicas now have cardboard sleeves around them to fend off cutworms, and a reemay tent over them for protection from weather and bugs until they are substantially bigger. 

Spending time amending and tiling your soil is probably the single most important garden task- the payoff is huge. Two of our raised beds didn't grow things particularly well last year. Having given these beds lots of TLC since then, we have high hopes for this season. We don't know the history of this soil, and we've put a lot of work into it (including a LOT of time pulling out rocks and gravel and garbage).

This bed did especially poorly last year. We cover cropped it with field peas all winter for nitrogen, added lots of egg shells for calcium and bunny poo for phosphorus, and the nicest, loamiest compost from the bottom of the pile, plus some composted bunny straw. Take that, poor soil quality!

The hens got several buckets' worth of weeds throughout the day. They can level a big heap of weeds in two minutes flat. They love finding bugs and slugs this way, and get good omega-3s from the greens.

We finally used up the last of the compost heap that was started last summer. There was a big pile of sticks here when we moved in, and we pulled out all the big ones before starting the heap, and hundreds more as we turned and used the compost. Now we've cleaned it out down to the bottom, scraped out all remaining sticks (and a fair few rocks), and it is ready to start another (stick-free!) heap. We'll keep the one on the left going for another month or so, then let it rest and begin again on the right. At the rate things break down with all the chicken and rabbit manure in, the bin on the left will be ready to use for plantings later in the summer. 

A nice fresh lunch on a quick break. 

This half bed will be a new planting space this year. It was in cover crops all winter, and we've pruned the tree back (a lot) and added compost and manure. It was so compacted here that it might take another season to get this bed in really good shape, but I'll try growing beets and flowers here this year.

Radish sprouts in the bed against the front fence. A prime example of the amount of gravel and garbage (see that piece of plastic right in the middle?) that rises up out of our soil constantly. At least when rocks "rise" to the surface like this, it makes them easy to scrape away into the paths with gloved hands. 

 The tent has come off the greens, which are all growing very well and now enjoying full sun.

Now if only we'd have more days like this-- spring seems awfully long in coming this year, what with all the snow and cold temperatures. Our winter wasn't bad at all, but now it seems to want to reassert itself. Anyway, I'm grateful to have had a day when I could work outside in short sleeves! 

Another couple sunny days, and the Asian pear will be blooming!

Our Sunny Saturday

It's been a really glorious weekend here. After working hard all week, I was able to take a day off from schoolwork yesterday and spend a good long Saturday with Matt, soaking up the sun (and wind) on a beautifully clear, crisp day. We started the morning right with a good sleep-in, then whipped up some buckwheat pancakes (using the recipe from Nourishing Traditions) and ate them with some yummy local bacon and a variety of canned and frozen fruit and berries that we have been rationing out carefully since this summer. Those peaches and raspberries just taste like little spoonfuls of sunshine, it was perfect.

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We spent a couple hours of the afternoon working outside and doing some organizing in the garage, reveling in having the sun shine down on our faces and the clear, cold wind blowing spring towards us. Matt cut back the roses that we have badly neglected since summer, leaving all the new growth that has popped out in the last week. I took a wander around the property, picking up bits of garbage that have blown in, been dropped in our curb strip, or been dug up by the chickens. Then I went and played with the compost heaps, giving both of our active heaps a big turn while the sun was on them.

Both heaps are coming along wonderfully.

Until last week, this section was still full of sticks and other big yard debris, but finally we got it all sent off to the city compost site, and this space is now free for all of our chicken- and rabbit-straw. It will compost on its own, and we can also take from these heaps to add to our other compost piles. We are keeping the two piles separate because the rabbit straw and droppings can be applied directly to the garden as mulch, but the chicken stuff can burn plants if it isn't yet composted. Matt asked how we would keep straight which heap was which- I said Rabbit goes on the Right, because they both start with R! 

Taking a good look at the havoc the hens have wrought on our backyard this winter, we have begun toying with the idea of fencing off the western side of the yard, under the lilac trees, to create a large chicken run that will connect to their coop:

With this big section fenced in, they'll still be able to free range, but we'll be able to reclaim the lawn before summer. Last summer the chickens were too young to be ranging much, so we had the lawn free of chicken poo and full of nice green grass for lounging around on, and a great yard for summer parties. Since we've been letting the hens out to range most days, this is what our back lawn now looks like:

Because it's winter, the grass hasn't even been able to fight back. We'd like to have it green and healthy again for summer, and also we're pretty sure our landlord wouldn't be too excited to see it like this. So I think we'll be perusing Freecycle for some more chicken fencing and temporary fenceposts.

We had a beautiful hike around Powell Butte later in the afternoon, with glorious views of Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams, and from the top of the butte, a view of the very tip of Mt. Jefferson, away to the south. Back home, we cooked up one of my very favorite curries for dinner, which we hadn't made since before we went to New Zealand. It's so delightful, all spices and pineapple and sweet potatoes and coconut milk. The recipe is in this post. It's also wonderful because it's completely lactose- and gluten-free, and you could easily make it without the chicken and substitute veggie stock or water for the chicken stock, and have a vegan meal.

As you can see, the recipe makes a very generous amount of curry, which happily means I'll be eating this for lunch for the next few days!

I have a goal for myself for the coming week(s), which is to be more productive in the evenings. Unlike the last couple weeks, when I crashed into bed and veged out every night after dinner, I want to accomplish at least one small task every evening, whether it is finishing knitting a dishcloth, baking a batch of cookies, or doing some mundane task like organizing my desk. I want to do more with my time, and I know from experience that doing these small tasks helps me keep my energy up.

I hope you all had a lovely weekend, and that you are feeling rested and ready for the week ahead!

Mulch from the Animals

I just came in from a couple hours spent outside between rain showers this afternoon. It was chilly! I wore four layers of long sleeves, a wool cap and two pairs of socks. Brrrr. I did some raking of leaves in the backyard and investigated the progress of the winter garden, but primarily I worked on mulching various beds around the place. Our little menagerie might be here to give us meat and eggs, but they also give us lots of extra goodness in the form of their poo! One of my weekly chores is to rake out the chicken coop and henhouse and move the droppings and soiled straw to wherever we are using them, and then fill the coop with fresh straw for the next week.

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The freshly cleaned coop.

I've mentioned before that we're adding in more vegetable growing space in front of the house--this is where I've been putting the chicken straw for the last month or so, with a little bit siphoned off for the compost heap. There are still a few gaps as you can see, but one more cleaning and I'll have it all filled in. I'll try and get another thick layer on in the next couple months, then we'll just let it sit and do its thing for the rest of the winter. Chicken poo composts "hot" and so can't be used to mulch vegetables because it can burn them. It needs to break down first, which our long wet Portland winter will help it to do. In the spring, we'll till it all in, and plant potatoes here. Our front yard faces due south, so it should be prime growing space! This soil around the edge was dry and compacted before we tilled it up this fall, and I'm eager to see what it looks like in four or five months!

The bunnies in the garage live in suspended cages, so all of their droppings and urine are collected in straw spread on the ground below them. I raked a big batch of this up today and used it to mulch the garlic. Rabbit poo has a different chemical composition than chicken poo, and is safe to apply straight to the garden without composting first.

 This mulch, spread on top of a layer of shredded newspaper, will keep the garlic bed nice and warm until the cloves are ready to sprout.

I can't tell you how glad we are for all that our animals give us, even before we've gotten meat or eggs from them! Their litter is revolutionizing our garden and our compost pile, the chickens have created exponentially better tilth of the soil under the fruit trees than was there a few months ago, and of course both our furry and feathered friends are endlessly entertaining. Everything they provide us with gets used to sustain the earth or ourselves or both. If you're pondering a small backyard menagerie of your own, I definitely recommend it!

Tucking the Garden In for Winter

Yesterday afternoon, on a perfect crisp fall day, I headed to the garden clad in jeans, work gloves and gumboots, toting the turning fork, hoe, rake and a bag of seeds. I got straight into that wonderful groove of physical labor and the ultimate feeling of satisfaction that I get from working in the dirt and encouraging things to grow.

This is what the garden looked like a few days ago:

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This is what it looks like today:

Having gleaned the last of the summer's vegetables from the plants, I pulled out all the vines and stems, leaving a few scraps in the beds to till into the soil. The rest went in the compost, with the bigger, woodier things heading for the yard debris bin. Then I turned my attentions to making our soil happy and healthy for the next round of crops. In places where everything had grown well this summer, I tilled in organic fertilizer and planted fall and winter crops (kale, spinach, radishes). In those areas that didn't fare so well this summer, I tilled in eggshells, compost and organic fertilizer and then planted cover crops. We'll let these grow for a couple months, then cut them and till them in and let them fertilize the soil that second way. This is the first year we've ever used cover crops, and we're starting off with field peas and fava beans, good nitrogen fixers that will also loosen up the soil with their roots and provide lots of foliage to act as green manure. Also, we can eat the fava beans once they are mature!

 Everything in this bed didn't grow particularly well, and all of the tomatoes planted here got blossom end rot. So this entire bed is now a mix of cover crops, with lots of extra nutrients mixed in.

 These are fava beans coming up in one of the rocky beds at the side of the house.

 Another bed at the side of the house, which was previously full of lovage. We pulled that all out and are growing field peas over the winter, hoping to make this into more vegetable space for next summer.

 This is where we'll be planting garlic. I spent a long time on this bed yesterday, working it with the turning fork and pulling out heaps of rocks and gravel. I'm really excited about how quickly the condition of the soil here is improving. Now that it's been tilled, we'll let it rest for two weeks, then turn it again and plant our seed garlic.

The leeks I planted a month ago, struggling in a patch of very compacted, rocky soil. 

Investing in our garden soil is very important to us---without good soil, you cannot grow good crops. As Joel Salatin says, "How dare you treat your soil like dirt!?" The soil we have here was compacted and rocky when we moved in, but slowly we are working to make it soft and aerated and rock-free and full of good nutrients. When we first planted our garden in late June, we didn't find any earthworms in the beds (never a good sign), but I'm really pleased to say that yesterday I found lots of worms in almost every bed. If the worms are happy, we're happy! 

I also inspected the compost heap yesterday, which is sitting and doing its thing for the winter, to be used in the garden beds in the spring. Happily, it is doing wonderfully (all that chicken litter!) and breaking down beautifully- it's going to be in great shape come spring.

Although I don't have photos of it yet, we're also creating new growing space around the front lawn. We tilled up the compacted soil border a month or so ago, and now every time I clean out the chicken coop, most of the litter and straw goes to mulch that border (with the rest going to the compost). I planted a few fava beans under the straw as a test, and they're growing very strongly, so I think I'll sow cover crops all around in that border as well to help break up the dense soil. In the spring, we'll till in the broken down mulch and plant potatoes all around our front yard! 

What are your tricks to preparing your garden for winter? Do you grow winter crops? Any favorites?