Lasagne Gardening, part 2

Today we cleaned out the barn of our neighbor, James.  He has 5 horses and 3 mules (who used to range on our property as well, until last December).  We filled the entire truck bed with manure and hay, then we took it over to our new garden beds and shoveled it in.  We made a third bed, this time without the cardboard layer on top of the grass.  Since the layer of manure/compost is so thick, we figured that would smother out the grass eventually.  We still put cardboard in the pathways and under the sides of the beds a little ways, as well as on top of the whole pile.

 

The first picture is Elvis (left) and Lady, with cockleburs in their forelocks.  The second picture shows the three garden beds.  The closest one is finished and covered with cardboard, the middle one has the manure piled in (about 10 inches thick), and the far one has just been started.  The last picture is my helper/poop scooper.

Lasagne Gardening

This is our first raised bed garden plot.  It is approximately 4' x 10'.  We plan to build several of these over the next month to get started on our spring garden.  We decided not to till the ground at all.  The soil is very compacted and somewhat clayey, but there are many earthworms (several for almost every spadeful of ground) and we don't want to chop them up with a tiller, nor do we want a heavy tractor on the land.  So, we are doing a type of sheet mulching, or lasagne gardening.

 

First, we laid cardboard down on the grass and staked it down.  The stakes also hold up the walls of the raised bed, which are logs from downed trees in the woods.  Next, we collected horse manure from the pasture around the garden.  Within about 100' of the garden, we collected enough manure to make a layer about 6" deep.  Next, we put down a layer of leaves (not shown) and finally a wheelbarrow load of good soil from near the creek.  We watered the whole bed with several buckets of creek water, then covered over with another layer of sheet mulch (cardboard/newspaper/brown bags) and weighted it down with wood.  We will pull back the top sheet mulch layer and add more compost/manure/leaves/soil until we eventually get a thickness of about 12" - 18", then we will plant our vegetables through a slit in the sheet mulch directly into the compost below.  Eventually, the grass under the garden will be killed, the bottom cardboard layer will decompose, and we will end up with a nice pile of rich soil, or so the theory goes!

Planting 120 Bareroot Seedling Trees

During the last two weeks, we have been planting bareroot seedling trees.  They were purchased from the Kentucky Division of Forestry.  We bought 10 each of 12 different species:  Loblolly Pine, Flowering Dogwood, Red Mulberry, Pawpaw, Black Cherry, Persimmon, Eastern Redbud, River Birch, Chinese Chestnut, Hazelnut, Black Locust and Shortleaf Pine.  About two months ago, we planted 100 Eastern Red Cedars, and next month, we will be getting another 100 Loblolly Pines.  Our goals are increased privacy, wildlife food and shelter, erosion control, reforestation of some of the pasture, as well as some fruit and nuts for us!  Here are pictures of River Birch, Loblolly Pine and Cedar trees.

 

Much of our soil is clayey and badly compacted, so we are "soil staking", which means driving wooden stakes on a diagonal into the ground near the planted trees.  As the wood rots, it provides open space for the roots to grow into, and humus.  We dug the holes for the trees 8" to 12" wide and worked rich soil from the woods or near the creek into the clayey soil of the hole.  The soil from the woods helps to inoculate poorer pasture soil with mycorrhizal fungi, which has been shown to benefit new trees (see Edible Forest Gardens).  Here is Randy soil staking a Black Cherry tree in front of the cabin.

The Second Snow of 2010

When we moved to TN, several people assured us that it rarely snows, and it is ALWAYS gone the next day.  This is the second time this month that we have been snowed in for three days.  While the major roads are cleared, all the smaller roads are very impassible.  However, we made the best of the situation!

 

This is a Tennessee sled (a cardboard box) and I am demonstrating its use.  Our rental trailer is in the background.  Here is another shot of our trailer and the nearby creek that we swam in all summer!

The Guest Cabin

We bought a used portable cabin for storage at the moment, but eventually it will be a guest cabin.  It is 10 feet by 20 feet and is 12 feet tall, with a small sleeping loft.  The side shown faces south and it absorbs a lot of heat in the winter.  It is typically 25 degrees warmer than the church on a sunny day.  Of course, we will have to plant some deciduous trees to block the sun in summer!!  The guest cabin is just about 30 feet from the creek and a nice swimming hole.  Here we are saluting Che.

Here are some inside shots, looking west toward the loft and east toward the "kitchen" area.  We will be insulating and finishing the insides soon.

Taking down the Porch

We have removed the front porch from the church and used the materials to build two nice shed add-ons.  The porch was on the south side of the church and was about 9 feet deep by 22 feet wide.  Unfortunately, it totally blocked the sun from falling on the side of the church during the winter.  We plan to add windows on the south wall and take advantage of the free heat from the sun.  In the summer, the trees will be leafed out and will block the sun.

We added a wood shed on the side of our existing shed and another storage shed behind.  They turned out really nice.  The roofs are made from the old porch roofing and the siding is made from some other recycled metal and the old tongue and groove flooring from the church.  All of the materials were recycled and the posts are cedar logs that were already down in our woods.

'S no Problem

Two new Tennesseans, fresh from the tropics, experienced their first really cold spell.  We went for 7 days straight below freezing.  Today got up to 37 degrees and it almost felt balmy!  Here are a few pictures of our deep freeze.  The truck is our new (to us) 1991 GMC Sierra 1500 4x4.  It has 137,000 miles and we are the second owner.  We love it!!