Rebuilding the Past
One of my hobbies is building rock walls. Back in Ohio, I built them all around the garden. Yesterday I spent time rebuilding and repairing a rock wall along the front of the new garden area.
The original wall was in terrible shape, no longer resembling a rock wall at all, it looked more like a pile of stones instead. You can see it in the photos below, just barely sticking up on the right hand side of the photo. The large tree is the one you see in the second photo behind the wall.
After a few hours of work, I managed to rebuild about 20 feet of it up to a height of about two feet tall. This is just small portion of the walls I will eventually build. Just to enclose this new garden I’m going to need a couple hundred feet of rock walls. When I think of how long I will need this wall to be, I might cap it at two feet!
You can see the continuation of this wall back into the woods. It continues the entire length of our property, which is pretty far. Though it is in rough shape in some sections.
I think one of the reasons I like building rocks walls so much is because I really enjoy puzzles. Rock walls are just real life puzzles that you don’t have to take apart and put back in the box when you’re finished.
What’s one of your hobbies besides gardening?
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Friday Favorite: Farmers Markets
Yesterday was the first farmers market of the season (well, if you don’t count the ones that are open all year long). I drove up to Waterville, to their farmers market.
It was small, but had it all. Spinach, arugula, lots of cheese, oxtail, liver and a few other goodies made it into my basket. There was even a local ice cream truck. Mr Chiots wasn’t along, and it was rather chilly, so I skipped the cone.
Even though I grow a lot of my own produce, I still love to hit the local farmers markets. You can find varieties that do well in your area and often find new and interesting vegetables to try as well. I’m super excited that it’s finally farmers market season again.
I’m pretty excited that I have a lot of markets to choose from, there are probably 10 different farmers markets that I can attend within a half our drive from our home.
Has your local farmers market started up again?
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Slowly but Surely
Yesterday, I was finally able to spend time in the main edible garden that’s located above our garage/shop. I started working on setting up the row system and marked the first one. Two thirds of the new row was raked smooth and will be ready to plant when I need to. I’m hoping to get some compost before adding anything, hopefully that will happen next week. Since I didn’t have time to make any compost last year, I’ll be buying some this spring. Next year I should have all I need.
While I was marking my rows, I measured the back garden to get an official size. It measured in at: 45 feet wide by 75 feet deep for a total of 3,375 square feet of gardening space. Add to that the 50 I’ve got in the small potager behind the house, and I’m finally going to be able to grow a respectable amount of food. These won’t be the only gardens, I’m in the process of putting in another one that will add around 500-750 square feet of edible gardening space. (How’s that for a view while gardening?)
I was happy as a clam yesterday while soaking up some sun, measuring and laying out the crisp rows in my large vegetable garden. It will be interesting to see how much I can fit into this space.
How much total edible garden space do you have?
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Starting a Garden on Sod
This is the second installment in the 5×5 Garden Challenge Series. Every Wednesday I’ll be posting about the challenge, covering topics that will help all the new gardeners get started. If you haven’t heard about the challenge head on over to the 5×5 Challenge Website, we’ll also be putting up a page here that pulls in all the 5×5 Challenge posts.
Chances are, if you don’t already have a garden area, you’ll be starting from scratch for the 5×5 Challenge. I decided to start my garden in the lawn since I thought some of you might be dealing with the same issue. I chose an area in the middle of the yard, away from any large trees and in an area that gets a good amount of sun.
Next up was laying down some kind of mulch to start smothering the sod. It doesn’t have to be really thick, one layer will do. You will want to overlap layers if you don’t have a sheet as big as your garden. You will also want to extend your cardboard out beyond the 5×5 area just a bit, four or five inches on each side will do. This is done to kill the grass around the edges of the garden. If it’s hot enough in your area already, you can use a piece of clear plastic to kill the grass.
This cardboard won’t be staying down, though you can do that if you want. It should do a great job of killing the grass by the time I want to get my garden started. I thought about putting some chicken litter under the cardboard, thinking the heat from the fresh manure would provide extra heat and kill the grass faster, perhaps I’ll go out and do that tomorrow.
Weighing down the cardboard with rocks is a good idea, I even added a full watering can on top because it was really windy yesterday. It should be interesting to see how long it takes for the grass to die.
If you are starting from sod, I’d highly recommend building a raised bed for your garden. This will make it much easier than digging out the sod. There will be a post about how to build an inexpensive, easy raised bed in this series. I want to make sure this garden looks really nice since I can see it from my kitchen window and it’s right in front of the main entrance to the house.
If you live in a southern climate, you can already be seeding some of your plants. If you have questions, head on over to the discussion forum and hook up with other gardeners in your area.
Have you ever turned sod into a garden?
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Cultivate Simple 26: Plowing with Pigs with Hank Will
A note from Mr. Chiots – We had some problems with our podcast host wcich resulted in changing hosts and all should be good from now on. We had to re-publish this episode to get it to show up in iTunes.
Today on Cultivate Simple we’re talking with Hank Will, farmer and editor of Grit Magazine. We discuss his new book that he wrote with his wife Karen titled Plowing with Pigs, and Other Creative, Low-Budget Homesteading Solutions.
We are giving away an autographed copy of the book. To find out how to win… you will have to listen to the podcast. You can also purchase a copy of the book directly from the Grit website.
Hank’s Books of the Week
Any books by:
Shannon Hayes
Gene Logsdon
Joel Salatin
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:29:39 — 62.3MB)
