Gardening

With the insanity of the last month it was a very welcome relief to finally be able to get a lot of garden and yard work done. The platform that my shed sits on is rapidly rotting and since I have to empty everything out I figured I might as well move it out of the protected, south face spot and in it's place I will be building a green house. I've also managed to get quite a few perennial herb plants (three of each: Rosemary, Thyme, Oregano, Lavendar and Echinacea) plus four dwarf (10-15ft tall) fruit trees. I'm particularly happy about the fruit trees, two different variates of pears with one being an early harvest and the second being a late harvest. I also picked up a cherry tree that starts producing fruit in early June and lastly I bought a fig tree. This will go along with the two very productive cherry plumb trees and nearby apple trees.

I still have to figure out where all these are going, but I'm building a map of the backyard (geo-referenced aerial phots with 2 foot pixels are great) complete with several different data layers (soil, geology, land use, known ground water pollution, ...) and the permaculture course that I'm in should be more then enough to put together a great design. I likely have more then enough yard space to fit in a lot more gardening space a few more dwarf fruit trees and design it so George can still dork around the backyard.

Besides the insanity that is the 2004 election, one of the non-work activities that I have been spending a fair amount of time on is wrapping up the summer and getting ready for late fall and winter gardening. I still have to figure out which garden plots will be left idle with a cover crop until spring and which will have a cold box built over them. I'm also considering building a tall cloche over my second planting of green beans and see how long they will keep producing.

One thing that I have been intentional about is letting some plants go to seed, which is part as a result of over planting, part bad timing, but also rewarding plants that were strong enough to both produced food for me and health enough to also produce seed. The garden has been thick with honey bees at several points, they are currently in the broccoli patch gathering pollen in the very noticeable yellow flowers. Previously the honey bees were all over the many sun flower plants I have growing around the yard.

This summers garden was reasonably successful, with the biggest problem is the tomato plants produced a lot of leaves and not many plants. I did apply some biogro, which is a fish fertilizer but I guess it through the NPK balance too far off. The good news is we have plenty of leafy greens, but I have to plant starts way from the flock of birds that like to live in my garden.

Even if you don't know much about gardening, this will be a great event. I'm hoping to work in a few of the dates so hopefully I will see you there. I did a GPS class project on Luscher Farm and I put together a webpage with some of the results.

Oregon Tilth's Organic Education Center (OEC) at Luscher Farm is in need of volunteer support in transitioning our gardens and program to sleep for the fall/winter. We will be having open volunteer days, complete with refreshments and fun activities for all (mulching, pruning, planting, harvesting, cloche building, and more!!), on Thursdays and Fridays through Oct. 15th. Please call the OEC at 503.638.0735 if you're interested and for additional information. Drop-ins are always welcome!

Special features of the fall fun include the phase one planting of our food forest garden and hedgerows! The food forest will include fourteen dwarf fruit and nut trees based on Robert Hart's ecological method of perennial food and habitat production. It will define and embellish the northern border of the Tilth demonstration garden.

Please get in touch if you're interested in lending a hand or two to help us close out a very successful and fruitful 2004 season. All ages are welcome, as are school groups, businesses, and other organizations interested in learning more about ecological agriculture.

Volunteer Days:
9/23, 24, & 30th 9am-5pm
10/1, 7, 8, 14 & 15th 9am-5pm

I'll be taking a five month course on permaculture and paying for the course by doing a combo of computer and field work for the people leading the course. After spending yesterday morning fighting with a very old Oracle 7 database with a GUI custom application at work, spending 4 hours hacking through the course leader's blackberries seamed like a very good idea. My preferred tools for clearly blackberries, besides a tractor and napalm, is a machete and my funny looking gardening hoe with two blades extending off the back and sharpened sides, and some times standard garden nippers. I like using the mod-hoe to bash my way through the thinner live stocks and the dead stocks, then twist the thicker live stocks around the head of the mod-hoe and cut the now taut stocks with the machete. The only time I end up using the standard garden nippers is when pulling blackberries out of trees or shrubs that I want to keep.

I should point out that wearing heavy boots, heavy gloves, eye goggles, a full brim hat and two layers of clothes that you don't care about and that have a very tight weave are included in my preferred items for taking out blackberries.

Each year I have been experimenting with ways to keep the garden soil evenly and consistently moist. Each year I have figured out a little more each year about which crops need more and water, need less water, very picky about consistant watering, keeping the water off the leaves, ... you get the idea. Today while wandering through one of stores I popped into for the few items that are not sold at the People's Co-op http://www.peoples.coop/, I spotted a buy two, get one free sale for garden watering related supplies. I call my parents to let them know and between the two households we ended up buying three timers, two sets of three 50' soaker hoses, three water splitters, .... I still need a few more water distribution supplies for next springs garden but those supplies were not on sale, but I can easily wait a while as in a few weeks the rainy season will startup again and I won't really have to worry about watering. I do have a few ideas for incorporating rain barrels, but that is something I can wait on and I need to design my cold boxes, mini-greenhouse and layout the fall and winter garden.