Start of Recovery

Right now this farm is an excellent example of why NOT to neglect the weekly work schedule. After three months of doing little except harvesting, I'm faced with weedy beds and empty growing containers. It's enough to make a new gardener throw up their hands and quit. Not me. I see it as a challenge in a way.  And I know that I am capable of whipping this baby back into shape. Besides, it's the kind of work I enjoy doing. (And with this coronavirus lockdown, I surely could use the exercise!) 

The very first thing I did was create myself a goal. I spread out a layer of cardboard in one of the larger biotrash/hugelpits I'm working on filling in. Ugly exposed cardboard gave me an incentive to gather lots of weeds and trimmings to cover it up. The easiest and quickest way to get said weeds was by cleaning out the growing beds. Many trashcanfuls of weeds later, the cardboard was covered and I had several nice cleaned veggie beds. 

A new comfrey bed. Three weeks ago this was solid tall weeds. 

A little shovel and tiller work gave me space to sow seeds. And while I was at it, I decided to divide a large comfrey clump and start new comfrey areas. Looking at bare garden soil makes me want to plant something in it. It's like looking at a button on the wall and having a strong urge to push it. Yes, I admit that I've pushed buttons. And I just gotta plant something! 

Comfrey starts. 

So the beds around the house now have a couple types of beans growing, peas, green onions, and baby comfrey cuttings. It's a start. 

Onions, beans, and taro out my front door. 

Garden Walkways

"G" just asked me for the best way to make his garden walkways. He was thinking of using cardboard, or possibly old carpet. He also thought about using a permanent wooden boardwalk or stepping stone path. I really couldn't tell him "the best" walkway to make, but I did mention a few of my own experiences. Since "G" lives not too far from me, my experiences might help him decide what to do. 

1- cardboard or newspaper. Yes, thick layers do keep the weeds down. But those layers can get real slick and slippery with all the rain we've been getting. Plus there's the problem with wind. Unless held down with dirt or rocks, the paper will eventually blow around. I've tried both, but now won't use either. After taking a couple bad falls on slippery paper, I won't dare let the stuff in my walkways. Not worth getting a broken wrist or hip, or worse. 

2- carpet. I've vetoed carpet for a couple of reasons. First of all, the chemicals. Repeated rains will leach the various chemicals out and into the soil, where the plants could take them up. No one has done research about this, so heaven alone knows what might get into the food you pick. Most carpeting has anti-fire chemicals which have been found to be very persistent in the environment, including in our own bodies. Nasty stuff. Plus they often contain anti-stain chemicals, anti-fade chemicals, glues, and who knows what else. 

     Second, the carpeting degrades in the tropical sun. Before long you will end up with a mass of shredded carpet strings with grass growing up through it. Try to pick them up will be a nightmare. They'll be well imbedded in the soil and intertwined in plant roots. Been there, done that, never will do it again. 

3- thick grass clippings or tree leaves.  Just like the wet cardboard, this stuff can get real slick. Because most people don't want to have to reapply a mulch every week, they will pile the stuff on thick. Big mistake. It gets to be real dangerous walking on it. It's the thickness that is the problem. 

4- I've seen cement blocks used successfully for garden paths, though they wouldn't work well for my own gardening methods. I use a cultivating tiller which kicks the soil about. Thus the cement blocks would get soil all over them every time I worked the garden beds. I suppose I could just resign myself to having the broom it off each time, but I hate wasting the time. The same problem would occur when I use mulch. The wind would tend to blown it onto the cement blocks. Though this method wouldn't please me, it might work perfectly fine for other gardeners. If using hand tools instead of a tiller, if using heavy woodchip mulch instead of fluffy grass, the cement blocks might be perfect. A plus would be that no weeds would grow in the walkways. You'd have a non-slippery, solid surface to walk on. The downside would be the expense, plus the work to install it. 

5- a permanent boardwalk. The same can be said for a wooden pathway as for the cement blocks. Eventually the wood would rot, but if you were willing to live with that, then it would be fine....and pretty. I don't know how slippery it might get over time in a wet environment. I've never tried it. As with the cement blocks, it would be expensive and require labor to install. 

6- wood chips. I've seen wood chips used in garden pathways and it seemed quite nice. Looked good. They would need to be applied thickly to stop most weeds, though some would still grow through. And though they would last a lot longer than grass clippings, they would need to be replenished occasionally. The downsides are #1- slugs would hide underneath them, and #2- most people would have to go out and purchase them. 

7- cinder or gravel. Both can be had in Hawaii. Both can be used successfully. Like wood chips, they would need to be refreshed regularly because you'd eventually walk them into the soil. And like wood chips, most people would have to purchase them. In my own gardens they wouldn't work because they would quickly be covered in soil or mulch. But I could see them doing ok in other situations. 

8- weed cloth. I'm really anti weed cloth, especially the lightweight stuff you can buy in Home Depot, Walmart, etc. Weeds, especially grass, grow right up through it. It gets "glued" to the ground, making it a nightmare to remove. If one is considering using weedblock cloth, I'd suggest going with the heavyweight professional grade stuff. You'd have to figure out a method to hold it down, such as using metal pins. 

In my own gardens I use grass clippings. I apply lightly and frequently. That way I don't end up with a wet slippery mass. They may not be as pretty as some other things, but for me they're readily available. A side benefit is that they will gradually decompose, supplying nutrients to the nearby plants.  

     

Growing My Own Biomass

Today I purposely sought out biomass (also known on this farm as weeds, trimmings, and other organic trash) to finish filling one of the compost bins. Finding biomass is fairly easy with our 20+ acres. But I know of some farms where that wouldn't be so simple. And I thought to myself, "I'm glad I didn't bulldoze this land clear of vegetation like I've seen so many other people do." 

I purposely leave brush and other plants so that they will grow back. Yes, I could just remove the brush and be done with it. But then, I'd be removing a valuable resource - biomass. Here's an example. 

Dozens of small sweet guava trees line the border between my neighbor and me. They grow rather rapidly, growing through the fence. If allowed to continue over the years, this would ruin the fence. So the trees must go, right? Well, that could be one solution. But the trees also provide a visual block, giving both of us some privacy. Plus they produce fruit that can be harvested. So rather than removing the trees, I opt to use them as an additional resource - a source of biomass.

Overgrown guava covering the fence. 

Once a year at fruiting time I trim the trees. I'll harvest all the greenery that encroaches on the fence. Some of the developing fruits are sacrificed, but these trees produce plenty, more than enough for me and my neighbor. By trimming at fruiting time, I can also prune away undesirable branches and open up the bushes so that we can harvest the fruits. 

Today I trimmed the trees and ended up with 9 trashcanfuls of trimmings. I had enough to top off the compost bin I was working on, plus extra to use in a garden bed I'm working on up by the house. And the beauty of this..... I'll be able to do it again next year. I don't have to do anything for 364 days a year to get this biomass. Nature does it for me. 

The overgrowth pruned back off the fence. 

I have large sections of ferns, gingers, and guinea grass growing which I regularly harvest for biomass. Some is chopped up for mulch, some for compost making. My neighbor has offered to remove these plants for me, but no thank you. They have a purpose, multiple purposes in fact. Besides harvesting for biomass, they help prevent soil erosion, help to build soil and increase fertility, provide some feed for the livestock, provide visual greenery which I find to be far more appealing than bare soil, and in the case of the ginger, have wonderfully scented flowers. 

Growing much of my own biomass benefits this farm, plus I don't have to drive soneplace else to go get it. 

Increasing Yields

Get a bunch of food growers together, be they gardeners or farmers, and one of the things they will talk about is how to get more production out of a particular space. Gardeners like to brag about the number of tomatoes they got from one plant. Farmers like to brag about the units of the crop they harvested. It's all focused upon getting the highest yield for your investment.

I'm not immune. I like to get a particular amount of veggies out of a planting too. I grow a lot of my stuff in beds, pallet boxes, or containers. So it's easy to know what to expect out of a particular space. But it doesn't always happen. Lots of things can go wrong. 

One of the things that can go wrong right from the start is that the seeds don't sprout. Over the years I've gotten pretty good at getting conditions right for the seeds. So when I don't see them sprouting it's usually because the seed is dead. Dead seed is common enough. It's almost unheard of to get 100% germination. Normally some seeds don't live for a vast variety of reasons. But it doesn't surprise me when it happens. 

Example.....

Last week I sowed bean seeds in the pallet growing boxes. I had harvested the potatoes and figured on growing a crop of beans before rejuvenating the soil in the boxes. I've done this before with success. So I checked on the progress today. Of the 10 boxes, 9 had a high percentage of success. One box had spotty germination. 

Only half the bean seed sprouted. Lots of empty gaps. So more seeds need to be planted to fill in the blank spaces. 

Now I could have left this as is. But as the title of the post points out, I want to increase my yield of beans from this growing box. The easiest way is to plant more bean seeds in the empty spots. Simple. 

I tend to always fill in empty spots in the garden beds. If it's seeds, it's quick and easy to poke some more into the ground. Yes, the plants will have a week difference in their maturity, but that doesn't matter to me. In fact, it's actuality beneficial because it draws out the harvest, rather than everything being ready to pick the same week. And if it's transplants instead of seeds, I usually have extra leftover seedlings in the mini greenhouses. 

Now all this sounds so simple. Commonsense, you say. But I don't hear many gardeners saying that they do this. They complain about a row being spotty, but didn't think about re-sowing the seeds. Farmers will often go back and overseed a spotty section of a field that failed due to excess rain, or some other reason. I'm not sure why gardeners don't do that. 

Anyway, today I sowed more Maxibel bean seeds in order to fill in the growing box. I have 10 bean varieties started : Maxibel, Pencil Pod, Royal Burgundy, Pauldor, Red Swan, Rocdor, Carson, Capitano, Black Valentine, and Purple Teepee. Not a whole lot of any one type, but it will give me variety. It will be a lots less boring than eating the same bean day offer day. 

Watching Food Grow is Exciting

Call me crazy, but I really get a kick out of seeing food grow. It's truly satisfying.....and almost a miracle at the same time. I love it.

I'm picking zucchini squash already. 3 yesterday. 3 tonight for dinner. Yeah, I pick them super tiny. Hubby hates squash, but for some reason baby gourmet-size is ok. So I pick them either while the blossom is still on or is just falling off. If that what it takes to get him to eat veggies, I don't object. 

The succotash limas are producing pods already. Let's hope that there are little limas inside them. Right now they are too small to tell. 

The greenhouse tomatoes aren't flowering yet. Those tomatoes pictured above came from a wild volunteer growing in one of my driveway gardens. 

So dinner tonight was a one pot pork stew, using our own onions, tomatoes, squash, potatoes, plus some carrots and green beans from Matt's garden. Yum. Homegrown food! 

Growing in Greenhouses

Why use greenhouses? For me it's mainly for pest control. Secondarily, to control soil moisture. And thirdly, to provide more heat to certain crops. 

Unlike much of the world, Hawaii is a difficult place to produce certain crops. Most squashes and cucumbers get routinely destroyed by pickleworm. Slicing tomatoes get stung by fruit flies. Sweet peppers, okra, and lima beans seem to require more heat than I get at my farm. Cowpeas do better with drier soil. 

Lima beans. Bush type in the front row. Climbing varieties in the back. 

I'm trying this year to grow food in three 10' by 20' greenhouses. One now has summer squash and cucumbers, all parenocarpic or with parnenocarpic tendencies. Since it's a night time moth that inflicts most of the damage to these veggies, I plan to leave the greenhouse ends open during the day to airflow, and closed at night to block the moths. That's the plan, so we'll see if it works. 

Zucchini squash up front. Cucumbers starting along the wall behind the squash plants. 

Greenhouse #2 has tomatoes and sweet peppers. Fruit fly is the main pest, which is active during the daylight hours. So this greenhouse will have screened end walls. 

The third greenhouse is planted in lima beans right now. I haven't had much luck harvesting lima beans although the plants grow well enough. General opinion is that they needs more heat units, thus the reason I'm trying a greenhouse. It gets much warmer inside a greenhouse compared to out in the gardens. 

More Seeds and Plants Started

Did some more seed sowing and added some more items to the list .......

Onion (yellow spanish) 

Tomato (black vernissage)

Squash (black beauty zucchini, desert zucchini, dark star zucchini)

Lettuce (green ice) 

Parsley (evergreen, Italian) 

Catnip

Basil (genovese)

Cucumber (bella, saber, puccini, nokya)

Carrot (solar yellow)

Pepper, sweet (buran)

Papaya ( local variety) 

Assorted flowers (forget me not, johnny jump up, alyssum) 

With the squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers I'm only sowing 3 seeds each. These plants will be going into the greenhouses so I don't need very many plants. I'll save the extra seed for starting more new plants later. 

I also has some questionable seed on hand. It was old and I didn't know if it would germinate. Rather than use a garden bed, I opted to start some in pots. It's just to see if the seed is still good. If anything sprouts, I can always transplant it into the garden.....

Beans (red swan)

Lima beans (eastland, and an unnamed black & white lima) 

I've also done a bit more planting......

8 pipinolas

6 pineapple tops

16 taro starts 

So the plantings to date this year come to.....

400 square feet of cholesterol spinach

19 pipinolas

18 pineapples

32 chaya cuttings

4 banana trees

16 taro

Starting seeds

While the mini greenhouses still need some repair (age and high winds weren't kind to some of them), I'm going ahead and starting seeds. There's enough houses in good condition to be homes for the container boxes and seed trays.

Old tofu containers make nice seed starting trays. I use a soldering iron
to burn a few holes in the bottom for drainage, 

Several of the cooler containers are now cleaned, refilled, and ready for transplants. First crops in will be carrots. 

Seeds that I've started so far include.....

Carrots (ya ya, oxheart, amarillo)

Leeks (King Richard) 

Bok choy (extra dwarf)

Kale (thunderhead, blue curled vates)

Celery (Chinese pink) 

Tomato (black icicle, orange icicle, black beauty)

Squash (golden glory)

Cucumber (picolino, socrates, itachi)

Portuguese cabbage

Winged bean (urizun Japanese) 

Celeriac (giant Prague) 

Chard (verde de taglio) 

Beets (avalanche) 

Pepper, sweet (mini bell mix, pretty-n-sweet)

Cilantro

Assorted flower(cosmos, marigolds, vinca, impatiens) 

Papaya (waimanalo) 

Tomorrow I'll get another group a seeds sown and I'll let you know what I've chosen to start. Some of the things I'm starting will be for hydroponics. Others will be in slug-free containers. Yet others will go into the main garden area. 

Urine Revisited

"P" wrote in......."I have a question. I think I’ve seen you mention "fermented urine” perhaps twice in the time I’ve been reading your blog (and I cannot find any mention of it in your index of topics. Is it 

fermented because you simply haven’t had time to use it? Mine sometimes sits in my pee jars 
for 5 days (I have 5 pee jars) but on the 5th day I clean them all (so I have a pot to pee in), so 
some have not “fermented” as long as others. I haven’t noticed any difference in effect, no 
particular burn, so I was wondering if there is some bio/chemical benefit in aging it."

Like you, I haven't noticed any particular benefit from aging (that is, stored urine) or fermenting the urine. Nor have I seen burning, maybe because I tend to apply dilute urine (diluted to stretch out my supply). People who report plant burning......perhaps they are on high salt diets or eat mostly commercial foods? I don't salt my food, nor do I eat a lot of commercially made food. 

I use urine for fertilizer. I have a limited supply (me), but I use every drop I collect. The only urine I don't save for using is when I'm taking drugs that are excreted via the kidneys. That usually means antibiotics, since I don't live on "old people" medications. 

How to collect urine? I use a funnel to direct urine into an old milk jug. Hubby won't do that, but he is willing to pee outdoors onto whichever garden spot I designate. The dogs are directed to "go out" in various garden beds. Like hubby, they're not keen on peeing into a bucket, although I could have trained them to it if I had really wanted to. But having them pee on a garden spot ready for tilling is fine enough. I no longer collect urine from the sheep because it's simply too much hassle. I get plenty of manure that's an easier fertilizer to collect, so I skip the urine. When I had the horse, she was trained to pee into a bucket. She was most cooperative. If fact, insanely cooperative. But the donkey will have no part in this scary silliness, so I don't push it. 

How to use urine :

I can use it fresh or stored (that is, stored for days or a couple weeks). I've seen absolutely no difference between the two so far. If there is a difference, it must be subtle. Perhaps because my soil has abundant microbial life, it makes no observable difference.

I no longer ferment urine because I didn't see a difference in the gardens. I used active sauerkraut juice to inoculate the urine for fermenting, then fermented for 2 weeks before using. The only difference I noted in the fermented urine was that it ended up with a lower pH, which is something I don't need since my soil is already naturally acidic. Fermented urine may have chemical differences compare to fresh, but the results in the garden weren't different. So in keeping things simple, I no longer bother to ferment. 

Do I dilute it? Yes. Do I have a set formula? No. I use about 1/2 cup per gallon of water, thereabouts. Could I use it undiluted? Yes. I could sprinkle it on a garden bed then till it in....much like having hubby and the dogs pee on the garden soil. But I don't pour undiluted urine onto a growing plant. 

How do I use the diluted urine? I use it to water the plants, or add it to compost bins while I making compost. My garden soils have a good amount of microbial life, so I don't get any odor from using the urine. The microbes take care of that very quickly. 

Would fermented urine work better in unimproved soils? Don't know. It would make a nice experiment. 

Talking about experiments.......I read an article in Modern Farmer magazine. Here's the link 

https://modernfarmer.com/2014/01/human-pee-proven-fertilizer-future/

The article brought up some interesting information. Plus it tells how to sanitize urine before use. 

Food Forests

"S" just questioned me about food forests. Guess she has been reading permaculture websites recently. While I do incorporate many aspects of permaculture into this homestead farm, I'm not a permaculture farm. At least, not yet. Maybe some day.  I keep edging closer and closer. 

So what is a food forest? It's a type of gardening that uses a young forest model to grow a diversity of edible crops. Most plants are perennials. Food production is layered, going from ground covers to canopy trees, and everything in between. Much of the food forest is not tilled, thus relying upon mulches and nutrient teas for soil additives. But that's not strictly the case, depending upon the crops used. Things like root crops require soil cultivation to plant and harvest them. But generally the area mimics a forest habitat. Come to think about it, I guess you could say that digging those roots crops mimics a forest pig rooting around for a meal. Ah-ha, just like nature after all. 

Why have a food forest? It's less time consuming that intensive gardening. But the diversity of food is more limited. Land that I may not have the time to tend can be made to be food productive via a food forest. A food forest need not destroy the native trees already growing there. The soil biome need not be destroyed. Wildlife can still utilize the area. Land perhaps not suitable for conventional gardening can be used for a food forest, perhaps someplace too steep or too rocky.  

Some food forest characteristics..... Predominately perennials. A mix of trees, shrubs, low growing plants, ground covers, root crops, climbing vines. Use of multi layers : subsurface, ground level, mid level, high canopy. Utilizes both sun and shade oriented plants. Provides other resources, such as firewood (from tree pruning) and mulch material (from pruning, spent plants, natural leaf drop). 

On my own homestead farm, I don't have just one area dedicated as a food forest. My food forests tend to meander through the 20 acres, and they morph from one type of food production to another. Over by the barn the forest area was originally eucalyptus trees. It now hosts in addition -- lemon trees, bananas, pipnolas, papaya, and chaya. I'm still adding plants and plan to put in sweet potatoes, cholesterol spinach, ginger, ti, and some herbs. 

     Along the dry river bed and up the driveway, ohia and feral guavas were the original trees. I kept the ohias and thinned out the guavas. I added a cinnamon tree, an allspice, a clove, moringa, coffee, and several citrus trees. Also growing there are pipinola, turmeric, sweet potato vines, bananas, and a variety of herbs. 

     The pastures are in the process of being converted from dense, inedible ferns under ohia and wild guava. The ground cover consists of various pasture oriented plants, both grasses and forbs (in the places where the ferns have been removed). I've already added avocado trees. There's a whole lot of work still needed back there, 

     The Secret Garden has the most diversity so far. Originally mostly ohia trees and ferns, I've added quite an assortment of food bearing plants. Pipinolas, sweet potatoes, okinawan spinach, cholesterol spinach, a sapote tree, a white guava, mulberry trees, several citrus, coffee, and many different kinds of bananas, lots of taro, lots of ti, a cacao tree, turmeric, lilikoi, pineapples, plus a few herbs. It's still a work in progress. 

    Just so "S" and others understand, I didn't set out to create permaculture food forests. I set out to grow food, period. I recently discovered that it's now in vogue to have a food forest. How nice. I'm not one for fads, trends, what's in vogue. I do what I'm interested in and figure out how to make it work. And by the way, my macadamia nut trees aren't a part of any particular system. They simply line the driveway. 

Getting the Main Garden Going Again

Been busy all this week getting the main garden area reclaimed. The grass was about 18" to 24" tall in most places, a real overgrown mess. First thing I did was turn the sheep loose and corral them in the garden area. After a week they had eaten the top half foot of tender grass, leaving the tougher lower stems. I could have left them grazing, but it would have taken a good month for them to eat it down to lawn depth. So off went the sheep and in came to 'instruments of destruction". 

After one morning of running the weedwacker and raking up the worst of the grass, it occurred to me to take a photo. So I plopped down an old kitty litter bucket to show you how tall the grass was after the sheep and before the weedwacker attack. It took three mornings to get the whole area down to mow-able height, about 4"-6" and the majority of the lose grass harvested. I used that grass to feed to the donkey, sheep, and goats. 

With the grass now mowable, I mowed at the highest setting (#6), collecting the clippings. Those clippings went to mulch the orchard and banana trees. I then mowed at the next lower setting, #5. Again I collected the clippings, using them to mulch taro patches. Each morning I mowed even lower.....setting #4,#3,#2. Lots of clippings for mulching everything, even the multitude of pineapple plants. 

Now I'm down to the last mowing. Monday, if the weather is dry, I'll scalp the area using the mower's lowest setting -- #1. Then I'll pray for a few sunny, windy days. Because what I plan to do next is to run the rototiller lightly over the surface, cutting off the vegetation at the soil surface. The sun and wind should dry it out and kill it. I'm planning on running the tiller over the surface for 4-5 days in a row, not going deeply, but just scuffing the surface. If 5 days isn't enough, then I'll do 7....or whatever it takes. This method won't kill the burmuda grass, but it should be death for just about everything else except the few clumps of guinea grass, which I will hand chop out. 

If all goes as planned, I should be able to start tilling in the compost in one week from now. I have about 12 cubic yards of compost ready to go. That's not enough but it will start a good number garden beds going. Rather than trying to get all the beds going at once, I'll do one at a time. I'm eager to get something planted as soon as possible. 

Using My Margins

Margins are those areas along defining lines that most people don't utilize. Places like.....

.....the foundation around buildings

.....the edges along a driveway

.....the space between a fence and building or orchard

.....the strip along a pasture fence

.....the ground between two greenhouses 

I became aware of using margins because I lacked decent soil to make enough in-the-sun garden beds to satisfy myself. So any and all land with soil that was a sunny location was pressed into growing space. Since then, I've gone into making gardens in margins because they are accessible and I can add soil to the low spots. Thus the driveway margin beds. 

On the other side of the rockwall, most of the ground is low. Not all, because the rockwall was built right into the raised ground in some spots. Where the ground is low I've been filling in. Layers of coarse vegetation, cardboard, waste paper, fresh grass clippings, chicken pen litter, pasture manure, compost, and soil gradually fill in the future garden bed. After a few weeks of filing, watering, stomping, the low places get filled up. I'm aware that this fill will reduce in depth significantly, so I plan on refilling in a couple of months. It will take several months before the new beds are ready for their final planting. 

The above pictured area is still in the settling process, but I said what the heck and planted sweet potato cuttings today. When I comes time to add more fill in a couple months I'll simply harvest the vines to feed to the livestock. That way I'll get a harvest while I'm waiting for the final garden bed to develop. 

This area I'm now working on ........

It was about a 2 foot deep and 3 foot wide hole behind the rock wall. It's ready for planting and will be first planted with a banana tree, some shade tolerant taro, a few pineapple plants for the sunnier spots, and sweet potatoes as the ground cover. After the taro and sweet potatoes are harvested out, I could grow other semi shade crops such as cholesterol spinach and turmeric. Or switch gears completely and make a perennial bed with bananas and chaya.  Who knows. I can let you know next week what got planted, 

Gardening on a Concrete Slab

I've often heard comments that it's impossible to successfully grow atop compacted soil. And I've had wannabe gardeners lament that they only had a compacted area or a concrete slab (old patio, old barn floor, old driveway) available for a garden in the sun. I'm a believer that those places can be successfully used for gardens. It just depends upon what crop you're planning to grow and how much effort you're willing to put into it. Plus you need adequate water available, because a garden atop a slab will tend to dry out. 

I have a concrete slab right beside my house. It's the top of the cesspool. Now don't panic and start sending me dire warning emails. The water level in this cesspool has never gotten closer than 9 feet below the ground surface, not even in the heavy deluge where we got 13" of rain overnight. I do indeed monitor the water level and it stays far below the surface. So there's no problem of contamination. 

My concrete slab had about 1 inch of "soil" atop it when we moved here. It was mostly crushed volcanic cinder. Some assorted weeds and grasses had managed to struggle along. Definitely not garden worthy. 

Step one -- smother the weeds with a 2" layer of compost (it was all the compost that I had at that time) and a 6" layer of grass clippings. A couple of months went by before I had the time to flip everything over. Believe it or not, I tilled it up, mixing everything together. It was pretty much impossible. With the little Mantis tiller hopping and jumping like a bucking horse, I ended up with what looked like a layer of compost. When it settled, it wasn't much deeper than the inch that I started with, but it was an improvement. Being an optimist, I sowed radishes. They did poorly. That was a flop, but also a learning experience. 

Whenever I had time, I applied more grass clippings, maintaining about a 2" layer. Into this I mixed any kitchen scraps and waste fruits I could gather. That's when I discovered that mango seeds, avocado pits, and macadamia nuts sprout very easily. But when they sprouted, I simply pulled them up and added them to the mix. 

The second year of adding things to this layer atop the concrete slab, I saw that I had close to 2" of "soil", so I planted beans. And to my surprise, they grew. I got a small crop of beans out of them. More importantly I learned that fertility was a problem, because the tropical warmth, sun, wind, and rain drove the nutrients out. And the little garden had severe issues with moisture retention. The first couple days after a rain were fine, but then the soil dried out even though I kept a mulch atop it. There simply wasn't enough depth to bank any moisture.

The following year I learned that you could grow potatoes in 2" of "soil". I actually got decent yields. I had also learned to watch the soil moisture level and irrigate as needed. This experiment also prompted me to start learning about how soil is created. 

After the potatoes, I focused upon making soil. Every month I tilled in about 2 inches of compost and a few inches of fresh grass clippings. In addition I spread some shovelfuls of coral sand, lava sand, and biochar. Nowadays these ingredients go right into the compost piles as they are being made, but back then I was using them as a top dressing. Sometime along the way I started adding broken up charred bone, broken up tree twigs,  a sprinkling of ocean water, and mushroom tops that I collected from the wild. I also kept digging in my kitchen waste, coffee grounds, and waste fruits that I had foraged. 

After a year of trying to create soil, I ended up with 6 inches of freshly tilled soil, which settled down to about a 3 to 4 inch layer. I was again ready to plant.....and I did. I don't recall all the crops that I grew, but they all did well. As crops grew, I continued to apply a monthly mulching of fresh grass clippings and kept digging in kitchen waste, waste fruits, coffee grounds. And between crops I tilled in a generous layer of compost. Even as the crops were growing I'd dig trenches between the rows and fill them in with organic waste. 

So here we are today. 6 inches (settled) of nice looking garden. I'm still working on this soil, adding more to it. 

If you have a compacted area or even just a concrete slab, keep in mind that with effort, time, and input it could become a productive garden spot. Mine did, mainly because I didn't know better when I started out. 

Turmeric Atop a Concrete Slab

Here's some photos of my turmeric patch growing in 6 inches of garden soil atop a solid concrete slab. After I had already done it, I was told that it couldn't be done. I'll tell you tomorrow how it is done. 

This turmeric patch is doing the best of all my turmeric gardens. The spot has had very fresh additions of manure/compost, is kept constantly mulched with grass clippings that are refreshed monthly, gets dappled sun with late afternoon shade. The ground stays moist. This year we've had almost daily light rain, which might have helped. 

The patch is 324 square feet. The soil depth is no more than 6 inches, less in a few spots. Inspite of the shallow soil, the turmeric is thriving. That black vertical stick in the photo is a hoe handle that's 4 1/2 foot long. That's gives you an idea of how tall the plants are......mostly 3 1/3 to 4 foot tall. 

The plants are lush, robust, green, well leaved, and all bloomed. They are not ready yet for harvesting, but I'm eager to see how the crop turns out. It will be at least another month or two before harvest. 

Monthly Job List - October & November

"H" asked me if I have a month-by-month list of the jobs that need to be done on my homestead farm. 

I have no written list of tasks. I've often seen published lists of "what to do in ________" (fill in the month or season). I guess that's what "H" is looking for. Truthfully, I've never even thought of writing down a list. Perhaps I'm not all that forgetful yet, thank heaven! Now that I'm older, I have indeed become a list maker for some things. I find myself writing down a list of things to do, buy, harvest, etc. But often I walk away and forget to look at the list until the next day. So much for making a list! Egads, there's times when I even forget where I placed the list. Oh-oh, looks like I am indeed becoming forgetful. 

But to help "H" out, here's some of my list for October, if I were to have such a list. Keep in mind that since I garden year around, these special jobs are things I don't need to do the rest of the year. There's still plenty of year around tasks such as making compost, sowing seeds, harvesting, mowing, fence maintenance, etc.  

...harvest & process pineapples

...prepare garden space for pineapple starts and plant them 

...harvest & process guavas

...harvest & process lilikoi

...harvest & process coffee

...harvest & process avocados

...shear of any old wool from the sheep so that they can head into winter with good coats

...start making Christmas season presents ......sea salt, jackfruit candy, dried pineapple

There's lots of other things that are done every month, but they are not October-only tasks. Things like tilling, mowing, planting, harvesting, fence repair, compost making, deworming livestock, etc.

October is also a good time of year to evaluate the chicken flock. The egg laying hens are in one pen, while the mostly non-layers are in another. So if any of the previous egg layers look like they're pau laying, I'll graft them into the non-layer flock. Plus I'll take a closer look at the young growing chickens that are running around (I tend to let the youngsters be unpenned since they stick around the adult flock. By "around" I mean within a 300 foot radius.) The roosters will go into a "finishing pen" and the pullets will join the laying flock. 

Now for November.  I really don't know what the special November jobs will be. That's right, I never took notes. But I can see these things coming up....

...harvest the last of the pineapples 

...check on the progress of the citrus trees, especially the oranges

...harvest the guavas in my area, since those located at lower elevation are now pau

...harvest & process more of my coffee

...plant gourd seeds (this is also a good October job but this year was too wet to do it) 

...finish the Christmas packages and start thinking about getting them mailed

Reasons Why My Soil Doesn't Get Wet

Last night it gently rained. 0.56" to be precise. That's a decent amount of rain for overnight and most areas of the farm benefited. But I've learned that I need to get down at soil level and check, especially in the veggie beds. 

It came as a surprise to me many years ago that my soil didn't equally accept rain water. Some growing areas soaked up the moist perfectly. Other areas tended to get too soggy, with the water pooling in areas. Yet other spots were bone dry even after a 5" downpour. Closely observing and playing detective, I figured out quite a bit about what I needed to do to have soil that soaked up the rain (or irrigation) and distributed it well. 

Soil too soggy -- Growing veggies over pahoehoe lava, or a concrete slab like I have up by the house, can be done. But the soil can easily become overly saturated. I needed to add coarse young compost, instead of my fine aged stuff. And I needed to provide drainage channels as needed so that pools didn't develop. Tilling into the soil 10% coarse chunky biochar also helped with drainage while tending to even out the moisture content. Not sure why it works, but it does. 

Soil bone dry -- What was baffling was the dry soil after a good rain. Much of my soil is based upon decades of degraded ohia tree debris, which seems to make for very hydrophobic soil. The rainwater drains via channels, leaving 99% of the ground dry. I found that to be incredible. I could pour on a gallon of water and it seemed to soak in normally. But when I took a trowel and scooped the soil, only the top 1/2" - 3/4" was wet. The rest was dry. The water just drained off into invisible channels and disappeared underground. I tried a variety of methods to deal with this problem. This is what works best for me -- compost. Lots and lots of compost. Plus mulch to keep the sun and wind from damaging the soil ecology. 

Today when I checked the garden areas that I have planted, I discovered that one of the taro beds was dry under the mulch. The mulch layer was only about 1/2" thick, so although it does interfere with the rain getting to the soil underneath, the mulch wasn't the primary problem. The problem was that this bed is a  relatively new growing spot, so it hasn't had much soil improvements yet. There's not much organic material in it to capture the rain and hold it. Plus the mulch wasn't thick enough to help retain what moisture it previously had. Since the bed is already planted, I can't rototill in more compost. But I could top dress with 2 inches of fine compost and lightly scratch it in between the plants.....water well....top it off with fresh mulch. So that's what I'm doing this afternoon. 

Square Footage

Plenty of readers have been asking about how much land do I have in growing spaces. Truthfully I can't say exactly. Some of my garden beds are teeny, some large. Trees, such as bananas and edible trees are planted singularly rather than in an organized orchard. So how would I calculate the square footage in them? 

For those of you who are curious, I'll start posting square footage, If you noticed, I'm including the square footage of the garden beds that I'm reclaiming (beds 1 though 5 so far). For those of you who have a need to crunch numbers, you can add them up for me. You can also add some beds that I've already done this year (I won't include anything prior to 1/1/18). 

... Single trees : 4 moringa, 4 bananas, 2 citrus

... 28 pineapples scattered about the farm

... Turmeric : 300 sq ft + 45 sq ft + 30 sq ft + 324 sq ft = 699 sq ft total

... Yacon in grow boxes = 18 sq ft

... Potatoes in grow boxes = 45 sq ft

... Sweet potatoes 174 sq ft

... Cholesterol spinach 30 sq ft

... Pipinolas 66 sq ft

... Chocolate mint 30 sq ft

I'll continue to mention the square footage of what I'm planting just so people can get a better idea of how much I'm growing. Just keep in mind that not all of this stuff goes onto my own dinner table. Yes, some does. But some also goes to Adam and Matt and to other people I know. Some is used for trading. Some gets sold. Much goes to feed the livestock. Some gets donated to senior centers and local food distribution efforts. 

I'm not one for keeping strict records. Through experience I've developed a feeling for how much I need to grow of this or that. And since the excess can always be sold, given away, or fed to the animals, the exact numbers are no big deal. By the way, I don't weigh my harvest either. I know of plenty of people who proudly know how many pounds of this or that comes out of their gardens. Frankly, I don't have the time to weight everything. And to me it doesn't make much difference if I don't weigh it. As long as there is plenty, that's all that matters. Besides, nothing goes to waste! 

ps- 

Bed 1 = 180

Bed 2 =   77

Bed 3 = 192

Bed 4 = 112

Bed 5 = 112

Moving on to Beds 4 & 5

Dry conditions are allowing the soil to dry out enough so that I can get back to farming with a vengeance. Hauling compost, digging weeds, tilling, planting, mowing, watering. I think I'm going to be good & tired at the end of the day! Today I've reclaimed two more beds. This means degrassing them, adding compost and a few other soil amendments, tilling it in to create a light, airy soil bed.

Prepared and ready for planting.......

Bed 4&5 are in the same general area I've been working on these past couple days. So at least this one little patch on the farm is looking like someone actually grows something around here. Each bed is 112 square feet, thus adding 224 sq ft more into what I'm working with this year. Each bed is being planted in taro this time around. In the past you would have seen golden beets, green beans, snow peas, cabbage, cauliflower, dill, onions, cilantro, basil, potatoes, or cardoon.

Taro starts ready for planting.......

Between these two beds, I got 7 more taro varieties planted. 

After planting, each plant is well watered in, using about a gallon of water per plant. Then the entire bed is mulched with grass clippings. 

Below is bed 5. Right after lunch I finished up mulching this bed and got all the labels in place. 

Garden Bed #3

(Bed 3 = 192 sq ft)

After finishing beds 1 & 2, I thought about what to plant next. Up at the house garden beds, I have taro that is overdue to be separated and replanted. This seemed to be the highest priority, so I choose the six most overdue varieties. Looking the plants over, I choose the best looking starts, cleaned them up, and planted them. Freshly planted, they look like green or purple sticks lined up in a row. 

As you can see, this garden bed gets shade very early in the morning. By 10, it gets full sun the rest of the day. Most crops have done just fine in this location, so I fully expect the taro to do okay too. 

I'm getting more careful about making garden labels. For short duration crops, a yellow stick & permanent magic marker works fine. But for crops staying in the ground for 5 or more months, I'm resorting to more durable markers. For the taro I'm switching over to repurposed pcv pipe painted yellow and labeled using black paint. 

Last task.......apply mulch. In the taro patch I'm using 3 day old grass clippings laid down 6 inches thick. At 6 inches it's fluffy, but in a couple days it will settle down to be about 1 inch deep. In two weeks I'll reapply the mulch so that I will end up with about 2 inches of mulching material. Then about once a month, as needed, I'll add more mulch to keep the ground well covered and the weeds under control. Taro is a crop that can't compete with weeds and grass, so weed control is important. 

Refreshed Garden Beds...1&2

Beautiful sunshine yesterday morning...and best yet, no rain! Got the strong urge to go play in the dirt. So without much delay, I was out the door. 

Bed #1 (180 sq ft)

Down on hands and knees (the most comfortable position for this task), I chopped out the invading grass in this small pineapple patch. Dang that bermuda grass! Dumped a couple of wheelbarrows of compost and very lightly tilled it in between the plants, but didn't till up to the plants at all. Didn't want to chop up the plant roots. Then I brought over some of the grass clippings from the other day and laid down a 4-6 inch layer, which will settle down to about 1" thick. 

Bed #2 (77 sq ft)

Using the lawnmower, I scalped the grass down in this section that we had used for gardening before. So I wasn't worried about hitting any rocks with the mower. Attacking the old bed with a garden fork, I worked out the bermuda grass that I could find. Adding two wheelbarrows of compost, I finished up the job with the rototiller. Ah-ha......a ready garden bed! I planted three wide rows of beans, Maxibels, my neighbor's favorite. After all, this particular garden bed is in his backyard (we share the gardening areas), so he deserves his Maxibels. 

In that I'm adverse to leaving soil uncovered, I applied a very light covering of mulch to the seeded bed. As long as the mulch isn't thick, the beans will sprout through it. 

Above, the mulch looks thick but it's not. In fact, it barely covers the soil surface. You can see in the photo below that there's plenty of soil showing through. 

The idea is to lightly shade the soil surface in order to help keep the sun and wind from drying it out and killing the soil microbes. Those microbes, after all, are the things that give me my plant food.