Planting Garlic

My garlic is planted in next year’s designated onion bed.  The onions follow the greenhouse and the garlic shouldn’t be planted until the greenhouse is moved.  I’d rather the garlic didn’t have a warmer environment inside the greenhouse when starting out – it shouldn’t have too much of a start on growth but rather something slow and regulated to the actual local climate. 

My son TOG has advised against planting garlic in September here in the Fraser Valley since it might get too far ahead before the cold snaps and heavy frosts come in the winter.  So early November garlic planting after the greenhouse is moved works for me.

In the kitchen we can use 15 bulbs with about 6 cloves in each bulb for a winter supply.  Plus we need 3 more bulbs for planting 18 cloves for the next year’s crop. 

My spacing is the same as my onions: rows one foot apart across the four foot wide bed, with plants 8 inches apart in the rows.  They would do just as well with 10 inches equidistant but I find the 12 inches between rows gives me easier access for that final weed cleaning before mulching with old, shredded leaves in May.

I use my row marker for laying out the spots then trowel a 3 inch deep trench, about 6 inches wide.  Totaling up 3 rows across the bed with 6 inches on each end makes up 3 linear feet of bed = 12 square feet.  Applying Rock Phosphate (or bone meal) at a generous 4 lbs per 100 square feet for bulb plants gives us half a pound for our 18 cloves.  Alas, I did my math wrong in the garden and wound up using a full pound.  We’ll see how that works out.

Last March I acquired a full cubic yard (27 cubic feet) of ‘hot’ fresh, free-run, organic fed, layer’s chicken gold (manure) from my brother-in-law’s operation.  He had turned it twice and when I got it home I turned it every 2 or 3 days another 8 times.  It heated up really well but still smelled hot.  So I let it rest, sheltered all summer and hopefully it should be ready for next year’s growing season.  

I grabbed 2 gallons of that fine stuff, smelling much more earthy now, and applied it to the garlic row trenches along with the rock phosphate.

This I stirred in with my small single-handed cultivator.  (I once had a vintage, long, thin, ash handled, four-tight-curved-tined cultivator that was a wonder to use.  I do believe it walked away.  Always lock up your tools.)  Without this fine Chicken, I'd normally use one half pound or a bit more of Soya Meal. (4 or 5 lbs per 100 square feet.)  I feel Soya is longer lasting or slower releasing than Alfalfa meal.

After blending the mix in the trench bottom, I placed my biggest garlic cloves into the fluffed up soil with the pointy ends pointing up and covered with about 3  inches of soil.  I like Russian Red hard necked garlic.  I raked the bed flat and smooth and covered with the obligatory fence mesh to deter cats.  

I prefer not to cover the bed with a mulch for the winter, I’ve had too many pale blanched tips trying to find sunlight in January and February and once they become rudely uncovered they freeze more readily and I think that sets them back.  I tend to think it’s better to let the soil stay cooler and they can harden properly as they emerge.  I might throw some leaves over the plot under the fence wire if there’s to be a nasty week-long cold snap and then pull it off as soon as the rains return but the regular modest frosts here shouldn’t be a problem.  

The next chore won’t happen until mid-March when I’ll top dress with some more chicken gold.  Actually, this time it will be Chicken Gravy from my own hens. I can give out my gravy recipe then.

I re-read parts of our garlic growing resource book: “Growing Great Garlic” by Ron L. Engeland.  His advice on garlic depth (one inch deep) and mulch (6 inches of grass clippings after planting) are good but perhaps better for his location.  He farms in North Central Washington due south of Osoyoos, BC and has a harsher winter than us plus he only gets 16 inches of rain per year.  

I get 63 inches of rainfall and don’t like to mulch my garlic and onions until the soil has really warmed up in early May.  Before that time lack of soil moisture is never a problem and mulching in our wet spring could keep the soil too cold.   

Engeland advises that planting depth and mulch have trade offs and should be fine-tuned.  I’m pretty safe with my procedures, however he has me wondering if I was careful enough in separating the cloves – I may have planted some that became stemless (that’s a part on the bottom among the root sources).  I may have to peek at the bulbs in mid-winter looking for growth to see if I got it wrong. 

Happy Gardening.

Potting Mix Step One: Emptying My Compost Box

My main composting method is a Slow Compost, a 3 or 4 year old box of weeds, shaken out pieces of sod, spent plants, garden waste and kitchen waste from the growing season.  

The other kind of compost, Fast Compost, can be cooked up in almost 3 weeks when one has all the right ingredients at the exact time.  The carbon / nitrogen ratio needs to be just right – the proper blend of carbon containing organic matter, like leaves, straw, spoiled hay, coarse plant stalks (never? sawdust) with nitrogen containing ingredients such as manures, grass clippings and other green garden waste.  For Fast Compost the right balance is blended into a 4 foot wide / high pile and turned every 2 or 3 days to add oxygen. Proper moisture levels must be maintained.  

The temperatures in Fast Compost build up to 160° F which kills pathogens and weed seeds.  It is totally wonderful stuff!  But it’s Magic.  You must get all the incantations right or you either have a cold pile or a stinking mess.  

I prefer to make my stress free, Slow Compost over a 3 or 4 year period.  I build a wooden box 4 feet square and toss in all the waste organic matter I run into from my backyard. (never sawdust, and my tree’s leaves are used for other things) I let the rain get into it occasionally and even step in it to tramp the stuff down occasionally to make room for more.  

The only potential stress comes from the fact that Slow Compost doesn’t kill weed seeds.  Therefore, I must be careful as to which weeds I throw into the box – nothing that has almost mature seeds on them.

This year my old compost box was full, so I built another one.  (That new one turned out to be 3 feet by 5 feet.)  

The front boards of the old box slide out and I start by removing the top few inches and tossing them into my new box.  Then the balance, what looks like humusy soil, is sifted over my wheelbarrow.  

I keep three containers handy, one for stones, one for bits of garbage (trash) and one for woody things like sticks, pine cones or large stems that didn’t break down.  Any non woody parts that didn’t quite break down, but should still break down, like mossy sod pieces, are tossed into the new box.  

The rest is sifted in my fine one quarter inch screen that sits on my wheelbarrow.  

Anything else that doesn’t quite go through the screen but doesn’t fit the other descriptions gets tossed around one of my grapes for mulch. 

My quarter inch screen was a bit slow for such a large amount, so I built a new screen from some galvanized, diamond shaped metal lath – the kind possibly used for some kinds of stucco or masonry work.  

I’ve learned from TOG that the longer lasting, trouble free screens have more than just staples to hold the bottom screen on.  I now use some wood strips to cover over the exposed edges of the stapled on lath.

The wonderful, dark, fine stuff in the wheelbarrow is carried to my collection of barrels under my deck.  This is the main ingredient for my next few years of potting mix.

  

Since my soil is a Sandy Loam and has very little clay in it, even a bit of soil tossed into my compost box with the weeds and sod pieces isn’t a detriment to my potting mix.  More clay in a soil would be different.  The capillary action of water in clays turns a potting mix into something closer to concrete.

The walnut tree I planted in the front yard 36 years ago has extended its roots all through my front yard.  These roots exude a growth inhibitor so we can’t successfully grow many flowers in the front yard.  Therefore, all of our front flowers must be grown in pots and containers.  And my Lovely Wife is quite good at keeping colour in the front yard.  Our large amounts of potting mix are one key to such flowers.  

Of course, the potting mix is also great for my home seeded vegetable bedding plants.  How to fortify the mix will be described in Part 2.

Happy Gardening.

"Can I Move?" my Greenhouse.

 

In the movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), the two bank robbers decide to go straight in order to avoid discovery and capture.  They try out for a job at a mountain mine site.  The colourful mine boss asks Sundance if he can shoot and throws a coin in the dirt for him to shoot at.  Sundance, standing still, misses.  Then Sundance asks, “Can I Move?’ and when he's in motion, hits the coin numerous times.  The two are hired as payroll guards.

My greenhouse also has to Move!  Growing in containers doesn’t really work that well organically.  Commercial greenhouse growers use bags of growing medium and a nutrient rich chemical soup piped in to drip into the plants’ root systems.  Pesticides are used for controlling pests and such in the close mono-cropped greenhouses.  Organics don’t abide those conditions.

I plant my greenhouse plants: tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and melons in the soil.  To do that for more than one year in the same spot results in nutritional deficiencies, pests and diseases.  So my greenhouse follows my four year crop rotation plan throughout the garden.  Each year it moves to the next set of beds. 

Eliot Coleman is an advocate of moving greenhouses and hoophouses.  My son, The Organic Grower (TOG) followed his lead and has successfully rolled his houses (13' X 50' and 20’ X 50’) using Coleman’s directions with both permanent and portable wheels for over 10 years.  (mine had been moving for much longer) 

My old greenhouse was smaller, 8 by 10 feet, made of cedar 2 X 2’s and sitting on a frame of cedar 4 X 4’s.  It was light enough to be pulled with a rope on skids to the next two beds.  

My new greenhouse is larger and much heavier, made of spruce 2 X 3’s and built upon spruce 2 X 10’s, it is 12 by 15 feet and covers three beds.  After I put it together, I discovered it wasn’t going to be moved by sliding it over skids like the old one.  And both TOG and I agreed it couldn’t be lifted by four guys and walked across the garden.

Last year I set up some rollers to go under the sides of the greenhouse and some planks to go under the rollers.  That hardly worked.  It constantly slid sideways off the rollers.  It was at the fourth year of the rotation and it needed to proceed over the whole garden to start over from the beginning.  Much like the carriage on an old manual typewriter, the bell had dinged and now the page must be moved to the other end to start another line of typing.  It took several difficult hours to “roll” the greenhouse to the far end.

This year I wanted to do something easier.  I bought four small, 10 inch pneumatic tires with wheel rims and bearings from Princess Auto.  I waited for a sale and picked them up for about $7 each.  Then I bought some ready rod – a six foot long piece of 5/8 inch threaded steel rod, and cut that into eight pieces for axels.  

I made skateboard like ‘scooters’ out of 2 X 4’s and since I didn’t have a drill press to make the holes for the axels perfectly perpendicular, I drilled ¾ inch holes.  There was no need to use nuts on the axels since we weren’t taking any corners, just slide the rods through the holes and wheels and let the weight of the load hold them in place.  

I guessed the house weighed about 600 lbs so that would put 75 lbs on each of the eight wheels. (the other four wheels I borrowed from the grandkids’ wagon).

Using a 45 year old piece of very hard Douglas Fir 2 X 10 for a lever, I got my Lovely Wife to stand on the plank, raising the end of the house while I installed each pair of wheels under the four door frames on the bed’s paths.

Then I pushed modestly and it started to roll nicely.  But then stopped.  Alas there was a kale plant that needed to be pushed down on its side to clear the under carriage.  It would hopefully survive and supply us with an extra early spring picking inside the greenhouse.

Once the kale cleared, the greenhouse rolled like a charm until it got to the end of the bed where the leading protruding wheels on the lower bed path came up to the higher grassed cross path.  I quickly got my shovel and carved a large divot out of the permanently grassed pathway to let the wheel continue the last foot.  Once the house was off its wheels there was no moving it, so I needed it to sit exactly where it was to rest.  

Removing the wheels was easier than installing them.  The sod divots from the grassed cross path were replaced and all sat well.  I will eventually drive some stakes to act as anchors against the winter winds (that is how the old greenhouse died) but I think the house’s weight will be the greater anchor.

Like Sundance’s shooting, my greenhouse performs much better when it Moves.

Happy Gardening.