A Favourite Tool: Black Plastic Bed Covers

More than three decades ago, a coworker, one who also was a vegetable gardener, told of growing his corn through a black plastic sheet.  Using the plastic as a mulch and weed barrier, he had great success keeping the corn warm and weed free with his black plastic 'mulch'.  

I gave it a try.  I bought a roll of 6 mil black plastic, 10 feet wide by 100 feet long and cut it into pieces 5 feet by 12.5 feet.  These comfortably covered a 4 foot by 12.5 foot, 50 square foot bed with room to spare.  That roll gave me 16 bed cover pieces. The plastic turned out to be Silage Cover plastic that was used by the area farmers to cover the open silage ends of their dairy farm's bunker silos.  The stuff was very ultraviolet resistant and has never broken down in the sunlight for these 30 odd years.

Last year's carrot beds just before planting.

Not only did the corn grow weed free – I’ll demonstrate how when I next plant my corn, -- but it was very handy in keeping weeds down in other beds growing the squash and the cabbage families – anywhere the plants spacings were wide enough for regular slits in the reusable plastic.

Last year's corn bed started in black plastic.

My Pacific North West location receives 63 inches of precipitation (mostly rain) per year.  That constant wet from mid-September into mid-May and sometimes June leaches out nutrients from the soil.  Our cloudy, cool, damp springs can let local weeds flourish while our vegetables slow and languish.  Hoeing weeds in the spring when the soil is wet doesn’t work, it just transplants them and that added stress inclines them to go into seed production. (that’s not good).

Black Plastic Bed Covers can keep the rains from leaching nutrients, restrict the sun from growing weeds, and warm the soil earlier than usual. The bed cover can also be used to stunt or kill any winter cover crops like fall rye in a matter of weeks.  

Notice on left bed -- dead fall rye after removing black plastic

The sheets are also good for covering newly manured beds, like the chickens’ run, once the birds have been moved to their next location.  The black plastic helps warm the soil and gives the microbes a head start in processing and readying the new nutrients.

Two beds from old chicken run.

With my yard sitting on top of 200 feet (deep) of gravel, just below my shallow subsoil is a wealth of sand, stones, and rocks (wealth that is if you had a gravel pit).  These Coarse Soil Particles are always trying to get my attention whenever I dig, rake, or turn the soil.  Technically they’re great for drainage and for helping warm up the soil in the spring but my perpetual OCD project is to constantly remove them.  I gather pails of them each year and stack the larger stones in a corner.  These larger rocks I use as temporary anchors for my Black Plastic Bed Covers.

Before covering I like to rake a slight hill along the center of the bed for better runoff into the paths.

When the time to plant arrives I simply pull off my black plastic bed cover and often just fortify, till, rake and plant.  

When Jean-Martin Fortier’s book, “The Market Gardener – A Successful Grower’s Handbook for Small-scale Organic Farming” came out in English in 2014, I was pleased to see that he too recommended the use of black plastic as a weed suppressor.  

I was a bit too proud to hear that I’d been ‘doing it right’ for many years on my much smaller scale garden.  My son TOG hadn’t yet gotten into using that tool on his acre-plus but quickly adopted it as he gradually had the funds to afford larger scale sheets.  He found it to be an initial cost that was well worth it.

My Black Plastic Bed Covers are a tool that I’d have a hard time doing without.  That’s why I invested in a second roll – just in case.

Happy Gardening.

 

 

Learning From My Failures: Carrots

One of my big gardening enemies these many years has been the Carrot Fly.  Its maggots leave nasty, rusty holes in my winter storage carrots.  Over the last four growing seasons I’ve beaten them twice.

Bolero carrots from a Good year.

For that first successful year, I had initiated my Carrot Frames – a 2.5 foot high boundary fence of clear plastic stapled onto 2 X 2’s surrounding the carrot bed.  And it worked!  After so many years of failure I had the cleanest carrots all winter, stored the whole winter and early spring in the same bed under a one foot layer of maple leaves.

Four foot row of Bolero carrots across bed, overwintered under foot deep of leaves, picked / lifted in late December.

The next year was my 35^th year gardening in this location so I practiced my fifth Sabbath Rest Year.  That year I planted only Red Clover in the vegetable garden.  In the past, the seventh-year rest worked well as the kids grew up.  They really learned to appreciate all the great tasting, home grown produce we didn’t get to eat that year.  And it gave me a break from the labour of constantly gardening.

It’s not that I’m Jewish nor are we chained to Mosaic Law. 

Leviticus 25:4 But in the seventh year the land is to have a year of sabbath rest, a sabbath to the Lord. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards.  

But it was a good exercise, especially for a doomer like me, to practice faith that the Lord would supply all our needs.  

Matthew 6:31-33   So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

The next year following the Rest, I continued my rotation down the garden and once again my carrots were wonderfully clean of carrot fly damage.

But the third growing year, the bug damage came back. Could it have been the screen door I’d made in my greenhouse that opened into the carrot beds?   Was the fence too low?  Were they getting under the fence somehow?  What else could I change?  

Therefore, in preparing this last growing season’s carrot beds I increased the height of my ‘fence’ to 3 feet, made sure all the carrot frame’s ground perimeter was well secured, removed any outside stairs for stepping over the fence, made sure all old possibly contaminated covering leaves didn’t enter the new beds, plus I had moved the greenhouse with its screen door to the far end of the garden.

But in spite of all that, this last, fourth growing season was also a bust.  

Five pounds of Bolero carrots from four foot row across bed.

Carrot fly damage.

What did I do wrong?  The season’s carrots are still tasty and usable, it’s just that they’re ugly and a bit of a pain to prep and not something I could give away as gifts.

I have thought of two options. 

1) Perhaps the carrot flies are flying over the top of the fence? (they're not supposed to be able to get higher than 18 inches.)  That would mean I need some of that new netting one can get for such a purpose.  My son TOG uses such netting for his carrot beds.  He doesn't use a fence.  

2) Or perhaps the flies are laying eggs right next to the previous beds and lie in wait for my next rotation?  If that is the case, my rotation needs to be farther apart rather than just the next beds over.  

I believe I’ll try the second option.  That potential solution works well for me this coming year.  My carrot beds have reached the end of the four-year rotation and now move all the way back to the far end of the garden.  If successful, it will show I don’t need a roof screen-net.  I just need to change my rotation.  If not successful, then I’ll need a screen net.

With my expanded garden this last year I have room to change my rotation if needed.  I’ll also tighten up the screen door on the greenhouse now that the carrots will again be next to it.

One of the reasons I’ve always grown vegetables is that I Wanted to learn how.  Because someday I (we) may Need to know how.  I think maybe those days are soon coming.  And learning from my failures --- is still learning.

Happy Gardening.

A Favourite Tool: My Row Marker

Even though I no longer imitate Jethro Tull (the farmer, not the rock group) with his seed drill, (that is making my garden into long rows as agriculture does and then tramping all over the garden, compacting the soil, up and down these rows), I still need a Row Marker.  It’s all about optimized spacing of all vegetables and often a straight line is the easiest way to accomplish that.

Rows within a bed and across a bed can help make weeding between these rows easier.  Proper spacing within rows can lead to ideal shading out of late coming weeds between the rows.  Even when growing in equidistant spacings over the entire bed, like with planting pole beans, the Row Marker is the tool to find those spacings.

For many years I had a collection of row markers.  They were gangly, long handled rake looking things made from scraps of wood that had wooden pegs nailed on at different spacings.  Each marker had teeth pointing both up and down for different needed intervals.  I would store them under the deck’s floor joists in a jumbled mess.  Whenever I needed one the rest would come crashing down with it.

For years I wanted one single, adjustable Row Marker but wasn’t sure how to make it.  My son, The Organic Grower (TOG) has a fine and simple one:  He uses his 30 inch aluminum landscaper’s rake.  It has teeth spaced every inch and he found some type of rubber hose – a bit like thick walled heater hose from a car’s heating system – that slide and firmly hold onto his rake’s teeth.  These 6 inch pieces of hose are easily moved to any combination of teeth as needed for marking rows within his beds.

But my favourite bow rake’s teeth didn’t have one-inch spacings.  So I needed to make an adjustable row marker from scratch. TOG had given me an old cast off potential marker made of 2 by 2’s.  It was solid and nicely braced but the handle was too short for marking rows. I easily extended the handle using a half lap joint onto another length of 2 by 2.

I had a length of hose and found 6 cast off carriage bolts the proper length and thickness, along with nuts and wing nuts.  After that it was just drilling holes across the head of the marker in one-inch increments.  

The hose pieces are slid down the bolt and held captive between the bolt head and a hex nut. Enough bolt length is left to poke through the marker’s head holes and held in place with a wing nut.

It isn’t the quickest to change but it works well.  Unused bolts are stored in extra holes partway up the handle.  And it no longer lives under the deck joists – it has a safe and secure place to hang out and socialize with my other valuable tools --- in the garage.

Happy Gardening.

A Favourite Tool: My Seed Storage Jar

 

Storing seeds properly is a minor but very important task.  And it can be successful and easy.  You need two things:  A large Glass Jar with a tight lid and a Rechargeable Silica Gel Desiccant.  

Lee Valley Tools markets one desiccant as Reusable Dehumidifier Bags containing about half a pound of silica gel inside a cloth bag the size of your hand.  The bag changes colour when it needs to be recharged – in that case in a microwave oven.  

I have their 40 gram desiccant packet that comes in an aluminum tin about the size of a deck of cards.  This one is recharged by gently baking 3 hours in a toaster oven at 300° F.  It currently sells for $15.

The best Jars I’ve found are the commercial 4 liter pickle jars. They have wider mouths than the normal quart sealer jar.  I’ve picked them up at the local second-hand store for 3 bucks or from any catering company or small restaurant.  Up until Covid, I enjoyed volunteering with our church's funeral catering crew and we went through those big pickle jars occasionally. 

I’m very organized so I just stuff my seed packets into my Seed Jar and keep it in my cool garage away from direct sunlight. However, I do keep a list of all varieties with their source, age, and current germination rates. That list is key for making my new seed order.  I keep an eye on my germination rates and once a variety starts to slow down or lose vigor, I replace it with a new packet of seeds.  

I used to keep my Seed Jar in my Lovely Wife’s fridge but that took up too much of Her Valuable Space.  So I tried the deep freeze but found every time I wanted to get out some seeds, the humidity in the room would quickly condense onto the very cold seeds and get them damp.

In the old days I had read that the three worst seed varieties for maintaining their germination rates were onions, peppers and parsnips.  These, I was informed, needed to be replaced each year.  But that is all wrong if you use a Rechargeable Silica Gel Desiccant and a Pickle Jar.  Out of those three 'worst' I can easily get 3 years.  And other seeds I can often get more.

Buying from a seed rack that sits in a humid area (like with a fountain nearby) is far from optimum.  Ordering seed from good suppliers is the better bet. Good quality seed is getting more and more costly.  Storing that investment properly is the answer.

Happy Gardening.

A Favourite Tool: My Grub Hoe

One of my first tools purchased for gardening when I was a young man was a Hoe.  It had a typical ‘B’ shaped head – with the flat side of the ‘B’ used for the scraping and chopping.  The head was made from poor quality steel and wouldn’t hold a sharp edge.  Its handle was too short and it was the wrong weight: too light to chop anything solid and too heavy and dull to slice through standing weeds growing near any vegetables.  I found I rarely used it.

In the end the ‘B’ shaped hoe was good for only one thing: Mixing -- either potting mix or concrete in a wheelbarrow.  It was useless in the garden.

For years I used a shovel to loosen or turn the soil in my beds.  After turning I followed that with my bow rake to break up any clods and to mix in any soil amendments.

But over the years I struggled with the hard-packed chicken runs caused partly by our incessant winter rains in our Wet Coast.  Eventually I purchased a tiny Mantis tiller.  That broke up the clods of the sticky chicken runs but the gas Mantis was a pain to start, maintain and trouble shoot.  It was noisy, smelly, and smoky and jumped and spun while it chewed up the harder soils.  I have no small gas engine skills, it was the only small gas engine I ever owned, and eventually I was back using my peacefully quiet shovel and rake.

One day, while visiting our daughter and her family in southern California, I wandered into one of their big hardware stores and as a gardener I naturally checked out their tools.  They had a ‘Planter’s Eye Hoe’.  It was a heavy thing with a 2 lb head and a thick, longer handle.  I bought it and drove it the 1350 miles back home. 

 

This Grub Hoe is the same type of thing that the Third World uses instead of a shovel.  My missionary friend, Chris, in Uganda teaches the locals the Farming God’s Way program and he says he prefers a 3 lb head.

It was excellent for chopping up the chicken’s bed and I also started using it for turning my beds and mixing in amendments at the same time.  But it did take quite a bit of energy to use. 

Then I tried it for weeding my bed paths.  It did the job just fine (this was before I perfected my dad-in-law’s Push Hoe).

This tent I live in is aging fast and comes with more and more aches and pains – my bad shoulder and much older back aren’t really arthritic, they’re just worn.  (or as Red Green said: “I’m not old, I’m ripe.”)   I’ve accepted that I’m now an old guy, so I purchased a new electric, corded Mantis.  It works like a charm, should last for many years, is so easy to start, and is way quieter than anything else motorized. (and no smelly, smoky gas engine to go wonky). The Mantis is now what I use for turning beds and mixing in amendments.  

But my Grub Hoe is still handy for small jobs – a small area to prepare for planting garlic or transplanting lettuces or to loosen up a portion of the chicken’s run so they’ll start digging and scratching there again.  The Grub Hoe is quick and easy and can be used even when kneeling in the bird’s run.  

This Grub Hoe is quite the useful tool.  Maybe that’s why billions of people are still using it. 

Happy Gardening.