Saturday Planting Day

Once all the chores were done Saturday morning, my focus turned to the garden. There were things that I needed to get in the ground.  My sidekick and partner-in-crime, Benjamin was willing to assist, so we got busy.  I had to pull up a few rows first.  I have a little system that works for me and I'll explain what I do. Over the past several years I've moved to gardening using no tillage provided by machine.  Partially because I don't own a tiller and always have to borrow one, but more because I don't want to disturb the soil structure.

I now plant on the same rows every season, but using different dirt - if that makes any sense.  What I do is once I pull up my rows, I completely fill in the valley between rows with leaves and composted cow and chicken poop and then hay.  All this organic matter fills in the rows so that you can't even tell that there is a row.  It is all one level.  During the year, I'll pull back the organic matter between the rows and with a shovel, I'll bury coffee grounds, vegetable peelings, shredded paper, etc.  Fast forward one growing season.  All of the organic matter has decomposed and I take my big hoe and pull all of that rich, musty, damp, good smelling soil right up on top of the row and I'll plant seeds directly into it.  Then I start over again filling the valley with new compost. When I pull the rich compost up, it is teeming with small organisms and earthworms. As a co-worker told me, "You could probably drop a dog turd in that stuff and grow a dog!"

The photo below shows several things:

1. On the right you can see the 2014 potato crop growing nicely, surrounded by hay that keeps all weed pressure at bay.
2. In the pasture, you can see the hens scattered out foraging for bugs, worms, frogs, seeds, as far as the eye can see, and eating the fresh, new grass of Spring.
3. You can also see the sower sowing seed.  Benjamin is planting Chinese Mosaic Long beans and Rattlesnake Pole beans.  Both will attach themselves to the trellis and grow all the way to the top of it while yielding a nice crop.  Both of these seeds were some that we saved from last year, so we're interested to see how our germination percentage goes.

Ye Olde Bean Planter

One row behind Benjamin in the photo above, you can see a long, tall, green shoot. That is our asparagus. The rootstock is going on about five years old.  There are numerous little shoots of asparagus popping up that I normally snack on raw right out of the garden.  Here are a couple of asparagus shoots right here:

Looks like Junior from Veggie Tales!

And another one in the photo below.  If you don't break them off when they are this size, they grow very quickly, becoming 'woody' and too tough to eat.  Then they become a big, fern like plant that gobbles up a large space in the garden.

Can't forget to harvest this one when I get home today

When the dust cleared Saturday afternoon, Benjamin and I had planted the following:

• Chinese Mosaic Long Beans
• Rattlesnake Pole Beans
• Contender Green Beans
• Roma Italian Beans
• Purple Hull Pinkeye Peas
• Ozark Razorback Peas

Over the course of the next few days, we'll be getting lots of seed in the ground. Tomorrow I'd like to tell you about one more seed that we planted on Saturday - one that Benjamin is REALLY excited about, as am I.  It was planted on the row directly to the right of the turnips shown below.

A new crop for us

I want to show you something interesting and totally new (for us) that we planted in tomorrow's post.  Tune in tomorrow as we discuss it and show you the seeds.