My (Redneck) Garden Riddle

This is not what you expected.  I don't have a riddle for you in terms of a joke to guess.  A garden riddle is an old term for a soil sieve.  I need this to get a good growing medium for seedlings.  Many of the cole crops and lettuce seed are so small and they are only to be planted 1/8 of an inch deep.  Because of that you need a light, airy mix that they can grow in - something that isn't heavy and clumpy.

That's why I need a garden riddle.  I'll show you my redneck version.  The first thing that I got was a big landscape bucket full of composted wood chips.  These have been composting down in a pile for three or four years.  The pile (that was dropped of FREE!) has decomposed to about 1/3 the size that it originally was.  I shoveled the bucket full and carried it to the garden.  You can see that some of it looks like topsoil and you can see some sticks that haven't quite decomposed.  More on that later.

I'm going to be using this topsoil (wood chip compost) to plant broccoli and cauliflower in.  In order to filter out the sticks and matter that I don't want in the seed starting mix, I'll use a riddle or a soil sieve.  I'm going to build one, but time got away from me, but I did find something that will work.  We'll call it Kyle's Redneck Riddle.

It's actually the door to an old rabbit hutch.  I don't throw much away, always thinking that it will come in handy one day.  And it did!  Here's how it works:  I place the riddle (rabbit hutch door) over the bucket that I want to catch the filtered soil in.

This is a job where you get your hands dirty, but that's fun, isn't it?  You might use gloves, but I didn't.  I like to feel the sensation of fresh made compost in my hands.   I put a handful on top of the riddle.  The riddle has hardware cloth that is perfect for this job.  You rub the composted wood chips against the hardware cloth vigorously and the filtered soil falls into the bucket.

The remainder that won't go through the riddle is shown below.  It's just some sticks and chips that haven't rotted down yet.  I'll throw those back on the pile for additional "seasoning."  Then, I rinse, wash and repeat until I have a full bucket of sifted soil.

Look at this rich growing medium, would you?  If I was a seed, I would love to be nestled in this stuff.  I'd burst forth like a Fourth of July firework.  Think about the fertility in here.  Three or four years ago, this 'dirt' was cut from a tree and chipped.  The tree had sucked fertility and minerals from the soil and grown.  All that fertility and minerals were stored in the wood.  That wood was chipped and now decomposed.  Now, we're putting that right into our soil.  We're importing fertility!  And it was free!  What a deal...

I'll show you some photos as soon as the seeds start popping out.

Below is a FANCY garden riddle.  There's nothing redneck about it.  This is a You Tube video by one of my favorite bloggers, Herrick Kimball.  He's a master craftsman and in this video, he shows you how to build your own garden riddle.  It is a first class project - one I hope to do one day.  Until then, I'll continue to use the rabbit hutch door.  Click the arrow below to watch.  I think you'll enjoy!

Oh, what the heck.  I'll give you a garden riddle: Why did the tomato turn red?  Because he saw the salad dressing!

About All We Can Handle

At least a couple of mornings each week at 'dark-thirty,' we hear the back-up alarm beeping on the big truck bringing yet another load of wood chips and dumping them on the property.  I've lost count of how many loads, they've delivered, but we're almost at full capacity.  We're out of room, and it is too bad, because like a gardening friend tells me, "That stuff is like gold."  The best part about it is that the wood chips are FREE!  I have looked around and see that they can maybe dump two more loads.  We have a couple of names and addresses of friends who are lined up to take it after we are full.

Composting piles of wood chips are not going to win us any "Beauty Spot of the Month" awards by the Garden Club.  The piles are kind of unsightly, but the benefit provides far outweighs the deviation from aesthetics in the neighborhood.  You can see in the photo below, the piles are heating up and the bacteria is beginning to break down the piles.  They will decompose and then be really useful.

About three years ago we got twenty-something loads of mulch.  We filled the flowerbeds in the landscaping, mulched around the trees to eliminate the need for weed-eating, and we put a four inch layer over the entire garden as we initiated the "Back to Eden" gardening method.  I piled the remainder into a BIG pile at the back of the garden.

We composted kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, and shredded paper into it.  We dumped cow manure into it.  We buried numerous chickens that were killed by predators into it.  A multitude of possums that I trapped were composted into the huge pile.  Three years have past and the pile has shrunk into a big pile of black, fertile compost.

When I plant, I rake back a line of wood chips to expose the soil.  Then I begin hoeing up the soil for my seedbed.  In a testament of healthy soil, a gazillion earthworms wriggle around to greet me.

They are of all sizes and they are enriching the soil and fighting against compaction.

When we first started gardening, I am not exaggerating when I tell you that there were NO earthworms.  Composting is the key to getting them back.

So today one of the things I planted was a row of black beans.  I worked up the seedbed in the row like I detailed above.

I made a 1 inch trench and dropped a bean every four inches.

Then I shoveled some of the rich compost pile into a tub and chop it up real fine with a shovel.  Then I cover the beans in the trench with the compost material.  It is a good medium for the beans to grow in.  As they grow, I'll pull some of the fresh mulch around them to crowd out any weed pressure and also help the soil retain moisture and a cooler temperature.

We're expecting rain tonight, so that will help the beans to sprout in no time!  

The Ever-Shrinking Wood Chip Pile

At the southernmost part of our garden lies a big pile.  In the past it was 50% bigger.  It was wood chips and over the last two years the wood chips have decomposed.  We got these chips from a company that was chipping up trees from electrical powerline right of ways.  The wood chips were free (other than for a few dozen eggs we gave the workers).

The wood chips were once trees.  Those trees pulled nutrients and minerals from the soil.  Now those same trees are slowly deteriorating and becoming soil from which they grew, returning fertility to the land.  The wood chip pile is not dead.  It is teeming with earthworms, bugs, and mushrooms.  Those living organisms help to break down the wood chips.

While you can still tell that there are wood chips in the pile, a good portion of the wood chips are broken down.

Some parts of the pile look almost entirely like dirt, soft, rich, and moist - a perfect medium for plants in a healthy garden.  As the seedlings grow, we rake a 4" layer of this around the plants to discourage weed growth and encourage the retention of soil moisture.

We also bury our compost in the pile.  This adds bacteria to speed up decomposition.  As evidence of the fertility of the wood chip pile, I have several healthy plants growing in the pile from seeds deposited along with the compost.  How about that?  Gardening in which you don't even have to plant the seeds!

Here we have a Butternut Squash and a Charleston Grey Watermelon.

Here we have a plethora of Muscadine Grapes growing.

Here we have a luffa gourd plant.

And finally, here are three peanut plants.

We'll check in on these plants to see if they are able to reach maturity.  As our inventory of wood chips morphs into rich soil, we'll have to keep our eyes open to accumulate more wood chips to keep the process going.