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!

Too Much Mulch? Never!

In advance of storms (hurricanes, thunderstorms, or straight-line winds) the power companies contract out crews that trim trees along the side of the road that have limbs that could potentially fall across power lines and knock out power.  Those guys are constantly working.  They are right down the road from us and Tricia stopped and gave them our address.

It's not that we are interested in them cutting our limbs.  I hope they don't!  We are interested in the wood chips that they make.  They toss all the branches in a wood chipper that shoots the mulch into the back of their truck.  When the back of the truck is full, they need a place to dump the mulch.  That's where we come in.

Over the years we've lost count of how many loads we've taken.  We use the mulch in our garden as we use the "Back to Eden" Gardening method.  We've explained it before in past posts.  What a time-saver and labor-saver it is!  Anyway, shortly after giving our address, we received the first load:

We were grateful to receive the free gift.  We put it into our garden and it becomes part of the soil.  Here's the truck on its way out.  The workers will hook up the chipper to the back of the truck and begin trimming and chipping.  Soon they'll have another load.

So far we've received 4 loads.  My wife began talking to some of the gentlemen on the truck.  They told her they were originally from Cuba and that they've lived in Venezuela, too.  They made it very clear that they do NOT like communism and that the United States is the best country they've ever lived in.  These friendly, hard-working men love America.  It made me feel good to hear people saying nice things about our country for a change.  I love the USA!

For comparison purposes, I wanted to show you some wood chips that we had received two years ago (I think).  Notice the difference in the size of the pile.  Over time, bacteria decomposes the chips and the pile shrinks into half the size that it originally was.  Some might call this an eyesore on your property, and it probably is, but the benefits far outweigh the aesthetics in this case.  There are upsides to living in the country and not having an HOA.

The outer crust of the pile looks like wood chips, but if you scratch the surface, this is what you'll find:

The chips in the center of the pile are moist.  Mycelium runs through it, actively breaking it down.  Earthworms wiggle through the pile, actively working.  I take a bucket of the wood chips and put on some gloves and run handfuls of this across a piece of hardware clothe I have stretched across another bucket.  The scraping motion pulverizes the decomposed wood chips into a rich, black medium that is perfect for planting seeds into.  The bottom of the pile doesn't even need to be processed.  It is rich, dark topsoil.  This a a great amendment to the garden soil.

Higher Ground

There is an old hymn that you can listen to by clicking here, that we sing at our church, and the chorus goes like this:

Lord, lift me up, and let me stand

By faith on Canaan’s tableland;

A higher plane than I have found,

Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.

It is a hymn, really a prayer, in which the songwriter aspires to grow closer to his Savior and by doing so becoming more Christ-like each day.  Rather than low living, the author of the hymn (and the singer of it) chooses to live on higher ground, walking with Jesus.  It's an inspiring song.  It should be our aim to have our feet planted on higher ground.

Our very wet first four months of the year reinforced the fact that our feet need to be planted on higher ground and our garden needs to be planted on higher ground as well!  Over the years I've amended our garden soil with tons of compost and garden soil, but it still needs to be higher to avoid sickly, yellow-leaved, scalded vegetable plants.  In order to combat this, I ordered a load of topsoil and had it delivered near our garden.  It would have been easier to dump it directly in the garden, but I don't have a wide gate leading into the garden area.  Therefore that caused me and my boys to work considerably in this effort.  We got it done, though, and hard work is good for the body and soul, I think!

A load of topsoil

Each day we loaded up bucketfuls of topsoil by shovel, put it onto a wagon and dumped it over the existing rows in the garden. This raises the level of the ground in the garden, but also will still allow the roots of our plants to reach the good, rich, worm-filled, microbe-laden soil that we have worked so hard to build over the years.

You can see the results of our work on about a third of the garden below.  A one inch rain packed it in after we dumped the dirt and smoothed it over the garden rows.  It looks like we tilled it, but we didn't.  It completely covered the existing ground, and the only thing you can see growing is a few stalks of sorghum that came up volunteer.  I'm allowing that to mature and I'll save the grain for seed.

I would assume that our work lifted the ground level in the garden by about three inches and once I pull up rows, the new level should be about 4 and 1/2 or 5 inches higher than it was last year.  I'm thinking that will really help out during future 'monsoon seasons.'  This year I actually had potatoes and beets that rotted in the ground.

In some areas of the garden, especially on the lower side, I had really high rows pulled up in which the ground level was high enough.  In those areas, I simply filled in the furrows between the rows with the topsoil.  

Filled in furrows between the rows

We've almost moved the entire load of topsoil into the garden.  I won't have enough topsoil to build up the entire garden area, and I estimate that I'll have about 1/4 of the garden area remaining, but that's okay.  I'll put that on the to do list for next year as I will be pulling up rows and planting the fall/winter garden over the next couple of weeks and I'm running out of time.  No worries, I'll pull up high rows and fill the furrows with chopped leaves and compost and the rainfall will flow around the garden in the pasture.

Project for next year!

Jennings, Louisiana sits at an elevation of 26 feet, 3 inches above sea level.  Higher ground.  That's what we're looking for - in our garden and in our spiritual lives, too:

I want to scale the utmost height

And catch a gleam of glory bright;

But still I’ll pray till rest I’ve found,

“Lord, lead me on to higher ground.”