This time of year is a great time to be purchasing food directly from producers at your local farmers market.
https://www.ams.usda.gov/local-food-directories/farmersmarkets The link above will take you directly to the USDA searchable data base of farmers markets. Enjoy the tasty food.
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Fresh Food From Small Spaces- The Square Inch Gardeners Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting By R.J. Ruppenthal A generalized look at the techniques and methods used to make the most of small spaces and urban locations for growing your own food. This book is good for beginners and people who are not familiar with some of the basics of gardening and other techniques for composting, mulching and growing your own seedlings in the spring. The part that jumped out to me the most were the sections on sprout growing and their nutritional qualities and some basic info mushroom production. Fall that wonderfully cool time of year that signals the end of summer's heat and summers work in the garden. The fall is actually a very simple time in the garden with only two tasks left to accomplish, the removal of the last of the year's produce and the prepping of the protective cover of mulch that will enhance your garden's soil over the winter. The most important thing you can do for your garden is the removal of anything that might contain any diseases like powdery mildew or wilts that could overwinter till next spring. If you don't have any issues like that than you can just go ahead and lay down the leftover stalks and stems from your plants right in the bed. Leaving as much as possible in the garden is important in maintaining soil fertility and health as everything you grow removes necessary nutrients from the soil. This can also be a good time to add residues, manures or other fertility adding materials to the garden. One thing that I am going to try this fall is the addition of coffee grounds straight onto the garden beds. I know they make a great addition to my compost bins and they promote high heat active composting. The same principle could maybe apply right in my beds and work for me all winter in enhancing the soil for next spring. Once that is done the best thing you can do is leave the garden alone till spring rolls around again. Everything even soil needs a rest period and winter is that time for your garden so let it rest by giving it some "food" and leaving it alone. If you are like me at all you are very frugal, some might say cheap and you are always looking for ways to make or turn something else into something that you need. One of the areas I am always trying to pinch the pennies is my garden. It’s very easier to go all out and buy all the best amendments and gizmos and gadgets to make gardening easier but that can blow a budget very quickly.
Beets those wonderful, earthy flavored roots that have graced many a dinner table over the years despite the groans from the children they were being served to. Now I will admit beets are an acquired taste and it can take some time to acquire it. But like a good wine or coffee the flavor of a good beet will grow on you with time especially when you grow them yourself in the garden. Now beets being a cool season root crop are very versatile in the home garden. They can be grown with lots of other crops as a companion and you can get multiple harvests per year depending on your climate.
The Three Sisters Planting method is a technique that groups up three different types of plants to form a healthier planting system. They work together to support each other in a variety of different ways. It originates from Native Americans and has been a time honored technique to growing successful gardens. The basic technique technique works because of the underlying facts of how plants prefer to grow together and with a variety of other types of plants.
Getting ready for the garden this coming spring is more about what plan you put into place this winter than it is about tilling the soil and planting the seeds. Getting a solid plan into place can save you a lot of headache in the spring.
The first thing you should do is take a look at notes you should have been taking during the summer. Good notes along with pictures will act as a record of what you had success and failures with. For example I kept a log that I put in planting dates, germination dates, rainfall and production success of plant varieties.
When it comes to your soil you can usually never do enough to improve your soils ability to provide you with beautiful, nutritious, sustainably grown food. I say usually because it is possible to overdo everything if you really put your mind to it. But with a well thought out plan you can easily and consistently improve and maintain your soil at its peak performance. I find the best way to lay out a soil improvement plan is to do it by the season.
For thousands of years soil fertility was maintained using a natural fertilizer widely available around the world.
This fertilizer is known as poop. That's right I said poop. I know that to the modern sensibilities the idea of using poop to grow food is probably a little uncomfortable. But when you compare it to the the other option we have been using it really doesn't seem that bad. Soil under modern agriculture has been reduced to a being a sponge that is there is absorb artificial fertilizers and pesticides instead of a living breathing structure. While chemicals can produce a amazing crop with great yields it has been shown that they suffer in flavor and nutrition. The growing trend of organic farming has brought about a new interest in maintaining soil fertility without the use of chemicals. This can be done with two different but very complimentary techniques. Organic matter is a essential part of soil that gets overlooked in many conversations about soil. While most people will be talking about soil pH balance, its composition or how well it grows crops they will leave out organic matter.
This is a mistake. There are many methods and tools out there for figuring out what your soil it made of. They can range from very cheap to omg expensive and unless you have a big bankroll you will want to stay away from a lot of them. One of the most common things you will want to know about your soil is what is it made of. All soil is made of a combination of sands, silts and clay's in various percentages. What those percentages are is critical for determining a lot of what you do on your land. There are a few ways you can test to figure out what soil components your soil has. There is the soil texture triangle like I talked about in my last post or you can also use progressively smaller screens to separate the soil into its component parts. The method I want to talk about today is the jar method. To do this you need a large jar like one of those gallon size pickle jars, a decent sample of your soil and water. Take your glass jar and fill it about 1/3 full of soil. Make sure the soil you use is a representative sample of the area you are testing. The add enough water to fill the jar about 2/3 full. Shake the jar until all the soil is completely mixed and suspended into the water. Then leave the jar to sit for at least 24 hours or longer if needed to get clear water at the top of the jar. Once all the particles of soil have settled to the bottom of the jar you should see clear bands of different soil materials. At the bottom will be the sands then the silts and the clay's will be on top of that. By measuring how thick the bands of soil are then comparing that to the total thickness of the soil you can get a rough percentage of the soil composition. This test can be more accurate for a novice to perform than the texture triangle as you can use simple measurements and little math to get a accurate reading. When you grow a large crop of carrots you can end up with a problem like I have. You can't possible keep all the carrots you grew in the fridge and you don't have a root cellar where you can store them either.
What does that leave you?
Soil pH is a critical aspect of soil that must be understood and managed correctly if you want to be able to create and manage a successful sustainable life. What pH your soil is determines a lot about what you can grow and where you can grow it as soil pH can very from plot to plot.
Companion planting has a long and documented history. While there has yet to be any serious scientific research into whether companion planting actual works the anecdotal evidence is intriguing. There are as many companion planting combinations as there are garden plants so the choices can be daunting. I wanted to narrow it down a little bit by talking about cucumber and what companions are suitable for them.
Trellis- "a frame of latticework used as a screen or as a support for climbing plants"
What a dry definition for a wonderful tool in the gardeners toolbag. There is so many ways you can utilize a trellis in the garden as just a simple support for plants or as a frame work for building a beautiful landscaped area using living plants and flowers. Now I do not claim to be a expert in any sense of the word about trellising plants and what you can do with it. In fact this is the first summer I have every tried to trellis anything other than putting cages around tomatoes.
If you live in the Midwest like I do you you are familiar with a little thing called wind. Wind is what defines many aspects about our lives. It effects where we build homes, if we plant trees, gardens, snow management, what we drive and the list goes on and on. Someone who is not from the plains states may have a hard time understanding just how much wind impacts our lives. Sometime in the dead of winter with the wind howling along at 40 miles and hour with snow and ice flying through the air it sometime seems like the wind has it out for you.
Urban Agriculture is the practice and the fast growing phenomenon of growing food in city settings. This is done through community gardens, utilizing vacant lots, balcony gardens, back yards and for those willing to deal with the scrutiny of there neighbors their front yards. Urban agriculture despite all the hype that it is receiving today is actually not a new phenomenon. Here in the US it has cropped up several times in the past couple centuries. One of the most notable occasions was during WW2 when people were urged to plant Victory Gardens. These gardens supplied more than half of all vegetables eaten during war years. This production right at people homes in cities led to supplies being freed up for the war effort. Growing good food in the city is not as difficult as some people might think. There are many things about cities that make growing food in them easier and more enjoyable than growing it in the country.
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AuthorHello my name is Josh Larson and I am the creator of the Green Living Library. Here on the blog you will find updates to content found in the Green Living Library as well as stories from those living the sustainable life already. Archives
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