While pondering all we are thankful for November represents the beginning of our new gardening season. Soil health and viability is the key to any garden success. We look forward to all of the decomposition that will be happening in our beds over the next 6+ months adding nutrients and improving soil structure for next year's plants.
Gobble, Gobble. We hear at Green wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
Soil structure improvement
Much of the leaf compost that was included in our soil delivery in the spring has decomposed and the soil left in place has a fairly high clay content. Our plan over the winter is to improve the soil structure by building up humus by mixing in a copious amount of mulched leaves and some well composted manure.
We expect the leaves to fix nitrogen as they decompose and hope the manure will provide more available nitrogen for plants this spring. We are also planting crimson clover and hairy fetch for cover crops and a spring nitrogen source.
We are going to take soil samples for analysis now, in the winter and spring. We will make final nutrient ph corrections prior to planting in late May/June.
We are excited about this phase of soil structure improvement and the subsequent soil-based experiments and we look forward to collecting these data points.
We expect the leaves to fix nitrogen as they decompose and hope the manure will provide more available nitrogen for plants this spring. We are also planting crimson clover and hairy fetch for cover crops and a spring nitrogen source.
We are going to take soil samples for analysis now, in the winter and spring. We will make final nutrient ph corrections prior to planting in late May/June.
We are excited about this phase of soil structure improvement and the subsequent soil-based experiments and we look forward to collecting these data points.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Carrots, beets, fennel, sunflower seeds, and horse manure
Wow, what an abundance of sunflowers seeds! The 5th graders did a magnificent job harvesting, sorting, soaking, roasting and sharing their seeds with the school and community! We just harvested the beets, carrots, and more fennels seeds. Our greens are growing like crazy as are our onions and garlic. Boy, we may have started our fall crop late but this wet warm weather is helping a lot.
We just finished picking up a large load of 18 month old horse manure. The stall bedding at this farm is newspaper. This is wonderful, completely composted manure and it is full of worms and other beneficial critters. Parents are bringing bags of leaves that we will mulch, add to the manure then add to our beds.
The students will take soil samples for analysis before we add the compost and leaves and cover crops. Then they will take soils samples in the winter and mid-spring for comparison.
We just finished picking up a large load of 18 month old horse manure. The stall bedding at this farm is newspaper. This is wonderful, completely composted manure and it is full of worms and other beneficial critters. Parents are bringing bags of leaves that we will mulch, add to the manure then add to our beds.
The students will take soil samples for analysis before we add the compost and leaves and cover crops. Then they will take soils samples in the winter and mid-spring for comparison.
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