Wood for Food ~ Gardening with the Slow Burn of Rotting Wood

Un-irrigating

2017-09-27T19:52:00.001-07:00

You sometimes hear about hugel beds that have gone without irrigation, even in dry climates. I have not had to water as much since developing my wood for food garden beds, but up until this summer I had never cut irrigation off completely.

This year I decided to try stopping irrigation in a few places to see how the plants would fare with only the moisture from the rotting wood. Once in a great while I sprinkled a little water from a jug (a few times over the whole season), but these plants were not really watered. And -- we went for about 80 days with no rain this summer!

This zucchini plant is in the center of the non-irrigated bed, with aspen logs and manure underground. It has beautiful zucchinis on it now and looks more robust than some of the other zucchini plants I have growing in an irrigated, non-hugel bed.

The potato plant next to the zucchini is doing just fine too. On the other side of the zucchini, I dug a hole yesterday and found the dry soil to be full of potatoes, with no plant in sight. It appears that the plant formed its potatoes and then died, perhaps due to lack of moisture. However, I harvested the most beautiful red potatoes I've ever grown -- beautiful skins, no blemishes, perfect flesh. Works for me!

This zinnia may have picked up some moisture from a neighboring micro-sprinkler, but the Swiss chard and celeriac in the background were not irrigated at all. (The zinnia is coming into the picture from an acute angle -- its base is a few feet away.) Both the chard and the celeriac volunteered in the straw-mulched path, and I just let them go. The path receives no irrigation, but they didn't seem to mind at all. They are growing in a mixed-species hugel bed.

Based on these experiments, it seems that you really can grow food without irrigating, once you have a moist sponge of wood available to your vegetables.

Happy fall gardening!

Totally coasting

2016-09-10T20:16:00.000-07:00

With the Wood for Food garden heavily front-loaded with hard work, I have been coasting all summer. The self-perpetuating garden -- a basic tenet of permaculture -- means that you can set things up for success and then enjoy the results as you are able.

The summer of 2016 nearly swallowed me whole, so the garden took a backseat to the rest of life. The plants did what nature does: they carried on happily without me. I would visit the garden whenever I got a chance, and pick some raspberries or a carrot or some greens, and whisper gratitude in my heart for these good things.

The Swiss chard bolted, but it had also gone to seed last year, so there were lots of new seedlings throughout the summer (above).

When I had the time, I'd trellis the beans or squash or cucumbers up their tipi or archway, and maybe pull a few weeds. With the paths and spaces all sheet mulched, there haven't been many weeds. Mushrooms continued to pop up everywhere. The timers opened the valves for drip and micro irrigation while I slept at night, but in some areas I decreased irrigation because the plants didn't seem to need much.

It has been a real joy to excavate the garden area and fill the pits with large wood, hay, leaves, and manure. It has been great fun to see what will grow here, and how, and to learn through the university of life what works well. I've enjoyed sharing the results through this blog, and will continue to share from time to time.

I enjoy the colors, the tastes, the textures, the smells. (Above: beets and the perennial Maximilian sunflower)

2016, the year of the many mini-harvests...

I enjoy seeing the birds nesting in the bird boxes, eating the grasshoppers and slugs, and flitting and singing around me. We've had Western bluebirds, house wrens, white-breasted nuthatches, and kestrels in the nesting boxes, plus lots of sparrows in the garden. The swallows have shown keen interest in the nesting boxes... maybe next year they will raise young here too.

This year the Armenian cucumbers are far behind where they were last year at this time, but it's still possible that we'll harvest some before the first frost. It was 3 degrees Celsius or 38 degrees Fahrenheit the other night, but we evaded frost, just barely.

Red and green orach remain my top favorite greens -- for coming up first, bolting last, self-seeding, and tasting great the whole season through.

We've got our first apples this year! They are Idareds. Last year there was one, and the wildlife got it. This year, there are six, and it looks like they are ours. Happy dance!

The best part of this garden has been sharing it with my daughter. I'm so glad we started it together when we did.

Thank you for checking in and sharing the joy with me. I will continue to post on this blog as I'm inspired, but not on a regular schedule. You have seen the Wood for Food garden rise out of rock and moondust, and now it is time for coasting.

Enjoy your own garden space, stack those functions, and I hope that you will have the opportunity to coast too.

From weeds to mushrooms

2016-06-30T22:35:00.001-07:00

Noxious weeds are abundant, especially this time of year and especially in our region. A little earlier this spring, I decided to reduce my weeding work throughout the next couple of years by sheet mulching some new areas, and re-doing some older sheet mulches that had decomposed. After discovering morels this spring along another sheet mulched area, I've been inspired to take weed suppression to the next level, by encouraging edible mushrooms to grow wherever I smother weeds with layers of organic material.

In my rhubarb garden, I laid old cotton sheets on the ground between plants. In the early spring, it looks like they are well spaced out, but by June, rhubarb covers this whole area. Weeds tend to hide under the plants and produce seed before I realize it. Smothering the open areas solves that problem.

Over the sheets I laid comfrey leaves harvested from the companion plants to my nearby apple trees.

On top of the comfrey, I arranged pieces of bark and slab-wood from my husband's sawmill. (Slab-wood is the edge of the log that has bark on it, which is removed to make a square cant for milling.)

I worked around some native plants that I enjoy, such as lupine and wax currant. The finished product: no weeds, and the rhubarb begins to take over...

Meanwhile, in another area where I was also installing fence, I used a similar process, driving the t-posts directly into a small hole in the sheets. This made a nice seal for keeping weeds out of the base of the post.

In the fencing area, I put slab-wood over the sheets and covered the whole thing with sawdust.

(Before)

This pom-pom shrub was surrounded by invasive St. John's Wort. I smashed the weeds down, and laid cotton sheets overtop, working around some native bunch grasses.

(After)

Next I added slab-wood and leaves from last fall. It will be interesting to compare the results with the sawdust vs. comfrey vs. leaves for mulch, in combination with the same slab-wood.

Now to the next level: encouraging edible mushrooms.

The first method I tried was drying morels on newspaper, allowing the spores to fall onto the paper. I turned the morels every now and then to maximize the amount of paper inoculated with spores and to encourage even drying.

I put the mushrooms in jars to eat later. Then I tucked the newspaper under my slab-wood sheet mulch, favoring those pieces with charcoal bark from trees that burned during last year's Nine Mile fire. Since morels flourish following fires, I figured this might potentially encourage them to grow.

The second method I tried was the slurry method. I started with a glass gallon jar of water.

I added some water with molasses and sea salt, which had been heated together in a saucepan.

Next I added the morels...

...and let it sit for a couple of days in a cool, dark place. Then I put the slurry into zippered plastic bags, and put them in my deep freezer. Next spring, when conditions are wet, I will pour the slurry onto my sheet mulched areas and see what happens!

Hugel in a Pot

2016-05-28T12:55:00.003-07:00

This year we are exploring the use of hugelkultur in container gardening.

The first order of business is to find a large pot. It does not need to be this large, but big can be fun! We were able to pick this one up for free (what a score), right after leaving the Seed Library's container gardening class (what fun). Fawn had a great time playing in it, like a big cardboard box but even more exciting, somehow!

I washed the pot with soap, water, and a natural enzyme spray. Before planting, I checked out the drainage situation. The pot only had holes in the bottom -- no bueno, as I had just learned from Master Gardener Tory Shook in the Seed Library class. Unless you're going to prop the pot up off the saucer, those holes on the base are not going to drain properly and may wreak havoc with the roots.

I drilled some holes on the sides at the base, for adequate drainage. Ready to plant!

Wait, not ready yet. First we need to play with the pot some more.

In the meantime, I made sure I had some planting materials ready. Here you can see a CanAm load of native soil, sand, well composted horse manure, and bark pieces. In the front seat is a nice big round of rotting aspen.

The native soil came from a special, unusual pocket on our property where the soil is dark and fluffy. Jackpot!

It feels so good in your hands, especially after you sift it.

Here we go...

But before placing any of that beautiful soil in the pot, we started with the aspen. It is sitting vertically in the pot to provide optimal access for plant roots to penetrate the rotting wood tissues.

Around the aspen we placed many pieces of bark from edging wood on the sawmill. Any kind of bark or sticks would do.

Now the sand and soil...

Smaller bark pieces...

...and lots of composted manure.

Water...

...and spearmint that was given to us from someone who had plenty to share. Since mint can be that way, we opted to plant it in our best container ever, to contain it! We can already picture mint tea on a chilly winter day.

* * *

Here are a couple of other ideas for utilizing wood in your container gardening:

Off-cuts from natural, untreated lumber

Punky, rotting firewood pieces, laid at an angle to fit, or placed vertically

However you slice it, wood is a great addition to your containers. And on top of acting like a sponge for moisture, wood helps create the mass you need to fill your space, too!

Please feel free to share your container gardening tips in the comments below.

Hugel on the Rocks

2016-05-21T07:58:00.001-07:00

Where can you use hugelkultur? Are there limitations on the kinds of places in which this method can be effective? Seems like there is only one way to find out...

On a granite outcrop near the garden, I would like to install a windbreak, privacy barrier, and shade area. This truly is hugel on the rocks. The granite bedrock is visible throughout the area, with just enough soil in between the protrusions to support some lovely native bluebunch wheatgrass, magnificent bitterroot flowers on the edges, a thick profusion of not-so-lovely invasive St. John's Wort in the center. (Above you can see beds #1 and #2 before they were covered with soil, and the rocky setting in which they are built.)

I started off by laying sheets and cardboard down over the St. John's Wort, in an effort to suppress it. Next I piled up rounds of spruce from Lee in Wauconda, short pieces about 16" high, in circles.

In the center of the top layer of rounds in bed #2, I planted lilacs that were given to me. I included lots of horse manure from my neighbor along with a little soil, compost, and hay.

Our dog, Kwilly, looks innocent enough here -- but we won't get into the number of times he tore the rounds apart to get at the compost I layered under the lilacs. Note to self: use completely composted food scraps only!

Layer one of bed #3.

Between some rounds there was a gap, so I stuffed it with punky spruce pieces. This really helps contain the horse manure for weed seed reasons, and helps keep moisture in the bed too.

I'm winging it with these circular beds made from stacked vertical pieces. They wind up being very steep sided, which makes it challenging to add the outer skin of soil.

A second layer of rounds... on bed #3

Here you can see the cardboard and cotton sheets, and my start on covering them with leaves.

I ended up fully covering the sheets with wood chips and leaves hauled from the valley, but later that winter, the deer ate most of the leaves! There is nothing easy about growing plants and managing weeds in this environment, but that makes it all the more rewarding when things do work out.

Two years later:

Orchard grass has taken over around the beds, and I still haven't managed to finish the outer skin of soil. The beds are growing fine, but more like conventional raised beds than hugelkultur rotting wood beds. If I want the wood to break down and provide the benefits of rotting wood, I need to cover the rounds with soil. It takes quite a lot of volume!

Opportunity knocks

My husband is creating a wider level area for his sawmill. In cutting into the bank, he is creating a source of native bunchgrass and beautiful soil. I won't be able to cover all of the beds, but it'll be a good start!

Loading the ATV with soil and native grass sod

Parked on a hill, letting gravity fill the wheelbarrow

Above is the progression of the bed that has the lilac, being covered with native grass sod.

And this is the bed I haven't gotten to covering with soil. It's functioning a little more like a conventional raised bed, although it does have rotting wood in its core. It now has hops growing on the outside as an experiment in lieu of a soil skin. I'm experimenting with live skins that are less labor intensive, to see how that works. In the center of this bed is Maximilian sunflower, a perennial sunflower that has been doing very well here.

A bonus:

I started out this project aiming to suppress St. John's Wort and to build a windbreak and privacy barrier. As shared in my last post, "Mycelium Magic", I got a whole lot more out of the project: here you can see morels popping up on the edges of the sheet mulch. All around the edges this spring, was the gift of morels! You may know that open, south-facing, rocky hillsides are not a place where you would usually find morels. However, the layering of manure, cardboard, leaves, and wood chips seemed to work for them. I've been inoculating other sheet mulch areas with morel spores, using newspapers upon which the mushrooms were dried. Here's hoping this is a replicable model!

Although hugel on the rocks has been a huge amount of work, it has been a lot of fun to create a new microclimate in an unlikely location. So far, I have not found a location unsuited for hugelkultur. It seems to work everywhere!

Mycelium Magic

2016-04-23T22:44:00.002-07:00

One thing I really love about having a rotting wood garden is watching mushrooms pop up everywhere. And I do mean, everywhere! The first six of these photos are from last fall, but the rest are from the last few weeks.

Puff! Out of nowhere, they rise up.

I've used a lot of wood chips on the surface of the garden, mainly for paths. It turns out that wood chips make the fungi very happy, in addition to all the wood rotting beneath the surface. For a visual on what's below the surface, use the blog menu to check out the bed construction pages.

I found these shaggy mane mushrooms near where I had layered tamarack (larch) needles for weed control and to keep moisture in the soil. The property where the larch needles originated supports shaggy mane, so I'm thinking we may have transferred some spores with the duff. The shaggy manes really made me smile!

Inside the cambered frame, these smurfy looking mushrooms rose up...

among the Tiny Tim tomatoes (last summer).

A common place to find mushrooms is along the edges of my cold frames, where the wood chips meet the frames.

On to this spring, which has brought mushrooms at every turn. It amazes me how the earth gives way to these fruiting bodies...

...and how they can rise up even smack-dab in the middle of a dense clump of chives.

They can push through thick layers of leaves.

Here is a close-up from the above patch.

I'm going to need to learn more about identifying mushrooms!

These guys came up where the edge of the tipi greenhouse meets the path...

...and these ones in an asparagus bed, over the past couple of days.

BUT: the biggest surprise of all came at the edge of an area where I had sheet mulched over St. John's Wort, just outside of the garden.

It was dusk, and at first I thought I was looking at a strange kind of scat. I bent over and realized that the sheet mulched area was lined with morels! Here you can see a cotton sheet over some decaying cardboard... and then just a few inches out are morels.

I brought them home and cut them open, and sure enough they were hollow -- the real deal!

Paired with wild asparagus, it doesn't get much yummier.

At first I dried some in the dehydrator...

...but then I learned to dry them on newspaper instead. This way I can use the newspaper in future sheet mulching, and inoculate new areas with the spores. :-) Spreading the joy around, mycelium magic... What started off as weed control for St. John's Wort has grown into a way to raise edible mushrooms. Stacking functions!

Potato Tower

2016-04-09T22:49:00.001-07:00

A few years ago, my daughter planted one innocent looking little raspberry plant -- given to us by our neighbor's mother -- which she named, "Trixie." Oh, were we ever in for some tricks. Trixie grew into many raspberry plants, which are now attempting to take over half of the garden. Above you can see Fawn with Trixie and her descendants, last summer. The raspberries also extend about 12 feet to the left, outside of the picture.

I knew that this year I needed to take some action. I trimmed Trixie way back, and then plastered cardboard down over the canes in one of the areas never intended for raspberries. Around the cardboard I built a simple 4x5 foot frame. This will be my first attempt at growing potatoes vertically.

Note that it is really important for the first frame to be level. Also, since I'm a firm believer in crop rotation, next year I will use this frame to extend the growing season and to protect carrots from marmots. But for this year: potatoes...

I filled the bottom of the frame with sand, for drainage.

Next, I crammed and tamped native soil along the inside perimeter, to discourage mice from getting interested in sneaking in.

A thin layer of partly decomposed leaves, maybe three inches deep...

more sand...

several wheelbarrows of well composed manure...

seed potatoes and more sand, soil, and compost.

After planting, I built another layer of the frame. I will put a little more soil on top, since the seed potatoes are quite near the surface. Then, as the potatoes grow, I will add more soil, sand, compost, as well as pine needles as mulch. As the potatoes grow upward, more layers will be added to the frame. I am using slab wood from my husband's mill, since the outside pieces of the logs, being rounded and covered in bark, are not functional for very many other projects. It's a little bit like our "Extra Enrichment" classes in elementary school with Mrs. Bev Barling: "Making something out of nothing." Sawyers often just burn or chip these pieces.

Instructions I have found online call for screwing each layer of the frames in place, then unscrewing at harvest time. I know myself during the harvest season, and I'm going to want to quickly pull this potato tower apart when the time comes, with no tools needed. So I am experimenting with some pivot latches -- one screw in one slim board, which can be pivoted to hold or release the board above it. Just like the barn door when I was a kid, only sideways. :-)

What you grow matters...

A key piece of information to know if you are considering growing potatoes in a tower: not all potato varieties grow alike. Short season potatoes mature sooner and may not put out tubers from the stems. So it doesn't make sense to grow these varieties vertically, because vertical is not going to happen! Instead, choose mid or late season varieties, which will continue adding tubers to their stems as long as you add frames and soil in a timely fashion. A quick internet search will inform you as to what varieties are early, mid, and late. Although you may come across some conflicting information, certain varieties are often listed as late season, such a most russets, German butterball, fingerlings, purple majesty, etc. Many yellows and reds are listed as early season varieties, which you should grow in a more conventional way. A rule of thumb seems to be that an expected maturation of at least 90 to 130 days means that the variety will continue to set potatoes further up the stem, making it worthwhile to grow in a tower.

Planting prep:

I exposed my seed potatoes to warmth and a moderate amount of light for a couple of weeks prior to planting, to let them pre-sprout while I prepared the tower. I let the cut potatoes dry out and heal a little for a couple of days, and then planted them. You can sprinkle some fir bark dust on the seed pieces if you think the soil is going to be overly wet. In our climate, this doesn't tend to be an issue.

Looking forward to another growing season!

Mixed Bed Construction

2016-04-04T19:57:00.001-07:00

Looking back on the construction of my subterranean hotbeds, this is one that hasn't been covered on the blog yet.

I decided to make one bed with a diverse mix of species -- spruce, alder, aspen, whatever I could find. Depending on the piece, it was laid either vertically or horizontally, making it a truly "mixed" bed.

"Before"

This bed was built during the second year of hugel-construction in the garden. The green areas on the right are one-year-old rotting wood beds, growing prolifically. The bare soil at left-center includes the place where the mixed bed went in.

"Before"

The soil was so dense before building the subterranean beds, that it felt like walking on a high traffic hiking trail. Our farmer friend Bill remarked on the sensation underfoot, saying that it felt like hard pan, with no give. Now it is fluffy with earth worm castings and plenty of aeration as the wood settles and breaks down.

I put manure on the top of every exposed vertical end, to provide nitrogen at those important interfaces. The logs were surrounded by horse manure, with longer pieces in layers with the manure.

Next, I added lots more wood, filling some of the gaps with large and small pieces.

Another load of horse manure helped turn this into a hotbed. Thorough watering after every layer helps trap moisture inside the bed. This is the one and only chance to directly water these surfaces, so it's important not to take shortcuts in applying water during construction.

And leaves! Lots and lots of leaves...

A little soil, more leaves, and more water.

As I built up closer to the surface, I added smaller diameter wood in a bed of leaves. The experiment here is to see how it works planting into the smaller diameter wood as compared with the large pieces. Also, being smaller, they have greater surface area and will break down quicker -- similar to the smaller food pieces in your compost pile.

More water

Another layer of horse manure on top of the small wood and leaves, providing nitrogen and warmth.

More leaves, more small wood...

...and a final skin of soil across the top.

This close up of one of the vertical pieces helps you to visualize how accessible the wood tissues would be for roots to penetrate, as compared with the side of a log. This is the rationale behind placing pieces vertically. However, that said, my horizontal beds are performing just as well in general, so the orientation has not proven critical in the Wood for Food garden. The amount of manure and rotting straw seems to be a more important factor (the more the merrier).

"After"

Who is Hardy? Perennial Garlic

2016-04-03T07:40:00.000-07:00

Garlic is well known for being hardy. When fall-planted, it begins to grow and then has no problem going dormant through the winter, ready to be first up in the garden. Unfazed by spring snows, you cannot beat the hardiness of this plant. Or can you?

Quite accidentally, I learned a few years ago that garlic is even more hardy if you allow it to grow as a perennial. Wow! It will not only be the first sign of life in the spring, but it will become lush, thick, and tall before the radishes have sprouted -- or even been planted.

You can use the garlic greens like a "cut and come again" option for salads, baked potatoes, and anything else you like to eat with the lively taste of fresh garlic. It's a wonderful garnish for just about any meal. It's got to be incredibly good for you, too, with its rich green color and its bioactive components, especially when eaten raw.

Then, throughout the season, you can tug on one of the plants that make up a clump, and enjoy fresh cloves also. Just leave some in the ground and you will always have garlic... no planting required.

If perennial garlic was not "a thing" in my garden before, it is now!

Who is Hardy? Green Orach

2016-03-15T21:43:00.004-07:00

The past two mornings, it has been -4 C, or 25 F. I wondered if I would find all the tender green orach sprouts keeled over, but no! In fact, they looked as vibrant as ever. At first I saw the clumps of volunteer sprouts, and thought that maybe they had protected each other from the cold, like individual moss plants growing together in thick cushions for insulation in cold or dry climates.

However, when I saw these individual sprouts doing fine, I knew there was more to it than density. I thought perhaps the pine needle and leaf mulch had made the difference here.

When I found sprouts growing out of bare soil, supple and alive as ever, I concluded that this must be one hardy plant. It isn't just surviving a solid freeze that makes green orach hardy. This plant seems to be much less picky about soil warmth for seed germination, too. In early March at 3,000' elevation in North Central Washington, green orach has come to life throughout my garden, both in cold frames and out in the open -- before the radishes, spinach, lettuce, kohlrabi, carrots, or any other seeds showed signs of life. I don't know to what degree the slow burn of rotting wood is warming the soil, but I do know that it's still too cold for most other seeds to sprout.

I use orach mainly in salads.

(Green and red pictured in the center of this harvest bowl from last year)

Don't believe it if people tell you that orach is a "warm-season plant." It is perfectly happy in cold weather. It gets the warm-season reputation, though, because it doesn't bolt nearly as quickly as spinach, and is reluctant to become bitter even in the heat. What's not to love?

I would like to extend a heartfelt and special thank you to Berta, who shared this seed with me. The first time I ever met her was at Lost Lake and she asked, "Do you have a garden?" When I said yes, she replied, "Hold out your hand. Do you have a pocket?" Soon my jacket pocket was filled with green orach seed, and I knew I had met a kindred spirit. :-)

Spring has Sprouted

2016-03-05T18:34:00.002-08:00

At first I wasn't sure what these prolific volunteer sprouts were. Then I found some still emerging from their seeds, and realized that they are green orach, one of my favorite salad greens!

A few days later I found this... Green orach branches laying on the ground have sprouted like mad!

Inside the cambered frame, the red orach has also come to life. I will relish their tender leaves in salads, tacos, etc. The only thing better than green orach is red orach! They are pretty enough to grow for their looks alone, but also delicious and very good for you.

Outside, it was 42 F or 6 C today (left), and there is still snow on north-facing slopes. However, the sun was shining... and inside the tipi greenhouse it was 90 F or 32 C (right), in the shade of a large pot. It was sweltering! This is just a simple tipi, with plastic on the east, south, and west sides, and an old thrift store blanket on the north side. I don't think you could make a more cost effective greenhouse.

The cauliflower has sprouted inside the tipi greenhouse. I surrounded the sprouts with coffee grounds because the slugs are already at epic levels. They are a *special* part of the microclimate we've got going.

Cauliflower-to-be (already being munched, but hanging in there)

This sight is a miracle to me: last year's seed husk with a live plant establishing itself. Wow.

And out on the property, more miracles -- the first buttercups of the year! This is my daughter's hand, for scale.

Few things bring more joy around here than the first sprouts in the garden,

and the first buttercups on the hills.

Blog Menu

Late winter garden

2016-02-21T20:16:00.001-08:00

Thinking about year-round gardening and winter gardens might conjure up images of kale surrounded by snow, and last year's carrots being dug out from under the mulch in January. These are wonderful components of a year-round garden. Once spring begins to show its face, we turn our attention to planting for the new growing season. But what do you harvest after the winter garden has pretty much been eaten, and the new growing season is in its infancy?

This year I tried fall-planting some seeds that I knew wouldn't mature on time for the dead-of-winter garden. I also left some key plants in the ground during autumn harvest. Of course there are also a few precious perennials that don't mind the cold weather, either. Today I'd like to share how these methods have translated into an active late winter and early spring garden.

Outside of the garden, my composted manure pile is frozen hard as a brick. But here in the aspen hotbed, the soil is supple, and these Egyptian walking onions are hanging in there.

New onion greens are coming up, sprouting from onion bulbs that fell off the top of last year's walking onions. (This is a perennial onion.)

During harvest time last fall, I left a few onions in the ground, which now means green onions in late winter! (This onion variety would normally be viewed as an annual, but I'm growing like a perennial.)

Today I harvested the first radish of 2016, in the tipi greenhouse. Note how sickly the top of the radish looks, and yet underneath the soil was a beautiful salad-ready radish. I planted this seed last fall, and it sprouted and grew just a little before winter hit. Little did I know that it has been steadily growing, perhaps as the days have started to get a little longer and milder.

Last autumn, I accidentally sprouted a bunch of onion seeds (they got wet), so I laid them in the soil in the tipi greenhouse. Now they are coming to life! Soon I will be cutting green onions from their tops. It's an accident worth repeating.

I had no idea that this purple kohlrabi was hanging in there, in a cold frame that my Dad made for me, using a window from a workshop upgrade. This winter garden produce was missed during the core of winter -- and therefore is available for spring, when I've only just put kohlrabi seeds in the soil. I think I'll let it grow a bit bigger.

This is a third generation garlic plant -- each year, I keep leaving it in the soil, and it provides me with lots of garlic greens as one of the year's first salad offerings.

And now for the dark side of our microclimate: it isn't all peaches. Warmer soil means that we ALREADY have lots of slugs, pill bugs, and who knows what other competition for our goods. However, I'm working on making room in my heart for pill bugs, since they mainly like to eat dead and decaying matter, similar to earthworms, which will help the garden. I hear that they can also take in heavy metals, so they can do some serious good. (They also like tender young shoots... I will plant twice as many bean seeds as I actually need, and hopefully there will be enough seedlings left after the pill bugs are through.) Slugs however, seem to take more than they give. I'm working on appreciating the fact that they serve as food for some of the birds that enjoy the garden.

All in all, cultivating a milder, more moist microclimate is worth it to me.

Awakening

2016-02-16T21:31:00.002-08:00

It may seem like your garden is fast asleep underneath the snow, but a rapid melt can reveal a surprising amount of vitality and growth. These nubs of chives were invisible yesterday; today the snow has receded and revealed that they were far from dormant underneath their white blanket. These chives are growing out in the open, with no protection from the elements.

The edges of snow are pulling back, and the amount of green I am discovering is frankly knocking my socks off. Also, this is our first spring starting the year off with cold frames and covered beds in place. The intent of the frames is to protect from the elements and to capture some of the heat being produced by the slow-burning, subterranean hot beds. Let's take a look around for signs of life in the frames:

The same story of growth beneath the snow was played out in this bed, which does not have a top cover but does have 1' wooden slab walls all around it. Last year's blackened chard leaves lie in stark contrast to vibrant orange stems, ready to spring up with new life.

This red Russian kale was tucked up against my mini cold frame and made it through the winter with just a sheet over it.

I didn't even know that this onion had been busy growing inside the cambered cold frame. It was last year's onion, and escaped harvest due to being completely obscured by tomato plants (the jungle effect). Now we have green onions to enjoy! They are amazingly nutritious and of course taste great.

This is the west half of "Bill's bed," where today I finally harvested the last of last year's carrots, and planted some lettuce seeds in their place. When I opened it up, I found a few plants that made it through the winter and are starting to perk up a bit.

Yes, only a bit! Although these plants may appear to be in a sorry state, this is a vision of beauty to me. These yellow and white Swiss chard and kohlrabi plants are primed to grow radiant as soon as the weather grows just a little milder. In the meantime, I see it as a beautiful mess.

What a difference some rough slabs and a cover can make!

Over on the east side of Bill's bed, more Swiss chard has overwintered.

Also in the east half of Bill's bed, the garlic is up! I peeled back the leaf mulch to find the plants much bigger than I would have expected at this time of year.

I'm not sure if there is a more hopeful sight in February.

And for those beds where the snow seems more stubborn...

Black plastic!

Stay tuned... the garden is awakening.

Subterranean Hot Bed Valentines

2016-02-14T16:43:00.005-08:00

Wishing you a Happy Valentine's Day, from my awakening garden to yours!

The snow is starting to melt... it won't be long now. (I took this photo last week.)

This is what I'm seeing out the windows as I write. Perhaps a little less spring-like, but I'm still going to plant beet seeds in one of the covered beds this afternoon! Planting is my Valentine's tradition: first direct seeding of the year. The soil is still frozen as hard as a brick in many places, but in the covered beds, it is soft. The seeds will wake up as soon as they feel ready.

This is a potato I pulled from the garden last fall at sunset... and saved for Valentine's Day here at the Wood for Food blog. All of the photos below were taken throughout the past year, except for the last one.

This is what it looked like close up. What says, "I love you," more than a heart-shaped potato? ;-) Hey, I guess it depends on who you are.

Some people like roses...

...and I do too. But I also like magenta colored Swiss chard!

And shiny red onions that reflect the blue sky.

Whatever your favorite way to say, "I love you," just make sure you express it.

2015

2013

* * *

About the title of this post: Big thanks to Kristin Ackerman for sharing the apt name, "Slow-Burning, Subterranean Hot Beds," to describe the Wood for Food garden. Till now, "Hugelkultur" is the name I've been using to denote the use of rotting wood, since it is the technique that inspired the main idea of my beds. Hugelkultur denotes hills above the ground, with hügel meaning hill in German. Since I've built my hugelkultur underground, it does not form a hill. So, "Slow-Burning, Subterranean Hot Beds" makes a lot of sense for the way that I'm gardening.

Kale House

2016-01-12T19:32:00.001-08:00

When the garden found itself in the strong grip of autumn, I realized that there was more kale growing than I could dehydrate and freeze before plummeting winter temperatures would kill the plants. I decided at the last minute to build a house around my kale.

The plants already had a single slab-wood frame around them, from last year's early planting when I covered these frames to make low profile greenhouses. (You can see the beginnings of this frame in the Vegetable Jail Season Extension and Life within the bed covers posts from last March.) At this point, however, the "dwarf" curly leafed kale had clearly outgrown its original cold frame.

Fast forward a few months to today, and the earth has tilted away from the sun, making the world white. (This photo is taken from the same angle as the photo above it.) I learned a thing or two about snow load this winter -- for looking so fluffy, that white stuff is really heavy!

This is the temporary entrance to the kale house. I ran out of time before winter set in, and was only able to partially complete the structure. The good thing about a makeshift door is that at least I can open it, and it isn't frozen shut like some of my other, better-built beds! (There is no prying them open, now...)

Despite the setbacks of a deep freeze before the roof was on, and roof failure after the snow came, I crawled in there today to find green plants!

Lovelies! A little worse for wear, but definitely hanging in there.

One of the more difficult things about a winter garden is remembering to water it. In this photo you see snow that came in when the roof failed. However, in places where the soil is exposed and has been cut off from all precipitation, it is remarkably dried out. I carried warm water in jugs down to the garden today and gave everybody a little drink.

When spring comes, these plants will be ready to make a comeback. Along with the Swiss chard inside the tipi greenhouse, they will be the first to produce. And since we are now locked out of the carrot beds due to thick ice and icy snow on the lids, it looks like we will harvest carrots in early spring, too!

Christmas Carrots

2015-12-21T15:57:00.001-08:00

After clearing the snow off this garden bed cover, I realized that it was frozen shut. Fortunately there was a bit of a gap and I was able to pry it open with a pitchfork. I'll need to work on wintertime accessibility of all my garden frames. I'm thinking about a .5x3" gap where the lid meets the frame, for sticking a bar in to pry things loose. It could be covered with a flap of plastic to help keep the cold out.

Once opened, I was happy to push aside some leaf mulch and dig up some crispy, bright orange carrots. Seeing the soil under the leaves was a bonus; it's a sight I miss during these cold, short, frozen days.

My Dad has been keeping winter carrots in the ground for years in British Columbia in a similar climate, but I always thought I had too many interested animals to get away with it. However I finally learned to mound my carrots to keep the slugs off them -- a few handfuls of sand or soil at a strategic point when the carrot tubers start to show -- and this year, that prevented most of the damage we would normally see. In addition, there have been no gophers since installing large wood beneath the ground... something tells me that they don't enjoying burrowing through wood! Just another fringe benefit of hugelkultur.

For those who have been following this blog, these carrots are growing in "Bill's bed," featured in Frames for Food and Summertime Bounty, earlier this year. This bed has come a long way since last April, and produced tomatoes, sweet peppers, paprika peppers, Swiss chard, celery, radishes, chives, and kohlrabi this year. (And catnip. Way, way, way more catnip than I could ever use.) The Swiss chard, above left, was hard hit by cold temps, but will be ready to grow with the first signs of spring. As the days start getting longer again, I can feel myself leaning toward spring when this bed will flourish again.

Happy Solstice!

Tipi Greenhouse - Part 1

2015-12-05T21:52:00.003-08:00

I've often wondered why it took me so long to start using tipis in the garden.

They triple-function as trellises, greenhouses, and animal exclusion!

This tipi is covered with plastic on the east, south, and west sides.

This is the south side.

This is the north side, which is covered by an old blanket, a comforter that I bought at a thrift store for $2. It was labeled, "dog blanket," because it had a small rip in it and was not in great shape. It actually had never been used by a dog and was perfect for my tipi!

Here you can see that it's about 14 degrees F or -10 C outdoors...

While inside the tipi greenhouse it is about 46 degrees F or +8 C. Nice!

A tangent: Meanwhile, outdoors I have to admire the marjoram that is still growing in the snow...

...and one asparagus plant that just doesn't want to go dormant this winter! All the other asparagus plants have long since turned golden and shed their needley leaves. This one just keeps going. Interesting that it is growing in the aspen hotbed...

A few days later it is 10 degrees F, or about -12 C, outdoors.

Inside the tipi greenhouse it is just staying above freezing, at 33 F, or less than one degree on the + side in Celsius.

The Swiss chard doesn't seem to mind the colder temps.

It's not growing very much but it's staying alive, and that is my goal! I can't wait to see the plants really come to life in early spring inside the tipi, when it is still too cold outside for seeds to germinate.

The Best Surprises

2015-11-14T08:11:00.002-08:00

Every year, there is at least one complete surprise at harvest time. One year it was a fragrant patch of holy basil growing underneath pumpkin vines, from seed I thought had never germinated. This year, as I was moving some pumpkin plants, I discovered a little watermelon! Pure joy! (I had planted watermelon seeds too late in the season and had thought they didn't produce.)

You might think that as time goes by, you get accustomed to seeing all that can grow from a set of seed packets. I find that with each season, it amazes me more and more to consider all that can come from a single seed. This flower is blooming in mid-November at 3,000' near the US/Canada border, from a perennial flower mix planted a few years ago. This single plant puts out dozens of flowers each year.

Raspberries in November? It's been -4.5 Celsius or 24 Farenheit a number of times already, and yet every time I visit the garden, there are a few more ripe raspberries.

Another great surprise was the high germination rate where onions had bolted and dropped their beautiful black seeds. I covered two patches of onion sprouts with leaves to see if they will overwinter. There were also some I'd collected for sprouting in my kitchen, and then forgotten in the garden in a sandwich bag. The entire lot had sprouted in the bag, so I planted them in my tipi greenhouse to eat as green onions later on. One of the benefits to growing heirloom varieties is that when they bolt and produce seed, the offspring will more reliably have characteristics you enjoy. However, with onions, the greens always taste good, no matter what the variety.

Meanwhile, inside the tipi greenhouse (which used to be the cucumber tipi), life continues to grow. When the sun shines, it feels like summer in there, even if it is just above freezing outside. Underground are aspen logs and generous amounts of alpaca manure. Around the tipi is plastic on the east, south, and west sides, with an old, thick, blanket over the north side, including the door.

These purple radishes in the tipi greenhouse are like little bits of hope coming out of the ground.

Unusual Eats

2015-10-18T07:54:00.002-07:00

One advantage about growing your own food is that you get to eat things that you would rarely or never find in a grocery store.

Once in a while, I harvest a head of garlic that turns out to be all one clove. I love these! I wish I could grow them on purpose, but I celebrate each one that happens to show up in my garden soil.

Did you know that garlic roots are just as delicious as the cloves, only more tender?

And of course there are garlic scapes... this photo was taken earlier in the summer when the scapes were going crazy. I love the tangled spirals they create in my kitchen. I fermented them this year and that was essentially a food of the gods...

Armenian cucumber from the cucumber tipi

Nosy tomato

Gargantuan kohlrabi, so good in soups

And speaking of soups... the carrots that were planted in cold frames in the first week of March got rather large! (yes, that is my hand, not my child's)

And kind of crazy!

So I am cooking the monster carrots up, putting them through the food processor, and freezing them in bags, since they do not appear to have storage potential. This way they are ready for soup anytime. Three carrots made almost a gallon of puree. (Shown here are 1/2 gallon jars used for chilling the carrot and kale puree before bagging for the freezer.)

Yum!

I also dehydrated a lot of kale for mixing in with mashed potatoes this winter: a traditional side dish from the Netherlands --Boerenkool -- or as we would say when we were growing up, "Green potatoes! Yay!"

Autumn Rainbow

2015-10-04T20:15:00.002-07:00

We often think of rainbows in spring, but the fall garden has its own rainbows too! I thought it might be nice to just offer a color splash without a lot of words...

Red

Swiss Chard

Blueberry leaves

Black Cohosh leaves

Orange

Fawn is at the age where pumpkin carving is still a thrill, but she is old enough to do it completely by herself. With volunteer pumpkins all over the garden, this should be a decorative autumn! She might even carve up the Atlantic Giant...

Yellow

Maximilian Sunflower (perennial)

Honeyboat squash, ready to dig in

Green

"Dwarf" curly leaf kale

And still some new Armenian cucumbers forming in the tipi, in October!

Blue

Incredible skies over the Wood for Food garden

Purple

Potatoes -- like an Easter egg hunt

Russian Kale and Johnny Jump-ups (I'm not the only one enjoying these petals)

Enjoy this amazing time of year!

Summertime Bounty

2015-09-20T20:56:00.000-07:00

Summer's bounty ~ is there anything better?

Earlier this summer, Fawn took this photo of me holding a cylindra beet. This was my first time growing this variety, and they are remarkably delicious! The only thing I would do differently next time is grow more of them. By now they are massive, but just as delectable.

This year, the garden became a jungle again. Last year the pumpkins took over, obscuring the paths completely, so I said, "That's it -- this year I am NOT growing pumpkins!" However, they volunteered near places where I had planted other, more manageable squash varieties, so I didn't realize what they were until it was too late. In the end, I still wound up with pumpkins everywhere! I guess I was just meant to have a jungle.

Fawn and her doll Sheila, playing with the bean trellis

I planted this curly leaf "dwarf" kale early in the spring. I mistakenly thought it might fit within my growing boxes, but of course I needed to remove the hardware cloth lids as these beautiful monsters pushed upward. "Dwarf" must be a relative term. Or maybe things just get big when their roots are digging into underground hugelkultur...

...like this daikon radish, which is too heavy to hold with one hand. I had to use a folding saw to remove the greens from the top.

...or like the massive chard leaves that compete with the rhubarb for size.

When I see veggies served up from the garden to the table, it feels like a miracle.

And when I see rainbow Swiss chard bringing color to a brown world, I realize that there are many reasons to grow a garden.

This is Red Globe onion, my first year successfully growing onions from seed. These beauties taste as good as they look. The trick was planting the seeds directly into early March's soil, which I had pre-thawed with black plastic, in wooden frames with plastic on the lids. It worked like a charm, skipping both my labor as well as the plant's shock, which both go along with transplanting. They were grown among carrots, as companions. I just realized that you can see the sky and a tree reflected in this onion!

This is "Bill's bed," pictured in the Frames for Food post. It seems like just last week that Bill was helping me try to remove a piece of rebar from the soil here, and working with me to amend the soil with aged manure. But now this bed is filled with the bounty of the growing season that has burst forth in the months since Bill's passing. He helped me with this bed just hours before he unexpectedly died. I know he would appreciate how prolific it is now.

This is a close-up from "Bill's bed." I put a hinge on the angled lid, and then propped it open as the tomatoes grew taller. The lid is made with hardware cloth, with garden fabric stapled overtop. These are Moskovich tomatoes grown from seed saved by my neighbor. I really like how they grew within this space, as the tomatoes ended up hanging down just beneath the lid. I will definitely plant tomatoes this way again in the future. They were direct-seed planted in the ground, earlier than would normally be possible because of the cold frame.

The Wood for Food garden feels like an oasis in the midst of an ashy, smoky summer, with plenty of brown grass and black ash in our neighborhood landscape. We have been able to grow a lot of green using a minimal amount of water, as the hugelkultur kicks in underground. I am so grateful that the garden didn't burn in this summer's firestorms.

Cucumber Tipi - Part 4

2015-09-10T22:11:00.002-07:00

This is the culmination of the cucumber tipi project: beautiful flower-like Armenian cucumber slices in the kitchen!

They are tender, crispy, and almost sweet.

This is the fabric I put up to keep the marmots from getting interested in the tipi plants, earlier in the growing season. Now the cucumbers are escaping!

Some of these cucs have been getting pretty long...

Magic inside the tipi

The garden came pretty close to burning up in the fire, but the firefighters set a back burn and saved our property. Bravo! Thank you firefighters! You can see the ash on the cucumbers, a symbol of being fortunate, and a reason to be grateful.

The tipi is still providing cucumbers, though not as prolifically as before.

Here, Fawn is harvesting a smaller cuc for us to break in half and eat on the spot.

We're enjoying the fullness of harvest time.

(This was the first day the sun showed itself --

in the background is smoke, not clouds.)

The garden is

a green oasis in our semi-desert surroundings,

and seemed even more strangely alive amidst the haze from the Okanogan Complex fires. We are very thankful to have our garden. My heart goes out to those who have experienced losses in these fires.

Cucumber Tipi - Part 3

2015-07-19T08:22:00.002-07:00

In spring, I covered the tipi with plastic to protect the cucumber sprouts from the cold and the wind -- and the marmots. I should have done it sooner, before a bunch of the sprouts got eaten... there is always more protection to install than I can keep up with.

The shelter really came in handy when Fawn and I got caught in a downpour!

It was raining cats and dogs, but we were cozy with the cucumbers.

Above is the one start that I grew inside the house this year, a much-needed backup plan for my direct seed experiment (below).

The direct seeding was a feasible trial in terms of temperature and timing, but a drawback I hadn't considered was vulnerability to wildlife. Indoor starts have an advantage in that department, being away from marmots during their most tender stage.

A great place to ride out the storm!

The spiral is the heavy gauge trellis wire I installed,

featured in Cucumber Tipi Part 2.

When my sprouts got eaten (before the plastic went up), I wondered if all this preparation would result in a live tipi after all. Then I experienced another serendipitous provision: my friend Harris said that he had some extra Armenian cucumber starts -- ones he did not need! He offered them to me, and I felt like the luckiest garden lady around, driving home that day with those green beauties at my side. Above, you can see them freshly planted in the ground.

While planting the new starts, I noticed a plethora of earthworms in every shovel full. In a garden that had absolutely no worms in the beginning, it has been really fun to see them proliferate. They particularly liked the alpaca manure I laid down on the tipi floor, under the cardboard, in Cucumber Tipi Part 1. There is nothing like manure and cardboard to make earthworms happy.

These starts made my heart soar -- a second chance!

When we entered a record-breaking heatwave at the end of June, I knew the plastic would have to go. Walking into the tipi was like walking into an oven.

Free!

I pulled the plastic back, and as much as I wanted to leave it open, I didn't want to lose my second round of plants. I put sheer fabric up to make the plants less obvious to marmots passing by. (left two photos: July 2nd; right: July 19th)

Above right: Fawn and her friends, looking for cucumbers on July 16th.

From flowers to food...

At last our favorite garden snack begins to form!

It's a dream come true. A cucumber tipi that you can enter to escape the sun's heat, and to munch on the crispy cool goodness of summer's bounty.

Alderwood Archeology

2015-07-02T20:46:00.000-07:00

The Alderwood Patch has come a long way from its days as a garbage pit, the way we found it when we bought the property.

Not only has the garbage been removed in a dump truck, and hugelkultur built up underground, but this year, a favorite childhood plant of mine has volunteered, bringing a sure sign of a microclimate shift! Scouring rush (Equisetum hyemale), a wetland indicator plant that sometimes grows outside of wetlands, popped up in the Alderwood Patch this spring, like a miracle in dusty sagebrush/Ponderosa Pine country. So how are things going underground, helping to alter the balances of moisture and temperature?

In March, I decided to rebuild the raspberry trellises as they were not tall enough. I made the circle bigger and as a side benefit, began some hugel-archeology with the post hole digger.

When I hit wood, at first I thought that was as far as I could dig. Then I decided to use the breaker bar (spud bar) to see if the wood had decomposed enough to dig through.

Indeed, I was able to put the post hole right through the hugel wood.

This is the condition of the alder wood in March 2015, after being in the ground since August 2013 (one and a half years).

3/22/2015

The Alderwood Patch with its new trellis posts

A couple months later...

5/25/2015

The raspberry blossoms attracted a wide variety of pollinators this spring.

This might be a Cuckoo bee from the genus Nomada.

The raspberries have been alive with many kinds of bees.

My favorite: the bumblebees!

Fawn says that even the green leaves smell like raspberries.

At last they start to ripen...

...and how fitting that the wildlife got the first one!

It seems there may be enough to go around this year, though. :-)

Frames for Food

2015-06-17T22:25:00.001-07:00

As the yellow-bellied marmots seek more and more food,

I build more and more cages.

All shapes and sizes ~ this time of year is a framing free-for-all!

This is the first above-ground frame to grace my garden, and it is featured in the Vegetable Jail post. Lee Johnson helped me build it using old 2x6's from behind our shop. A woman from Omak was giving away old leather belts, so I tried using one for a latch on each corner to keep it shut. It is a good concept, but the old leather was already brittle and they have started ripping. It would be good to have thicker, more supple leather.

Here Fawn is harvesting from this same frame. It was planted on Valentine's Day and has been serving us well! Just a few old 2x6's can protect enough lettuce to keep our family eating salads every day.

This design is tops for simplicity:

1. Nail some 2x6's into a rectangle.

2. Make a lid frame to match, using 1x2's or 2x2's, or 2x4's.

3. Tack on hardware cloth or chicken wire.

4. Done.

(Hinges, latches, and plastic or fabric are optional)

This I call, "Bill's garden bed." My husband's lifelong friend, Bill, was helping me add aged manure to this bed on the day he died at our home unexpectedly, earlier this spring. He also helped me try to remove a piece of rebar that I had pounded in (last year, to support a different marmot cage that came before I learned to frame with wood). I will always remember working this soil with Bill, and the gezellig of working together that day. I will honor his memory by sharing my produce with others in the way that he was generous with us.

This is Bill's garden bed with the lids on, and after the plants have had a chance to grow.

This is how the angled lids open. I love hinges!

This large frame was featured in the Vegetable Jail post.

I have started adding extensions as the plants get taller.

Here's how it looks from the other side. Since this photo was taken, the carrots and onions have topped out of the extension too!

This design is tops for its ability to grow taller plants...

...and the curved roof for shedding rains when plastic is laid on top.

It is more like a mini-greenhouse than any of the other designs.

Here Fawn is picking Red Orach, a wonderfully purple salad fixing! The front panel is compression fit into the frame, and the lid lifts off.

When I can't get my hands on wide or straight enough boards, then I cobble together miscellaneous pieces to create the dimensions I need. This is my green bean bed. One side is made from two pieces of slabwood.

The other side is made from several different pieces, all nailed together to generate the needed height and length.

It turned out better than I expected, given the mish-mash of pieces. I love making "something from nothing," a concept we practiced at B.X. Elementary school in our "Extra Enrichment" classes with Mrs. Barling. It means you take things that would normally be discarded as useless, and make something that you are proud of.

Deb visited my garden today and took this photo. It's fun to have garden visitors!

(Thanks for taking this photo, Deb.)

The next frames on the docket are for the strawberry beds to keep the chipmunks off. The bonus with all of these cages is that they also function as cold frames, and will extend the growing season in both directions. So, I don't mind making the effort and learning some new skills in the process. We are definitely eating more veggies as a result.