Double-digging garden beds Part Two

Now that we have our first linear foot of the bed dug out, we should start filling it with organic matter. What constitutes an organic matter? If you have prepared compost, that would be ideal. I am one of these people who do not have ample compost at all times, so I have to improvise. Keep in mind that vegetation, dry or green, will decompose in the soil, so it does not have to be perfect compost that we put into the garden at all times. I have some "forest" on the property, so I go and rake up some fallen leaves, including oak and pine needles as some of my layers:

If you have something like that, put a six-inch layer of it into the dug hole. Then, cover with dirt. The rule of thumb for compost, which includes a compost pile or composting in place, is to mix roughly fifty-fifty proportion of dry and green matter. Fallen leaves will constitute dry matter. For a green matter the best things are grass clippings and kitchen waste. We eat a lot of vegetables in our family, so a 34 ounce coffee can fills up every two or three days. This is perfect green matter for a compost:

Again, just layer this green stuff on the top of the other sprinkled layer and cover with dirt:

The idea behind the double-dug beds is to loosen the soil and enrich it at the same time. There are no hard rules on how to do that. I know an old man in Cape Coral who only layers his new beds with dry and green palmetto leaves, and he grows some awesome produce, in fact he grows for the market as well. Work with what you have and have at least three layers of vegetable matter per the height of the bed.

Too many tomatoes, how to plan tomato harvest

I always overplant, meaning I plant too much of some things that we cannot possibly eat in the amounts harvested, especially tomatoes. When planning a garden, you should not only think of what you want to plant, but also how to take care of these plants as well as what are you going to do with the harvest. Granted, it is difficult to predict if the yield will be substantial or dismal, because it depends on a number of things, such as weather, plant diseases, insect attacks and purely your own time devoted to the garden. Sometimes you end up with too much of a good thing:

These grape tomatoes from Sam's club bought tomatoes that I saved seeds from grew like crazy and the yields were absolutely insane:



When you have that much of a crop coming up all at the same time it might be too much of a good thing if you are unprepared. So, how do we plan for the future harvest in a manner that a certain crop does not overwhelm us, but at the same time providing for a variety of vegetables in a garden?

I imagine, the first thing to think about would be what is it your family likes to eat and in what quantities. If you are buying two pounds of tomatoes per week in the store, then you know that you need that much from the garden. An average tomato plant yields about  four to five pounds of tomatoes, total. That means if you plant one tomato plant you can expect to harvest four to five pounds of tomatoes. Usually, indeterminate varieties will fruit over time, for approximately a month or two in length, but not all at once. So, if you expect to harvest a quarter pound per week per tomato, then you need eight plants to provide you with two pounds per week. This is not an exact science, of course. For comparison, I normally have a hundred tomato plants of various types in the garden per season. You can see now where I run into trouble ... :)

Take a look at this book if you do not already have it. In Vegetable Gardening in Florida James Stephens lists yields for all commonly grown vegetables in Florida, so you could calculate how many seeds or plants you need to put into the ground to sufficiently provide your family with vegetables, as well as not being overrun by them:

How to harvest amaranth

The time has passed and amaranth tassels have grown large and bountiful, and started to show some signs of ripening. Ripened amaranth seeds would be seen on the tassells as minuscule whitish seeds, as well as the tassells themselveses would start to yellow and a bit dry:

Now simply break the tassles off the plant and collect them in some large container. Ideally, you would hang them in a dry place, like a garage, over some clean sheets of plastic to let the seeds fall on the plastic. I do not have such luxury as the garage is full of other "necessary" things, so I simply put my amaranth into a garden wheelbarrow. They will dry in there just fine because the wheelbarrow sits in the lanai, so it is out of the rain.

Now, we have to clean the tassles off the remaining leaves and stems and fluff it up every day to allow drying thoroughly and evenly. The process of drying will take approximately three weeks, or when most of the seeds fall of the stems.

Let's grow some peanuts

I always wanted to try growing some peanuts, even ordered the seeds a couple of years ago, but never got around to it. Recently I bought a bag of peanuts in the store and decided to try some out. For the peanuts to be "germinatable" they need to be raw, not roasted or processed in any way. Here's some raw peanuts from the bag, shelled:

I got some sixteen ounce Styrofoam cups, filled them with moistened potting mix to about two-thirds and placed peanuts on top:

Then covered with soil and watered:

Now I have to wait a week, maybe a couple of weeks for the peanuts to come up, while keeping the soil moist of course. Really, that's all to it.

When it comes to seeding, I do not obsess with it. Trust me, I used to, but not anymore. Nature will take care of it's children, and the children, aka seeds, are very resilient. I have volunteers in my garden all over the place. Whenever you leave a fruit on the ground, like a tomato or some Marigold heads, or radish pods, or been pods, etc. - they will seed themselves, it is inevitable. The only thing to pay attention to when it comes to seeding, is seeding in season and in conditions close to those of natural growing conditions.

Take these peanuts for example, naturally they should be seeded deeper than you would seed a tomato because peanut fruit is buried in the ground, and tomatoes simply fall on the ground. If in doubt, think how a plant would germinate in nature and try to imitate it. That's it. Happy seeding!

Electric garden tiller: "Good Ol Rusty"

Without my Good Ol Rusty it would be impossible for me to build the garden that I have and to continue expanding it. The grass in Florida is extremely difficult to get rid of, once it is in the yard. I have possibly the worst kind of it, the Bermuda grass: the kind that sends the roots deep and wide and is very resistant to the gardener's efforts of eliminating it.

If you own a gas-powered tiller, you are in a good shape. I did not want to spend hundreds of dollars for the tiller, so after some research I settled on an electric one, who's name is Good Ol Rusty. He's been with me for about two years and done a lot of hard work in my garden:

When he was young, he looked like this:

Mantis 7250-15-02 3-Speed Electric Tiller/Cultivator with Border Edger and Kickstand

Here's some good things about him: He is quiet. Yes, he does the job without much grunting. He is familiar: tilling with him is like vacuuming, done in the same motion. He is easy to start, no need to pull any strings.

The negatives are, he is shallow; he is only tilling for about nine inches deep, and he jumps when he encounters a rock or a large root. Whether you decide to get someone like him to help you with your beds, or rent something like him, that would be a good decision because trying to dig beds by hand is a grueling and punishing task that might make you reconsider that whole gardening adventure.

Double-digging garden beds Part One

There are three most commonly used types of gardening: containers, raised beds and tilled beds or rows. I found that a variation of tilled beds, called double-dug beds, works best in hot climates like Florida. Usually we encounter the extremes of hot/wet, hot/dry or cool/dry gardening conditions. Plants, on the other hand, like constant moisture and temperature. Containers and raised beds dry out too quickly in the hot sun, unless they are filled with special mixes and are watered and fertilized often.

Double-dug beds, with their depth of at least twelve to eighteen inches, provide coolness to the roots, good drainage and ample moisture. I discovered that even in hottest and driest weather I only need to water the plants twice a week, as opposed to every day or even twice per day in raised beds or containers.

Double-dug beds are also the cheapest method to build a productive garden. They do however require a good amount of physical work, initially. When I started with double-dug beds, I went gung ho. This was a mistake as it proved to be a challenging task. For someone just starting out with the double-dug beds I would suggest starting small, maybe even as small as four by four feet bed. By combining a productive double-dug bed with square foot garden design, even a bed this small can produce a lot of vegetables.

To start with, you need to designate an area in your yard where the bed will be, and then measure and outline its boundaries with boards or garden hose. Once you are happy with the layout, use spray paint to mark the edges. Now the fun part starts. You need to remove the grass. If you ever tried digging in your yard where grass is growing, you know that this is not an easy task. Not impossible, but very labor-intensive. For that task I use "Good Ol Rusty", The electric tiller. It does not till deep, but does a fine job stripping the top layer of the grass, which is what I am after.

Pictured above is the three by ten feet future bed stripped of grass by the electric tiller. I rake up stripped grass and put it aside; it will be used in a compost pile later.

Now, the physical labor part gets into play. Using a shovel, dig out a portion of the bed, a foot long for a whole width of the bed. Take out the soil and put it aside. This soil will be needed to finish the bed at the other end. The depth of the bed should be at least a foot. Here you can see how deep the bed is, showel depicted for scale:

Once you take the soil out, loosen the soil with the shovel or a garden fork for another six inches, or as deep as you can go.

Double-Digging garden beds Part Two

Plant for pest damage

I am a huge fan of Eco-system gardening: I like my vegetables organic and I do not want to do any additional work, such as spraying insecticides if I can help it. An Eco-system will not happen by itself and it will not happen overnight. But it is not an unattainable goal either. I have been gardening on our property for almost two years now, since we moved, and I can attest that not only I do not use any pesticides, even organic ones such as BT or soap spray, but I also have minimal pest damage.

I am a follower of John Jeavons system, detailed in his book "How to grow more vegetables". He states, and I have proven it in practice, that pest control starts in the soil. I am double-digging my new beds and adding a lot of organic material to the new beds when I am building them. After I plant, I mulch heavily, and then dig that mulch in after the harvest. I usually plant more than we can eat, so some insect damage to the fruit is not a big deal. It also helps, as Jeavons suggests, to plant in season and give plants proper care, e.g. watering.

Here's a swiss chard leave eaten by some insects. It is not the plant's fault, this plant should have been cut to the ground and watered every day to allow only new leaves, because swiss chard is a cool season vegetable and can only stay in "maintenance" mode during the summer:

Something chewed a hole through this tomato:

and this one:

Why? Because these roma tomatoes are done fruiting and should have been harvested, as well as kept being watered and shaded during our hot and dry season in May and June. 

There are some chewed holes in okra leaves:

But it is not really a big deal. Okra grows in it's proper season now and is cared for, so it will be fine. John Jeavons rightly suggests that pests should be dealt with control, not death and poison. If I sprayed these tomatoes or okra plants with some pesticide, chances are the leaf-chewing insects would be dead, but beneficial insects that eat them would be dead too. Then, the next higher up insect or animal on the food chain will not have enough of food and go elsewhere, which can lead to some other insect over-populating the garden.

John writes in his book that they did an experiment, where they planted a bed of green beans and let insects have at it. Some thirty percent of the leaves were eaten by pests, but bean yield itself increased, compared to the controlled bed. Interesting...

Garden Eco-system is delicate, but also very robust; my garden is a testimony to this practice. If you are interested in John's work, here's the book that is prominent on my bookshelf: