20 x 20 community garden plot – before cleanup

20x20 community garden plot - after cleanup

Passive solar house - before cleanup

Passive solar house - after cleanup

Just wanted to share a few good pictures of recent garden cleanups. ‘Tis the season; good luck with yours, and let us know if you need a hand!!

The most common type of garden unreadiness in early spring is cover crop that hasn’t been cut down, or sheet mulch that hasn’t fully decomposed. In both of those cases (and in most others), there’s one surefire work party-buzzkill: sopping wet soil. DO NOT work it. If you think it’s even a little bit likely to be wet wet wet on the day of, tarp the area you’re going to dig and keep it dry(ish) until you are ready to go. Then, if it is raining at work-time, uncover small sections at a time and work fast.

Also, avoid the temptation to rototill, if you can help it. Mechanical tilling and working wet soil are bad habits that will do more damage than good, and undo all the work your soil’s done through the winter to get ready for spring. Instead, use trusty spades and digging forks to chop up the cover crop, or break down the clods in the sheet mulched area. Same goes if you’re prepping a new area (or reinvigorating an area that was left bare through the winter): remove sod/weeds, add organic matter, and turn soil. You’ll arrive at just about the same state.

Here’s one example of what you’ll see happen, and the tools you’ll use to effect this transformation:

If you’ve got a big area and/or a little work party, you can shape your beds and stop there, come back in a week or so to remove weeds (including any re-growing cover crops), and then rake a seedbed and plant your plants. But if after you’ve turned the soil and shaped your bed(s), your work party’s just getting started⎯say, you have seeds and starts right there waiting to be planted⎯you have one prep step yet to take.

Your newly-disturbed “real” soil needs time to settle in and re-establish relationships before it’s suitable as a planting medium. You don’t have that time to give. So, rake your beds level and break up the big soil clods, then bring in a thin layer of bulk planting mix (often 3- or 4-way, depending on the supplier/ingredients) or potting soil (esp. if you’re working with a raised bed) to give your seeds an easy time getting started.

If you need to use the bed right away...add soil for a seedbed

Rest assured: even if you cover up your soil with another layer, your hard work was not in vain. You’ve created an amazing environment in the soil underneath for microorganisms to get to work. And once your seeds get started in good contact with the top layer of imported fill, they’ll reach their roots into the real, lovingly-prepared soil below and find everything they need to thrive.

Of all the mulches out there, straw is our all-time favorite for edible garden use. It is functional and beautiful (especially when fresh-laid and golden), as well as very, very flexible. You can apply it in paths and in beds, in spring, summer, and fall. (You can lay it in winter, as well–but ideally, your garden would be tucked in before then!) You can lay it thick, move it around, and use it repeatedly; when you’re done using it as mulch, you can compost it to give it yet another useful life.

A few things to be aware of:

• Hay is not the same thing as straw. Straw is the stalks of grain plants–most commonly, wheat. Hay is used for feed, and contains viable seed-heads. Many of them. These will sprout and create a wheat carpet in your garden, and an innocent carpet can turn into a serious weed problem if not caught early.
• All types of mulch can smother small/young plants and cause rot on woody plant stems, so make sure to leave a “donut hole” around your plants, ensuring that the mulch is not touching them.
• A lot of people use straw as bedding for their chickens, and then turn that out into the garden. This is great in fall, to mulch beds that will be used for planting in spring. But don’t lay fresh chicken poo straw on areas that are currently growing things. It is too hot! Compost it first.
• We’ve occasionally encountered negative results from use of chemically-treated straw around town, so make sure you ask your feed store for organic straw and/or investigate thoroughly where your materials are sourced.
• Also, critters like to play and hide in mulch, so keep an eye out for slugs and snails and evidence of other visitors.

Here are a few pictures of straw-mulched areas that we’ve created with captions that describe how the straw functioned in each case.

For more ideas of how to use straw as mulch, check out this blog entry. But beware: this article refers to “hay” throughout, when I bet it doesn’t mean to.

• City of Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability’s Urban Growth Bounty
• East Multnomah Soil & Water Conservation District
• Growing Gardens Learn & Grow
• Metro Natural Gardening Workshops
• Oregon State University Extension Service Master Gardeners
• Oregon Tilth Organic Education Center
• Portland Fruit Tree Project
• Portland Nursery
• Zenger Farm

This is designed to give you a timeline to follow, but remember: plants can and will grow outside of these specific dates, if conditions are right. So, use it as a starting point to develop your judgment about what plants like and when they’re likely to get what they like. And expect the unexpected…within reason!

* For more seed-starting tips and tricks, check out our seed-starting class at SlideShare.net.

We assume that most people who are checking out our website are Pacific Northwesterners. Probably Oregonians. Perhaps Portlanders. So here’s a list of local, organic, heirloom edible-focused seed companies that are suitable for gardeners in our area:

• Adaptive Seed Co.
• Botanical Interests
• Ed Hume Seeds (web only)
• Horizon Herbs
• Lonesome Whistle Farm
• Nichols Garden Nursery (web only)
• One Green World [sells plants, not seeds...but we can't resist including this awesome nursery]
• Renee’s Garden (web only)
• Seeds of Change
• Seed Savers Exchange
• Siskiyou Seeds
• Territorial Seed Co.
• Uprising Seeds
• Wild Garden Seed

There are many other quality seed companies out there (check out this list for an overwhelmingly comprehensive selection), and we couldn’t possibly hope to list them all here. If you have a favorite supplier that we haven’t included, let us know.

And if you’re looking for seeds beyond the Northwest, here are a few tips for finding a quality purveyor: try to find a nursery that tests their seeds in your climate, preserves rare varieties, and/or focuses on organic production. Good luck…and enjoy your winter reading!

But that one word doesn’t quite fit all.

In the general arena of landcare professionals, there are a lot of specific types of work to be done: landscape design, landscape maintenance, backyard farming, edible landscaping, landscape architecture, outdoor construction, coaching and consulting, building edible gardens… It can get a little confusing, so it can be easier to use one word to describe us all! However, specific rules, regs, and professional standards apply to each of these fields, and determine what types of work practitioners can do.

For instance, even those who know our business well frequently refer to Independence Gardens as a “landscaping business”. But since we don’t have our Landscape Contractors Board (LCB) license, we make very sure that our work respects the rules set by that body: among other things, we don’t call ourselves landscapers, and we try to explain the differences to others who use that word as shorthand to describe what we do.

So, what is the difference? Landscape contractors are registered with, and regulated by, the LCB. We got our Construction Contractors license (CCB#186008) so that we could build garden infrastructure, which helps people get comfortable working in their own garden spaces. We don’t recommend or install any plants that don’t have an edible use, since we think food-producing plants are beautiful and productive. In the end, our contribution to healthy outdoor environments is that we help people grow their own food: we don’t do it for them, but we empower them to do it themselves.

If you are in the market for help in your outdoor space, we recommend checking out businesses listed under Oregon Tilth’s Organic Landcare Certification, the City of Portland’s EcoBiz Program, and/or the ReDirect Guide. When you call up to tell them what you want, in case they’re not a good fit, they should be able to refer you to a professional who’s better suited to do the work you need done.

• Protect the soil from compaction, erosion, and nutrient loss due to hard winter rains
• Suppress weeds, which can still grow through our not-so-fair winter weather
• Maintain and enhance soil structure
• Replenish organic matter and nutrients in the soil

In order to accomplish these goals, you might choose to use cover crops and/or sheet mulch. You probably have areas in your garden that could benefit from either or both method(s); here is a brief explanation of each, along with some of their benefits:

• Cover cropping (also known as “green manure”) uses winter-hardy plants that will be turned under in the spring to loosen and aerate the soil. It also adds organic matter and nutrients (primarily nitrogen), enhances soil microbial activity, and improves soil structure.
• Sheet mulching, which is also known as “lasagna gardening,” is a way to use slow composting in place to create planting areas; it is also an easy way to prep new ground in fall for planting in the spring.

Which areas can benefit from cover cropping/sheet mulching? Anywhere you have grown crops in the past and/or intend to grow crops in the future! You can throw small seeds around or drill medium-large seed in between existing plants and in cleaned-out beds, and sheet mulch around existing plants or over cut-short grass to create new planting areas.

Ideally, cover crops should be planted before the end of September: they need time to get established before cold weather hits, and planting early gives you more options for what to plant. You can sheet mulch up to six months before you need the space for planting. Sheet mulch doesn’t get hot like other composting methods, and it takes some time to break down into a good planting medium.

Cover crops can be used alone or in combination. If you plant them together, aim to plant a nitrogen-fixing legume with a tall crop for structural support, or use a pre-combined “garden mix.” Some good green manures for fall planting and spring removal:

• Hairy vetch—nitrogen-fixing legume
• Winter rye—winter-hardy grain that grows tall
• Crimson clover—shouldn’t spread like other clovers

For more information about winterizing your garden, check out this blog entry from last year. And at this key time of the year, keep up the good work!

You can lay down raw materials for your lasagna garden as you collect them, or stockpile them so that you are ready in the fall to prep new areas for planting the following spring.

Here is how you could turn a lawn into a garden, starting as the summer winds down:

• First, mow short any existing groundcover (e.g. grass).
• Make sure to completely remove any noxious weeds (such as blackberries or bindweed).
• Loosen the soil where you’ll be creating your bed with a broadfork, digging fork, or flat-blade shovel. (This step is optional, because the worms will do a lot of this work for you during the winter!)
• Lay down a weed barrier: 10 sheets of newspaper (not the shiny inserts, just the newsprint part) or thick cardboard (avoid wax-coated corrugated, and remove as much tape and metal as possible). Make sure to overlap the edges at least 6 inches.
• Build up additional materials in 1- to 3-inch layers, alternating “browns” (high-carbon ingredients) & “greens” (high-nitrogen ingredients); 18 inches is a good thickness goal, but don’t panic if you don’t hit it. Some of the many materials that can be used are listed in this blog entry.
• 

  Raised beds can be sheet mulched and capped with straw to winter over.

  Put a cap layer of straw or soil on top to reduce pest attraction and encourage breakdown.

• Wait!

In the spring, you might have to remove a few pieces of compostables that didn’t break down, but you should be ready to prepare a seedbed and plant.

And one last tip: if you are getting rid of grass to make a new garden, make especially sure you don’t leave ANY gaps in the first few layers of the sheet mulch. Grass will find a way to come back.

The first step in setting up a successful compost system (and the only step we’ll cover here) is knowing what you can put in your pile. You might be familiar with some of the no-nos: meat, bones, dairy, fat, and garbage. And you might have heard that you’ll need to use the right ratio of “browns” (high-carbon items) to “greens” (materials that are high in nitrogen).

So, what materials get a “yes”? Which are brown, and which are green? Here’s a short list to get you started:

Material | Brown/Green | Info/Instructions

Yes! Cotton clothing can also be composted. Cut it into small pieces for faster decomposition,

• Fruit & vegetable scraps | Green | Add with dry carbon items to avoid smells
• Coffee grounds & tea leaves | Green | Filters & bags (which are brown) may also be included
• Eggshells | Green(ish) | Best when crushed
• Fresh grass clippings | Green | Add small amounts in thin layers so they don’t mat/clump
• Dry leaves | Brown | Leaves break down faster when shredded or chopped
• Lawn & garden weeds | Green | Only use weeds which have not gone to seed
• Plant trimmings | Green/Brown | Use them fresh for green, or dried for brown
• Straw or hay | Brown | Straw is best; hay (which has seeds) is less ideal
• Fresh comfrey leaves | Green | Excellent compost “activator”
• Pine needles | Brown | Acidic; use in small to moderate amounts
• Flowers, cuttings | Green | Chop up long woody stems (which break down slowly)
• Seaweed and kelp | Green | Rinse first; good source for trace minerals
• Wood ash | Brown | Only use ash from clean materials; sprinkle lightly
• Chicken & other manures | Green | Excellent compost ‘activator’; DO NOT use cat or dog doo
• Shredded (news)paper | Brown | Avoid using glossy paper and colored inks
• Cardboard | Brown | Shred material to avoid matting
• Corn cobs and stalks & sunflower stems | Brown | Slow to decompose; best if chopped up
• Dryer lint | Brown | Use only if the lint is from natural fibers
• Sawdust & wood chips | Brown | High carbon levels; add in layers to avoid clumping