How To Plant Trees
By thomas | September 6, 2008
There are probably many ways to plant a tree, but this method I learned from an experienced gardener. Her garden is about 1000 m2 (11,000 sq ft) and I think it’s at least 20 years old, so I guess she knows what she’s talking about. It’s even open for visitors on some occasions. I have used this method with success several times so I think it’s worth sharing. It’s not that advanced but sometimes also the small things counts. So here goes.
This is the tree we want to plant. Soil is still attached to the roots. You can see the grass of the lawn:
Dig up three times as much turf as the root is wide and put it aside for later:
Dig down to about the double height of the root and put the turf in the bottom of the hole with the top down. Put the soil aside for late. In time the turf will turn into mould and provide the tree roots with nutrients. It will also prevent water from draining down too fast:
Put half of the soil from the hole back again. This could also be replaced by horse manure which would be absolutely great for the tree if you have it at hand. Or maybe compost. Just remember that horse manure will probably be compressed as time goes by so use a little more than you would do with the original soil:
Fill up the hole with water:
Let the water in the hole drain into the bottom and surrounding soil, and wait until you can’t see it anymore. This usually takes around half an hour in my soil. Then moisture is available for the tree in the coming days. Put the rest of the original soil back to fill up the hole. Also do a bit of watering on top of the soil:
This method can also be used on warm days since the soil will be wet below ground even though the sun is shining on the surface.
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How I Built A Cheap Composting Box
By thomas | September 5, 2008
Here’s a cheap way to make a good composting box. I’ve bought the wood with the notches pre-cut in a DIY kit, but you could cut it out yourself. Notice that the length of the notches is a little bit shorter than the thickness of the wood, therefore the wood will wedge itself together making a rather strong construction. I had second thoughts about using pressure-treated wood due to the chemicals used and the risk of it leaking into the organic material inside the box, but I did use it and at least this type of material will last longer. So let’s see what happens. Comments are welcome on this issue (or anything else you have in mind 
)
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How I Improved The Soil Of My Raised Beds
By thomas | September 4, 2008
If you want big healthy vegetables you need a good soil. The first year we grew vegetables in raised beds the soil was loose all right. We dug a rectangular hole below the raised bed wooden frame to a depth of 30 cm (12 inch) below the ground. This soil we put aside and started filling up the hole with the good stuff. We’re talking box trailer full of horse manure and several 25 kg (55 pound) bags of peat moss. Then we put the soil back as a top layer but this turned out to be a bad idea. The horse manure and the peat moss got so compressed under the weight of the original soil that those two layer shrunk to about 10 cm (4 inch). The roots didn’t have a chance of reaching the good stuff, but the vegetables turned out well anyway.
This year it’s quite different because the beds were turned completely, so all of the 50 cm (20 inch) dirt inside the wooden frames was mixed very thoroughly. I’m very pleased with the vegetables this year, they’re very healthy and beautiful as you can see in the picture. The loose soil provides good draining of excessive rainwater, so that’s another bonus.
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Two Inspiring Videos
By thomas | September 3, 2008
Here are two inspiring videos for you:
The first one is called “Greening The Desert”. A guy called Geoff Lawton is talking about a project they did in the desert 2 km from The Dead Sea. They’re harvesting the small amount of rainwater they get in that area and bringing the soil to life again. Figs and citrus fruits are grown on the 40,000 m2 (10 acres) land.
“You can fix all the worlds problems in a garden … and most people today actually don’t know this and that makes most people insecure.”
- Geoff Lawton
In the other video Geoff shows a 300 year old food forest, which he came across on a trip to Vietnam. The forest has been owned by the same family for all these years, so they know what they’re doing.
“It’s a view of the past - and the future. The only possible future we have.”
- Geoff Lawton
Check out the Dervaes family for more inspiration. It seems like they also know what they are doing.
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Raised Bed Plans
By thomas | September 2, 2008
(Click picture to enlarge)
The picture above shows the dimensions of my small raised bed. You can get a closer look at this particular bed in my garden tour video. It’s made of raw pinewood, which is not the best material for this I guess, but it’s still going strong after two years. It’s cheap but it’s beginning to show some signs of rot, but I didn’t want to use pressure-treated wood due to the risk of chemicals leaking out into the soil. I used indoor screws (52 pcs.), which is not the best either, but that was what I had at hand at the time. The six laths goes about 30 cm (12 inch) into the ground to stabilize the whole thing.
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My Garden Layout In 2008
By thomas | September 1, 2008
(Click picture to enlarge)
This is an overview of my garden as it looks in 2008. There are five beds of which two are raised beds. The remaining three beds are raised bed wannabes meaning that the width is the same as the raised beds 120 cm (47 inches) and the soil has been dug deep. I just need to build wooden frames and add to the beds as much soil above ground as there is below ground. Bed 1 and 2 were also in use last year. Bed 3, 4 and 5 were added this year:
1: Raised bed 2007
2: Raised bed 2007
3: Bed 2008
4: Bed 2008
5: Bed 2008
The good things about this garden are that the beds are located on the south side of the house so the plants receives most of the sunlight available. It’s also really an advantage to have the composting boxes near the beds, because of the many trips back and forth with waste. And the pond with the small fountain is creating a relaxing atmosphere.
There are some room for improvements though. We live about 25 km from the west coast of Denmark and from the coast there’s about 1000 km of open sea before reaching Scotland. The wind often builds up here and is quite harsh on the vegetables and fruits on the trees, coming in from the west (left in the picture). I need to put up a hedge from the corner of the house to stop the wind (dotted red line), but that means I’ll have to move bed 3 and 4 to the left (damn, more hard work The ground is suffering from soil compaction and is full of clay).
The peach tree is placed on the south facing wall which turned out to be a bad idea. The spot is relatively warm. Therefore flowers is put out early and later surprised by late frost causing them damage.
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Pruning Blackberry
By thomas | August 31, 2008
I have a blackberry bush i my garden that has been growing a little wild on it’s own. It’s all over the place as you can see in the picture above. Now I would still like to have many blackberries year after year so I’ll have to prune it. A blackberry bears fruit on one year old wood so in the winter you cut away the branches that carried fruit this year. Keep two new strong branches to carry the fruit next year.
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The Local Weather Conditions
By thomas | August 30, 2008
Just wanted to show you what the weather conditions are like on average in my area:
Usually we have a wet and windy fall and most of the snow falls in January and February. There’s not that much heat around here, so growing oranges are out of the question and melons are difficult. But we’re not too far north to justify transporting our food from far away on trucks. This is not the north pole. If it was that hard to grow our own food maybe we should consider moving further down south. Who said we should live up here anyway… The oil companies?
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Planning for 2009
By thomas | August 29, 2008
I’m starting to take a look at what kinds of vegetables I’ll be growing in 2009. Most of the plants from 2008 I’ll also grow next year, since they all turned out quite well and brought us a lot of food on the table. As inspiration I’ve put together two lists for you to get ideas from.
2008 and 2009:
- Bean
- Beetroot, long
- Beetroot, round
- Carrot
- Leek
- Lettuce
- Parsnip
- Pea
- Potatoes
- Radish
- Red Onion
- Spinach
- Yellow Onion
- Zucchini
2009:
- Artichoke
- Asparagus
- Broccoli
- Cauliflower
- Celery
- Chard
- Clove
- Corn
- Fennel
- Garlic
- Horse Radish
- Pumpkin
- Silver Beet
- Soy Beans
- Spring Onions
I will try to get hold of some fine-meshed net to keep the bugs out. Or maybe two layers of net to keep the cats out too. (How do you keep cats out of your vegetables?)
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Arion… What?
By thomas | August 28, 2008
Will you just look at it?! If this is not a killer slug I don’t know what it is. But - I found information today that explains that what we here in Denmark normally refer to as killer slugs are NOT Arion lusitanicus. So the one in the picture is not Arion lusitanicus. I don’t know the Latin name for it if there is one at all.
Sabine from Aarhus University in Denmark did a study comparing the Red Slug (Arion rufus), Black Slug (Arion ater), Iberian Slug (Arion Lusitanicus) and the species shown in the above picture. I believe her supervisor was Dave Parker.
She found that:
- The Iberian Slug has 24 chromosomes
- The one in the picture, Red Slugs and Black Slugs have 26 chromosomes
She talks about the following studies:
- Quintero et al 2005
- Breugelman et al 2007
- Maristella 2007 (chromosome analysis)
I know three things:
- I don’t know what species the one in the picture is
- I would like to grow food for humans, not slugs. Please.
- The bullet function in Wordpress is great
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