Blog entry from April 2, 2018

(Blog from April 2, 2018)
Focus
It took way too long but I finally finished moving out of my thrift store on Main Street in La Farge. After 5 ½ years the stuff was deep. I also had some physical and emotional hurdles to overcome to finish. So now I can switch my focus to the garden... and my new quarters... and straightening up Greenville... and my court case(s)... and my blog and other writing... and my new online store... and... Seems like I have just as much to focus on as before except now I don't have the stability of the shop which had electricity and water, kept me relatively warm and I had access to my daily essentials. Now I'm off grid and I find myself digging through boxes among piles of boxes for stuff I need. Its what I do though.

Small Start 
So I feel way behind on the garden but that has been a good motivator. I've only spent a few hours at it so far so the gardening is still more pleasure than chore. I got a new bed dug last Friday (3/30) and did the first Spring planting so far, two rows of peas and a row of beats. It rained about a 1/4” on them Saturday. The bed was a small pocket bed near a small garlic bed I put in last Fall. Its maybe 8' x 3' at its widest so not a full 10' x 40” bed I'm using as my 'yardstick'. So a modest start but a start it is. Zach and I hiked around and discussed growing areas, etc. that day too.

Sunday after finishing the clean out of the shop and after hanging with friends for the holiday I went out to the garden site in Rolling Ground and did some clearing around my building site for more beds. I laid down about 75' of black plastic 8' wide to keep the coming snow(4-7”) off of the area to keep it drier and to start warming the soil up. I'm using the plastic mostly because I had a roll, some random acquisition from my junk business. Personally, I don't care for plastic in the garden. Its not sustainable but its labor saving advantages are so tempting. I covered the pea and beet bed with an old patio door that was waiting around for a use.

Banana Box Gardening
Ok, the name just about says it all. Container gardening is popular nowadays. People use buckets and grow bags, both cost money or are available free only in limited supply. I thought of trying banana boxes.  Let me say that I am a big proponent of planting in the ground when you have the space. You get the wicking affect and the temperature stabilizing affect from the ground. Above ground containers need special soil, require regular watering or irrigation and are prone to greater temperature fluctuations because of their increased exposure to air and sun.

 So why would I consider container gardening? I'm going to need all the planting days I can get to accomplish what I have in mind.  In the midwest there are many days that you cannot work the soil because it is too wet. Even though I take a low tech approach to working the ground I still have to be aware of the problem of compaction when working it too wet. I also have access to a large quantity of banana boxes that are routinely burnt up in a homemade incinerator just to get rid of them.

Planting in banana boxes (BB) would have the same drawbacks as other above ground containers however they do have some advantages. 1) They are free (except for hauling) and plentiful in many areas if you know where to look; 2) They have flat uniform sides so if you line them up together tightly in a double row you greatly reduce the surface area that is exposed to air and sun; 3) Corrugated cardboard holds moisture; 4) Most BBs have no tape and little or no plastic labels so when they are done at the end of the season you can flatten them and use as biodegradable mulch or compost; 5) The larger BB will smother out more weeds beneath it than a bucket or bag.  Ideally, when the BB beds are done the area is a good ways towards a new bed sans sodbusting and spading.  6)  If planting potatoes, harvest is as easy as knocking down the sides and picking up the spuds.
Perceived drawbacks: not available everywhere, one season use, unable to relocate after bottom softens, removing any plastic labels.

Will BBs last a whole season? I plan to find out. My thought is to fit the bottom of the BB into the top to serve as additional cardboard layer. I mostly want to use them to plant potatoes. I'm going to try putting about 6” of soil in the bottom, put seed potatoes on top of the soil and then cover with straw or hay, whichever I find around me cheap and fill in as the plant grows. I'm thinking two rows of 6 BBs lined up on top of a layer of flattened cardboard.  That would make a 10' bed that is 32" wide.  The 4 end boxes would have two sides exposed to air and sun, the middle ones only one side exposed (not counting the top).  If failure of the exposed sides seemed imminent I could use my surplus recycled bailing twine to tie around all 12 boxes to support them.  On wet or rainy days when the garden is too wet to be worked in I can get a van full of BBs, some soil mix and straw and keep planting.