(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.
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Hope Springs Eternal
Indomitable spirit. That was one of the 5 tenets of taekwando on a paper my brother gave me back in my early twenties (Courtesy, Integrity, Perserverence and Self Control are the other 4). He knew how I liked to paper my home office with inspirational quotes. I've had to overcome quite a few difficulties to get to the difficulties I face today. Many times it would have been easier to give up or give in. But the spirit was not crushed and it was these trials that made it stronger. Challenge becomes the norm and you begin to embrace it - to take it on willingly.
Starting over with a small farm really isn't daunting. I have some practice. I've made many of the mistakes and hopefully learned from them. It may be that starting out is the funnest part. So many possibilities. The future is bright and the common drudgery of carrying things out season to season hasn't figured into the equation yet.
As long ago as I can remember if you would have asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I would have told you I wanted to be a farmer and an author. After a lot of twists and turns I finally got down to starting in 2005 (see grandprairiefood.blogspot.com) and at age 44 I'm still trying.
In 2015 I picked up an old building in town (the former local Knights of Pythias Castle - that's just the name, it's not a castle, its a two story vinyl sided box). In the small backyard I have been growing a small garden of my own and a small crop of garlic to increase for planting stock. Last year a friend bought us thousands of flower bulbs and I expanded to the "community garden", some unused village land in the floodplain, in spite of being told explicitly by the village board president that I could not use any village land. I planted some of my garlic there again this fall.
I've also begun to branch out on a friend's country land in a place called Rolling Ground. Just tiny beds so far. In my experience, commuting to a garden means a neglected garden so if I commit to growing there on a larger scale I will want to relocate. I'm in a bit of a transition anyway right now with the impending closing of my thrift store after 5+ years in its current location. In fact, I began a dug-in greenhouse at Rolling Ground this fall so you might say I've committed.
In 2004 I adopted intentional poverty. I have my reasons and I'll try to explain them elsewhere. When I first encountered the concept of intentional poverty I thought it was silly and not for me. I rolled that idea around in my mind for many years before I came around to it. A good dose of state oppression, no doubt, helped polish it for me. I knew that growing food on a small scale with no machinery would not make me rich and I really felt it was a practice I wanted to experiment with and demonstrate. Now after a few years of doing other work, I'm coming back to it. (This was a draft from this winter. Other than the last sentence, it is going out the way I wrote it then although the publish date is April)
Starting over with a small farm really isn't daunting. I have some practice. I've made many of the mistakes and hopefully learned from them. It may be that starting out is the funnest part. So many possibilities. The future is bright and the common drudgery of carrying things out season to season hasn't figured into the equation yet.
As long ago as I can remember if you would have asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I would have told you I wanted to be a farmer and an author. After a lot of twists and turns I finally got down to starting in 2005 (see grandprairiefood.blogspot.com) and at age 44 I'm still trying.
In 2015 I picked up an old building in town (the former local Knights of Pythias Castle - that's just the name, it's not a castle, its a two story vinyl sided box). In the small backyard I have been growing a small garden of my own and a small crop of garlic to increase for planting stock. Last year a friend bought us thousands of flower bulbs and I expanded to the "community garden", some unused village land in the floodplain, in spite of being told explicitly by the village board president that I could not use any village land. I planted some of my garlic there again this fall.
I've also begun to branch out on a friend's country land in a place called Rolling Ground. Just tiny beds so far. In my experience, commuting to a garden means a neglected garden so if I commit to growing there on a larger scale I will want to relocate. I'm in a bit of a transition anyway right now with the impending closing of my thrift store after 5+ years in its current location. In fact, I began a dug-in greenhouse at Rolling Ground this fall so you might say I've committed.
In 2004 I adopted intentional poverty. I have my reasons and I'll try to explain them elsewhere. When I first encountered the concept of intentional poverty I thought it was silly and not for me. I rolled that idea around in my mind for many years before I came around to it. A good dose of state oppression, no doubt, helped polish it for me. I knew that growing food on a small scale with no machinery would not make me rich and I really felt it was a practice I wanted to experiment with and demonstrate. Now after a few years of doing other work, I'm coming back to it. (This was a draft from this winter. Other than the last sentence, it is going out the way I wrote it then although the publish date is April)
Thursday, January 18, 2018
Come on in
I'm glad you're here. This will be the blog for my latest homestead/ market garden adventure, Strike the Root Farm. As before I will be using low-tech, chemical free food production and other alternative technologies. For market, I'll be focusing on some reliable root crop favorites such as potatoes, beets, garlic, onions, sunchokes and others. Knowing me, I'll plant a lot of other stuff too.
I will be growing root crops but the name Strike the Root is borrowed from Henry David Thoreau's quote,
Time will tell how far I carry this project. If you would like to learn more or join in send me a message. If you've read this or other posts please leave me a comment.
I will be growing root crops but the name Strike the Root is borrowed from Henry David Thoreau's quote,
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve."Strike the Root is also the name of an online "journal of liberty" which I used to be an active member of. The principle of striking at the root is a theme I hit on often.
Time will tell how far I carry this project. If you would like to learn more or join in send me a message. If you've read this or other posts please leave me a comment.
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