You aren't going to realize it, but all next week I will not be writing my blog. I will be embarking on my big spring project, overhauling and expanding my community garden. I will also be thinking up new and clever ways to distract my fellow gardeners while I pee in the bushes.
There's no bathroom at the community garden.
You'll still get posts - I wrote them in advance. You won't even know I'm not here.
Last year I took on a second 20' x 40' plot but it wasn't near my original garden. So when the plot beside me became available last fall I decided to take it over so I could have two plots side by side. That meant I had to move all of the perennial plants from my old secondary plot to my new secondary plot. Confused? Yeah, it's a shit show.
So on a weirdly warm day in February (seriously, I'm talking Apocalypse weird) I trudged up to the garden to transplant my 2 large asparagus beds, a whack of raspberry canes and my 2 beds of strawberry plants.
The raspberry canes croaked but the asparagus survived which is exactly backwards of what I thought was going to happen. It was like expecting to toot and a big burp comes out instead.
And I never even got to the strawberry plants. They are currently in my old bed, flowering like no strawberry plants have ever flowered before.
So let's assess exactly what needs to be done during my "week off".
Here's my new plot, which will make up the left side of my entire plot. It's 20' wide by 40' deep.
Here's my old plot, which will make up the right side of my new garden. It's also 20' x 40'.
Those two plots together will give me a 40' x 40' garden. Right now they're just giving me a headache.
Let's talk no dig. No dig gardening is the theory that you do NOT under any circumstances dig your garden. It was invented by some really lazy guy who got lucky in that the method apparently works. I think his name was God.
No dig gardening replicates what happens in the forest. Nobody digs up the forest to plant things. The trees just drop their leaves and gunk on the forest floor, it decomposes into compost on top of the other soil and then seeds drop in it and grow. Done.
My favourite no dig guru is Charles Dowding.
If you want to learn more about how no dig works click on the link above and watch Charles' videos. The short story is that you form your beds and never dig them. Every year you simply add 2-3" of compost on top and plant into that. You don't dig the compost in, you don't stir things around.
The reason for this is digging your soil ruins its structure and disturbs the fungi and beneficial microbes in the soil. And you piss off the worms by ruining their homes.
Worms, you see, make tunnels in your soil. Some worms make horizontal tunnels along the top of your soil and other worms (nightcrawlers for instance) make vertical tunnels in your soil which are GREAT for keeping an airy soil structure that also allows water to travel down towards roots.
The longer you maintain no dig beds, the better the beds get. Better structure, better microbial activity, better nutrient value in the soil all around.
THIS was the year I was going completely no dig. Except I'm not. Why? Because I got this new plot and I'm running out of time and I have a lot of work to get done in a limited amount of time.
So I had my new plot rototilled to make constructing the new beds faster and easier. I had to cross myself as Ron my garden buddy sunk the angry rototiller blades into the completely innocent soil and started ripping it up. It had to be done though. Like ripping off a bandaid. Or waxing a moustache. I also needed to have it tilled because my two plots might be side by side, but they aren't level to each other. They're very unlevel. And rototilling the one bed was going to make levelling the gardens easier.
THIS is what I'm talking about. I turned over a planter filled with my garden soil and it was teaming with worms. That's exactly what you want in your soil. And rototilling and digging disturbs them.
Next week my plan was to take half the soil from my new rototilled bed and transfer it to my old plot, so they end up being level with each other. It's completely aesthetic. My choice to do this is the absolute worst choice for my garden, and I know that.
But you can't stop crazy.
I want a nice level playing field purely for aesthetic reasons. A real gardener would leave things exactly as they are and build their beds around the natural slope of the soil to take advantage of the naturally occurring runoff and established soil structure.
Luckily I have a ton of compost thanks to my ever pooing chickens and there's a good supply of compost up at the garden as well. We all compost at the community garden. It's slow composting as opposed to the fast (Berkley method) composting I do at home, but it works just fine. It just takes longer.
Here's where the problem is. The longer I was up at the garden staring at my two beds the more I felt like I was making a whole lot of work for absolutely no reason whatsoever. You can see in the picture above where my left garden meets my right garden and how the left one is higher. Actually you might not be able to see that from the picture but I can assure you it's true.
So maybe I should just leave it. Maybe I should just have one bed higher than the other. I can live with that can't I? It might even be cute. A raised terrace garden. An upstairs and a downstairs.
I have 24 hours to decide on my plan, 7 days to implement it and 1 bladder to get me through it all.
Have a good weekend.
Dana H.
Love that you carved your logo on your garden gate, Karen. My vote is for terraced garden.
Karen
That's beautiful Dana! The problem is my gardens aren't that unlevel. Not so much I could do anything as nice as that. :/ ~ karen!
Carol
I think you should leave the 'terraces' between your two plots - will make the 'No Dig' method more fun and obvious(?) in the next couple of years in your old plot. Plus, I was reading through some of your older posts - one of them mentioned your 'Wait a Week' approach after you refinished your patio stones last year. :-) Yup, that is my motto now, Wait a Week if I don't like something, and yup, I read through several of your old posts. Okay, well, it was raining, and I had finished all of my 'indoor to-be-done-when-it-rains' duties, and then there were the Dollarama posts, and I am geeking on Dollarama at the moment
I also dug up some bushes in my garden during a warm spell this past winter. Because it was a bad-ass thing to do (who gardens in January in Ontario?). Still need to chop away a few of their roots, but now that it is Spring, and I can do that any time, I don't want to...
Lisa G.
Yeah, this all awesome but that shit needs to be level. Surface of a freshly-opened jar of peanut butter level. I can't even look at the photos.
Erin
Lots of great ideas here.
We are also ripping out old garden beds and making new ones. Some of them will be no-till. Many are already low-till.
My piece of advice is to think through 1) water flow/drainage and 2) access (for you, wheel barrows, hoses, power equipment...)
Good Luck!
Jennie Lee
If you're going no-dig, won't the higher garden compact over time, and get lower by itself? Also, why don't you just make it slope, now that it's all dug up? Either slope the whole thing, gradually, or have a more noticeable slope in a strip where the 2 plots meet. You could intentionally plant things in that strip that like more drainage. An added benefit is: NO STEPS. Those garden steps are pretty, but a slope is SO MUCH easier on the knees!
Ev Wilcox
Even though you are "thinking about it", I would bet that you will be doing some leveling! Just don't hurt yourself!
LINDSAY CUDINI
To Tina:
May God wrap his arms around you and ease your pain. I have a 14 year old husky that needs to be put down. I cannot do it. Pets give us so much. My sincere condolences to you!
Lindsay
Jody
I would say you are officially a farmer with 0.037 acres of prime Ontario farmland. You should investigate if you can get a tax credit for your acreage.
And....why do you have 2 lamps at your garden?
Barb
I have the solution... a COMPROMISE! The number 3 is always good in design. Push down SOME (small) of the high area, so that you will have a 3 tiered garden. the amount of work will be less and the also the step will be minimal... maybe not even noticeable. I can see it already :-)
I bet 'mother nature' will work for you to eventually push it down more level since we have been getting those torrential rainfalls lately anyways.
Plant the 'wet loving' - 'dry loving' in their zones.
Mary W
NOTHING beats the sight and smell of fresh turned dirt! Don't let it fool you. My heart is breaking for that beautiful old garden that has wonderful enriched soil and raised beds. It hurts to think of it covered in fresh new soil that lacks good stuff. I also must comment on the worms. Are you sure these are worms and not pieces of worms made through the precision tilling/splitting process? My condolences on your loss (raspberry canes) and I love the trellis idea from Lynn, just above. Maybe even extra sweet climbing sweet peas to nibble on while working. During yardening I never need to pee since I live in Florida and swear my sweat is yellow!
Elizabeth
When you expect to toot but you burp instead!! HA!
Lynn Wallrath
"I think his name was God." Hysterical... yet wise and makes perfect sense! I had not heard of the No Dig method but I'm going to look into it!
As always, your posts are the bomb and make my day!
Happy gardening (and garden peeing) !
Teri
Hey Karen, have you taken the wood off the raised beds in your 'old' garden? are you intending on haveing what I would call a TRUCK garden - no raised bed wood, just hand built beds with pathways between?
Sweet Maggie's Farm has concrete raised beds, greenhouses, and a considerable amount of field that is mostly made of long 'hand built' raised beds with walking paths between. These require more weed suppressing, but much less material to build and maintain (and have given us 4 years of experimenting about bed width, as well as plant location).
The Truck garden is a sloped field - quite sloped, and soggy wet at the bottom in the winter. Not an issue until spring comes and we want to plant, and if spring is late the bottom bit is wet longer, hence a lot of plants are started in soil blocke and, if necessary, transplanted into pots.
Get the freaking plants into the ground and spend the winter NEXT YEAR thinking about how you want to transistion between the two gardens, girl. Is this all about looks or is some about production? LOL...
Lynn
Personally Karen I would not level the gardens, put a trellis in between for climbing veg. With one or more entrances it would give your garden more appeal, with the bonus of giving you more variety use of space.
Flat gardens are nice but a small incline like you have ramps up the game.
Wishing you luck with your garden, I know you don't need it . 🌽🌶🥔🌰🍅
Edith
Well, for me the decision would be easy. Get tillerguy to come back and make everything level. New start. There are plenty of worms left.
Alena
Karen,
I think you should build a little tower, say 4' x 4' x 8', and hoist a Buddha or any other suitable object to the top. Tell your fellow gardeners that you need to meditate over 2 hours or so.
Lock yourself in your towel and pee instead of meditating. Then you can pull a cold beer covered in beads of condensation from your cooler and enjoy it on a hot July day as you proudly overlook the beauty of your garden. (Number 2 will just have to wait until you get home).
Karen
LOLOL!! ~ karen!
danni
Wow, I feel your pain. Exactly why I tore out all my lopsided raised beds in the fall and rebuilt them this spring! I had been cobbling together beds one at a time, and throwing up shoddy fencing against the groundhogs, and trapping the fat little bastards, (which only becomes a problem if you get a skunk....) My yard drops drastically so I built a massive, level fortress, fully fenced with trellises built in for climbers, three gated entrances, prepped for string method tomato growing, it is a thing of beauty!
Karen
It is a thing of beauty! Love the boxes mitered to create a centre. I can't even fathom boxing everything in I don't think. But it really does make the beds easier to maintain and looks so neat. BLAH! I don't know what I'll do!! ~ karen
Sarah
Crazy knows crazy. If you don't own your inner OCD traits and make the gardens match, it will drive you nuts and you will end up doing it later causing even more work and destruction. Just do it, you will be glad you did.
Karen
Yep. And that's my fear, lol. But it is a HUGE job, which normally I wouldn't shy away from but my time is limited. Ack. ~ karen!
Monique
Great post and I know it will be amazing.
You are so funny and smart ..humor injected into hard labor.
I look forward to seeing it all happen.I am a gardener too but it seems like I do nothing compared to you.
Really.
Kelly
As much as I love raised beds having one in my vegetable garden might eventually drive me nuts-it's an OCD thing. I'd probably level it to prevent headaches in the future... But that's just me. Having said that, it's all raised beds for me. I'm trying square foot gardening (theoretically more plants in leas space). We moved and I'm missing my flat, spacious garden. We'll see how the raises beds compare! At least I won't have to till the "garden"!
Kelly
"Less" space. Dang iPhone.
Jeanne
I am trying square foot gardening for the first time this year. I have 2 5 foot by 3 foot beds on legs since my knees are no good. I wish all of us luck in whatever method "or not" we choose.
Tina
I'm old and my knees are shot! For health reasons, I can't been over much so my friend built me 3 foot wide x 9 feet long garden boxes, 2 feet high. They're so wonderful! There's a narrow walk between each of them but they've made it all so easy for me, I can just do whatever I like!
Karen
Raised beds really are fantastic Kelly. They're so easy to maintain and weeds don't get going in them nearly as much because seeds which normally blow across the ground don't get up into the bed. You'll like them. :) ~ karen!