Start Me Up

I have been saving and saving my old plastic containers and FINALLY have amassed enough to get one crop started for spring...this is going to have to speed up A LOT!!!

Anyhow, I decided to start my peas tonight for a couple of reasons:

1. Peas like cooler weather and can easily get burned when the sun gets intense. I know that they will do well in the early spring, but I have been assured by people who live here that summer gets quite hot and dry.
2. Peas take a while to get going, and I want them to be significant plants before I transplant them. I am worrying about small animals that might want to snack on tender pea shoots (I don't blame them), so I want to have some solid plants before I put them out into the wilds of the backyard.
3. Starting my peas now means that I have to get my butt in gear and build a place for them to climb.
4. I happened to have my peas saved from last year, and have yet to purchase a lot of the seeds I am planting this year.

I am going to have two different kinds of peas this year - sugar snap peas, and Oregon Trail shell peas (not planned, but funny in a cheesy way nonetheless). Both varieties come from peas I saved from past plantings. Originally both were seeds I purchased through Seeds of Change. This year my goal is to have lots of peas to eat fresh, but I doubt I have enough space to grow peas to put up - we shall see how it goes.


I filled my containers with soil that we got from a local gardening center. Because we are planting into the sheet mulch that is currently composting in the raised beds, I want to make sure that the area around the roots of each plant is nutrient-rich soil so as to mitigate any issues with our little mulch experiment.


I planted two peas per container, 7 containers per pea type. In the end I should have enough plants to run along the full length of one of the raised beds in the back.

Now, here's something very cool that was a total accident. We had a tupperware bin sitting out in front of the house that no one bothered to put away. As the rains came down last week I slid it under a place where our gutter leaks a bit to catch water. I can't say that I have the know-how to fix the gutter at this point, so I figure why not try and turn a problem into a solution? The result is a nice reservoir of rainwater out front that I am using for watering the starts as well as the house plants.


A tupperware bin we never put away becomes a great cachment out front by the rosebush.

Sheet Mulch

So its time for us to actually start that whole gardening thing. We spent some time talking, dreaming, scheming about it about 2 weeks ago, and now we are finally getting it to action.

We decided to put in 4 framed beds out back - each is 8'x3' and made out of reclaimed lumber we got from the Benton Habitat for Humanity ReStore. Jason worked this week getting the frames built, and we are going to spend some time this weekend turning the ground and starting to get things ready for seeds.

Upon digging into the yard (thanks to our landlady who is OK with this!) we found that the soil is mostly clay. This is great when we are talking about making plasters or cob, but for gardening it worried us a bit, hence the framed beds so we can import some other materials without having to till up the whole yard.

We looked into ways to get ahold of good soil. This included all kinds of ideas from going to the woods and getting some to purchasing it at a local store. We decided hauling soil seemed pretty energy inefficient and labor intensive, and discovered the route of buying soil would put us out over $200 minimum (ouch). So Jason got on the horn and started researching other options.

What he landed on was sheet mulching. This was an idea he'd originally had, but rejected because he did not think it was feasible for immediate planting. Sheet mulching is an incredible soil-building technique, especially if you have 6 months to let it break down. Fortunately, Jason pursued this idea deeply enough to discover that it is possible to plant almost immediately if one takes certain steps.

Lets take a moment and talk about what sheet mulching actually is. It is rooted in the concept that tilling is actually not beneficial for sustainable gardening (or agriculture for that matter) in that it will initially promote plant growth, but in the long run leeches nutrients out of the soil and leaves in barren (anybody remember the dust bowl?). It is essentially composting in place. To do this we are going to:

• Trim the grass short, leaving it in place.
• Covering the grass with newspaper and cardboard to prevent grass growth.
• Layering on top of the paper and cardboard from the bottom up, these four layers: partially composted goat manure and straw from a local farm, completed compost from the local municipality, straw, and dead leaves.

The net result is a striated combination of materials that will break down into fluffy, humus-rich, healthy soil. This process would have been best started back in October of last year. Of course last October Jason was living in a tent at an earth-building worksite, and I was watching football and drinking beer in Flagstaff. So, we are starting a bit behind, but developing a plan for being able move forward nonetheless.

While Jason builds his 5-layer dip of poop and other organic material in the backyard, I have been saving old containers to get our starts going. The plan is to get the sheet mulch up and decomposing while the plants get rolling indoors. Stay tuned for an article on starting plants as well as updates on the backyard beds. We are slated to get our plants into the ground on April 15, thus turning tax day into happy-gardening-fun-plant-dirt-day.

We must certainly give a nod to Toby Hemenway, author of "Gaia's Garden" for inspiration, ideas, plans, and instruction.