here comes the sun (spring is sproinging pt.3)

alright internet-machine, it's just me & you.
and morning edition.
and a huge pot of lima beans that i woke up early to cook since it feels like summer already.

The odd absence of winter this year compelled me to ramp up my garden plans.  It's hard to focus on just 3 rectangular vegetable beds when it's 70degrees most of the winter.

I was having some problems keeping my janky bamboo/plastic/duct tape coldframe warm at night when a friend reminded me of hugelkultur.  Remembering hearing that hugelkultur beds slowly released heat somewhere, i figured i'd put a couple beds in around the coldframe...

What the heck is hugelkultur? you ask.  Click this link for a how-to, or googlewhack it.  Basically, hugelkultur uses the water retention properties of rotting wood to create raised beds that require very little watering.  here's the process picture-show:

Joe-knee & I started by trenching out a drain around our "cold-frame"

I fished some really rotten wood out of my ma's backyard and made a stack on either side of the frame

A tree company clearing out trees around the power lines dropped off a huge load of mulch, so i chucked some of it on too.

then i started piling on the clay we'd dug for the drainage ditch.

sprinkled a little compost on it and stuck some plants in.

I planted black-seeded simpson lettuce, a few extra strawberries, cherry belle radish and a smattering of onions and leeks in each hugelkultur bed. One side got early jersey wakefield cabbage and the other got a couple waltham broccoli and a few fennel.  Both sides are also sprouting a healthy amount of weeds, which i think were lying dormant in the clay.  Everything's growing better than i thought it would, as i didn't sheet compost or build up a particularly deep layer of soil over the wood.  We still will probably not get maximum yields from these two food piles until next season, but food is food and food is good.

Because we live in the dirty, dirty south, as the man says, our growing season really never ends, unless the grower decides to take a break anyways.  It's just a matter of knowing what to plant when and praying that our notoriously schizoid weather doesn't do anything too ... notoriously schizoid.  So around the end of February i started digging in.

I started direct-seeding sugar snap peas (nomnomnom) through the wood chip mulch.  This is the first garden experiment using wood chips for sheet mulching, and while it's great for water retention and attracting the small farmer's first livestock (worms), it's a pain in the tookus when it comes to direct seeding an intensive planting.  It could be good for row plantings but there's not much room for that kind of thing out here in the burbs, at least not if you want to grow a lot of your own food.  In the future i may use the woodchip beds where only seedlings will be transplanted, but probably will sheet compost where I'll be direct-seeding.  Nonetheless, the peas are up and the succession planting is just starting to pop up too.

 I've also tranplanted red russian kale and perfection fennel, which seem to be doing well.  The lettuce and spinach transplants seem to be struggling, and the broccoli seems to be in some kind of stasis.
  After helping a friend's dad take down his shed, I was given a couple gardener's supply co. potato bins.  I planted both of these at the end of February as well and am just starting to see the Kennebec and Pontiac Reds poke through the compost straw mix they're growing in.

So sorry, internet machine, that this supposedly quick recap of what's been happening here at Backyard Beddie's Suburban Microfarm has turned into several somewhat rambly posts... and also that it's going to turn into at least one or two more, but i find it difficult to spend more than an hour sitting in front of the computer and the lima beans are now tender enough for me to abandon my post here at the breakfast table to check on what's happening outside.... in the amazing yellow haze of record pollen counts, buzzing bumble bees, butterflies, sunshine, bugs & life.  As much as i love you, o faceless interwebs, i must follow my heart and my cup of coffee out of doors.