Manuring the garden
The truck, wheelbarrow, and
shovel got a real workout yesterday, with me and Mark using them in
shifts. First, I unloaded the rest of the manure on top of half a truckload
of imperfect
chicken compost so
that Mark could drive out to get gravel while the ground was still
frozen. All morning, I spread manure in the mule garden,
focussing on the beds that we'll be planting in February and
March. Mark got home just as I was finishing up and took the
wheelbarrow out to work
on the driveway.
I estimate we each moved about the same volume of material, which means
he probably worked about three times as hard as I did.
In the past, I've been
extremely frugal with compost and manure, but now that we have a
better supply (and a truck to haul it with), I'm adding a solid inch to
each garden bed, the amount recommended by soil builders. Being
so profligate with manure, though, means that even Mark's huge compost
pile may not be enough. I figure I need about six more truckloads
(14.4 cubic yards) to treat the whole garden, orchard, and berry patch
right. It feels like a very ambitious plan, but I suspect that
after a year or two of heavy manuring, we'll be able to keep fewer beds
in production and cycle some through low-work cover crops. My new
goal --- the same amount of high quality food with less work.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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