Spring Has Sprung! First Planting and a Lack of Compost

After a long hard cold winter, we are finally seeing the first signs of life from the garden!  We had a spate of unseasonably warm days scattered through the last few weeks, so I have been outside working in my garden.  Our last frost date in this area is April 13th, but on the 5th I went through a bunch of old seeds from last year and planted some early spring seeds to give them a head start in the garden.

I planted:

1. Peas:  1 packet of Guisante Super Snappy peas from 2011 and 1 packet of Burpeeana Early from 2013
2. Broccoli:  Organic Romanesco from 2013
3. Cabbage:  Earliana Cabbage from 2013
4. Lettuce:  Lechuga Looseleaf Blend from 2013
5. Beets:  Organic Detroit Red Beets from 2010
6. Cauliflower:  Early Snowball A from 2013
7. Cherry Bell Radish from 2013
8. Catskill Brussel Sprouts from 2011
9. Swiss Chard Neon Lights mix from 2013
10. 6 celery plants started from the ends of store-bought celery

I am not expecting the older seeds to sprout, but i wanted to give them a chance.  If they sprout, they have saved me from buying the seeds for this year.  If they don't sprout, I will have used up the seed anyway without just throwing it away and wasting it.  I planted all of these in the western bed, which was tilled up from lawn last spring and mulched with straw over a mixture of newspaper and cardboard for weed barrier.

The Back to Eden gardening method I started last year seems to be working out fine...the half of the garden that did not get papered and mulched last year is nothing but a pit of weeds and mud atm.  It needs tilled before I can even think about planting anything it, and the tiller man (otherwise known as Dad) is a farmer heading into planting season, which takes priority over everything that isn't immediately life-threatening.  My new garden bed and tilling the exposed half of the existing garden will have to wait until he is free and the ground is dry enough, which could be as late as the end of next month (If it is dry enough to till, it is dry enough to plant).  I am planning on using those spaces to plant heat-loving veggies and melons.

The half of the garden that did get papered and mulched last year turned out wonderfully...I was able to just scrape back the remnant's of last year's straw to expose ground to plant in.  The cardboard underneath had already decomposed and the straw, which i laid down ankle-to-shin deep last fall is maybe two inches thick now, and the bottom half of that is already black as it decomposes further.  I was able to just dig my trenches for rows and stick the seeds in and recover them all without tilling.  The soil beneath was rich and dark, and full of earthworms.  I found one dandelion growing in last year's mulch, and a few sprigs of grass on the very edges of the mulched garden...easy enough to remove.

Compost is a big part of the back to Eden Method:  I wanted to put a load of horse manure from the farm I work at on all of my garden beds late last fall  and let it "work" over the winter, but that did not work out.  Somehow a nasty bacterial infection commonly called Strangles worked its way into the barn in November and we are still fighting it five months later.  A proper compost pile should get hot enough while it works to eat or destroy any remaining pathogens, but the manure at the horse farm is only piled up for about a month before it is removed, not nearly long enough to gain the kind of heat it needs to be safe.

Strangles is highly contagious, and I don't want to risk bringing it onto my property with uncomposted manure, and then possibly taking it from here back into the farm at work.  The horses who had it this time will be immune, but we have a lot of horses in and out for short amounts of time, and I don't want to risk exposing them to it and having them carry it to other farms when they go home.  Once our last sick horse recovers and the manure is removed one last time I will start bringing home the uncomposted manure from work and adding it to my compost pile here.  Right now my plan is to stick a few old rubbermaids in the trunk of my car and fill them once or twice a week and adding it to my pile of old much, yard waste, and kitchen trimmings.  It will be stinky and smelly (I really need to get a truck so I can just bring home a load of it about once a month), but my garden needs the nitrogen and I know exactly where this comes from and what's in it, so to speak.  That is worth any amount of hard work and bad smells, and by doing the work myself it's all free!

By next spring I should have a nice pile of compost to spread over the garden.  Funds are tight at the moment and all my spare change is going towards buying seeds and seedlings, or else I would buy compost to add and build my proper layers of nitrogen and carbon to improve the soil.  Thankfully I have good soil to begin with, so I shouldn't see a huge decrease in garden fertility this year, but this is not something I want to do year after year.  I want to improve my soil, not deplete it!