5 minute read
Saying Y.E.S. to Nature
Good Practices for Gardening Success
BY CAROLYN HERRIOT
Since 2006, volunteers have gardened on the Kiwi Cove Lodge grounds to grow food for the Ladysmith Food Bank. Each year, we strive to increase our yields by improving soil fertility and texture, reducing weeds and preventing pests and diseases, and each year, we make progress. For each of the past few years, the garden has provided 4,000 pounds of fresh-picked organic vegetables to the food bank. We’d like to share with you some of the practices we follow to achieve our goals.
Unless your soil is compacted, no-till gardening is the ideal, as this will protect the vital soil food web. I know from experience that soil loosened with a broad fork rather than pulverized with a tiller grows superior vegetables. We avoid walking on and compacting the garden beds by laying two-foot-wide pathways, edged with wooden cribbing. We line the pathways with black landscape fabric (Lumite) and top them with coarse bark mulch to prevent weeds from growing. The bark mulch is good for two years, before it eventually breaks down.
Last year, we were thrilled to see lots of earthworms in the soil. The presence of tunnelling earthworms indicates a fertile soil that is well aerated and of good texture. Structurally soil is 50 per cent air and water spaces and 50 per cent solid mineral particles. Ideally, organic matter (humus) makes up five per cent of the solids, so we are always adding organic matter such as compost, manure and shredded leaves to the soil.
Sandy soil is easy to work, but it has poor nutrient quality and dries out fast. Clay soil is harder to work; it holds water and nutrients but drains poorly and compacts easily. The ideal we aim for is a sandy loam made up of 40 per cent sand, 40 per cent silt and 20 per cent clay. You can suspend a soil sample in water in a mason jar and let it settle out to see what you have got in the resulting layers.
The ideal for growing most vegetables and herbs is a pH in the range of 6.3 to 6.8. Potatoes, tomatoes, blueberries and strawberries prefer a lower range (5.5) on the acidic side. Use a simple strip test, available from your local garden centre, to determine the pH of your soil. Add lime to raise pH. Add powdered sulphur to lower pH.
Manure is a valuable fertilizer that provides high levels of nitrogen and other nutrients. We are blessed to receive donations of local horse or cow manure, which we age before using. We get a large pile delivered in late fall, and we apply it to the beds in early spring. Since we grow intensively in our 160-feet-by-40-feet garden plot, this removes a lot of nutrients from the soil. We need adequate levels of macronutrients: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) and a healthy dash of micronutrients (Ca, Mg, Fe, Zn Bo, Cu, Mn). Calcium and magnesium are needed for the uptake and metabolization of nutrients, so we dust beds with dolomite lime each year in the fall. The plants will tell us of any nutrient imbalances, such as blossom end rot of tomatoes, which indicates calcium deficiency, or poor beet growth, which tells of a pH imbalance or lack of boron in the soil.
Last year, we used free wooden pallets to build a four-bin compost system, and we filled it with layers of weeds, herbaceous waste, grass clippings, seaweed and leaves. We activated the piles by dampening the layers with water and adding fresh manure as the pile was being built.
We protect our soil from harsh winter conditions by sowing green cover crops, which prevent the soil from eroding from heavy rains, suppress weeds and feed microbes in the soil during the dormant season. Last year, we sowed a mix of hairy vetch, field pea and fall rye in October. We will turn this under one month before planting begins in spring, which adds nitrogen when and where we most need it. One ounce of seed covers 50 square feet.
Nature abhors a vacuum, so we try to avoid leaving the soil bare. We mulch with shredded big leaf maple leaves from the Kiwi Cove grounds, up to a two-inch maximum thickness. We try to prevent any weeds from going to seed. We also use Lumite, lumber tarps and flattened cardboard boxes to smother weeds. Many hands make light work when it comes to weeding!
Our garden beds are designed in blocks so that we can practise crop rotation to avoid the build-up of pests and diseases. We avoid growing the same plant family in the same place from year to year. We have had problems with flea beetles eating holes in the leaves of arugula, radishes and turnips, so we use cloche tunnels covered with Reemay. We plant flowers, such as cosmos, and herbs around the garden, which attract beneficial insects, such as parasitic wasps and hover flies, and pollinators to increase our yields.
Our garden is an opportunity for hands-on learning in a beautiful setting by the ocean. We are always looking for more volunteers, and you will take home a bouquet of beautiful flowers from the garden every week. If you want to join us, call Bill Tilland at 250-924-5269.
