garden

My Garden 2013: The Start of My Cantaloupe Bed

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Last year we had some mild success at growing Cantaloupe Melons. We love this fruit! This year I decided to try again. I have a raised bed dedicated to Watermelon and Cantaloupe.

The wire cages I’m using this year are not ideal for Cantaloupe, but they worked ok last year. These are normal wire Tomato cages. These will not be used for Tomatoes. The Cantaloupe will vine along the ground, but can be trained to go along a trellis as well. I will train mine to wind around these wire Tomato cages.

Cantaloupe Planting – Daddykirbs Garden Blog
Notice that I tied the tops of the cages together. This is done for support. Each cage on it’s own isn’t very sturdy so they tend to lean over. With each of them supporting each other they should stand the weight of the plant and fruit on them.
Here is a short video that explains the process.
Here are some advertised products that could help in your garden:
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My Orchard Irrigation Mistake: and How I Fixed It.

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I added an irrigation line to the orchard. Nice! … but I made a mistake. What? a mistake? yes yes… sometimes I make mistakes… Ok, I am a mistake maker. Now that you know that I’m not perfect here’s what happened.

I thought it would be cool to run six hose connections to the six rows of trees. I also thought it would be cool to reuse some items that I had laying around so I could save some money.

The original plan was to put a regular hose bib for the connections… so I did. There’s part of the mistake. The other part of the mistake was that I used an eight inch sewer pipe cut into sections for the “holes”. This is nice except the angle of the hose bib doesn’t allow for the hose to connect without crimping inside that eight inch hole. Take a look at this video to see what I’m talking about.

Now… I couldn’t leave it like that, right? Of course not.

I shut the water off and pulled all those hose bibs out. Here are the components that I used to fix it.
From left to right: Sprinkler Head Riser Pipe, PVC Ball Valve, Brass Hose Connector Fitting. 

Parts for Fixing Irrigation Mistake – Daddykirbs Garden Blog
All the parts assembled. 

Fixing Irrigation Mistake – Daddykirbs Garden Blog

And here it is MUCH BETTER! 🙂

Irrigation Mistake Fixed – Daddykirbs Garden Blog
Here are some advertised products that could help fix some of your mistakes! 🙂

farm, garden, projects

My First Hugelkulture Garden Bed

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Permaculture? What is it? Well I’m still learning to answer that question for myself, but basically it’s designing our environment more like nature. When we mimic nature our gardens will thrive and be more self sustaining. We help the soil along by providing more materials like compost, clippings, mulch and in the case of Hugelkulture we bury wood.

It is my goal to use my farm in a more sustainable way. Or as a gardening buddy of mine on Google+, +Dan Grubbs,  says “regenerative”. The idea of restoring our land to a more fertile and fruitful existence.

This is all new to me too. I’m learning right along side you. Here is my first experiment with Hugelkulture. As the experiment goes along I’ll add pictures and video to this post. So, bookmark it and come back! 🙂

Watch this video 🙂

Starting the Hugelkulture Bed – Daddykirbs Garden Blog
This next video shows some of the “next steps” I took to make this bed work better.
Finally I was able to plant the beds. Check out my berry bush plants going in in this video.
Since that first bed felt so good… I built a second. Here is a series of pics for that second bed.

Daddykirbs Garden: Hugel Bed #2 Logs covers with mulch – view from the South

Daddykirbs Garden: Hugel Bed #2 Logs covers with mulch – view from the North

Daddykirbs Garden: Hugel Bed #2 Covered with first layer of dirt

Daddykirbs Garden: Hugel Bed #2 Layered with horse manure compost

Daddykirbs Garden: Hugel Bed #2 Layered with horse manure compost – view from the South (Awesome shot of my beautiful little ‘bota in the background)

Daddykirbs Garden: Hugel Bed #2 Layered with horse manure compost

Daddykirbs Garden: Hugel Bed #2 Final layer of mulch/dirt blend.

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Why Does Compost Produce Steam?

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In the end compost is dirt. But how does it become dirt and why does it produce steam in the process?

Good questions.

I’m not a scientist but here’s the break down (get it? “break down”… oh never mind).

A compost pile could start from a pile of leaves or wood mulch or lawn grass clippings… or, many other things. These materials all contain carbon (often called “brown material”) and nitrogen (often called “green material”). Some materials are higher is carbon and others are higher in nitrogen. Both ingredients are needed for the pile to start the process of composting or decomposing.

Yes, decomposing… all living material can become dirt once it dies and is left to nature.

The compost pile has microbes. A microbe is a a microorganism. These microbes are alive and they are the reason a compost pile can decompose. These little critters start eating the material that are in the compost pile. In the process of eating and digesting they also give off heat as a byproduct.  The moisture in the pile is heated up and turns to gas. This is the steam that can be seen as you turn a hot pile of compost.

There ya have it. A condensed science lesson that should raise more questions than it answers! Hey, I said I’m not a scientist 🙂

Here’s a video that shows a pile that is alive and steaming.  We are adding dried leaves (carbon) to the hot pile of horse manure (nitrogen).

Compost Pile Steaming – Daddykirbs Garden Blog
for a more complete scientific explanation of what goes on in the process check this out:
Here are some advertised products for your composting pleasure 🙂

farm, garden, projects

Building & Filling Raised Beds

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This garden area that I have is fantastic! There is a 32 foot square fenced in with a cute gate…. but it’s empty. Last year I tried a couple of different methods. I used an old raised bed that was there and that worked fine, but it wasn’t enough and wasn’t laid out how I wanted it.

Chicken feed bags was the another method that I tried out. This seemed appropriate to me since I have lots of bags and it was more of a mobile solution. I figured I could move the bags around as needed since there was not a clear plan for the garden.

There were a few challenges with the bags. One, they didn’t hold water like they needed too. It’s hot in Texas and the bags dried out too fast. Another challenge in Texas is the bright damaging sun. Those bags broke down pretty fast. By the end of the season they were brittle and flaking all over the place.

Those methods worked ok… I got some produce out of them. But, it was not that good.

This year I’m investing in making the garden more usable and productive. There are raised beds for the family and the kids that want them… they have their own. There is also a greenhouse going in. It’s small, but should be fine for seed propagation and over wintering the lemon tree.

Here is a snapshot of the raised beds:

New Raised Beds – Daddykirbs Garden Blog

Here is a video of the garden as it transitions from empty to useful.

It’s worth noting that I did plan on lining the bottom of the entire garden with carpet. My thoughts on that were that the carpet would be a weed block barrier. In my original thought process it made sense. I figured that the beds would be full of good dirt so it didn’t matter that they would be on carpet.  Well, after some exchange on the Google+ community, Hobby Farms: Growing Food & Families, that I moderate, I changed my mind. It was mentioned how dangerous it could be to have the chemicals breaking down and getting into my vegetables. This is called “leaching”… I’m not sure how much of it really happens and how BAD it really is, but I figured it’s better to err on the side of caution. I really do appreciate the warnings and comments that were made.

Here is a YouTube playlist that show my videos of my garden before this makeover:

Daddykirbs’ Gardening Playlist

Here are some advertised products for your gardening pleasure 🙂

Hi! I'm Blake. Online I go by "Daddykirbs". My farm and blog is a place to learn about my journey with Permaculture, Homesteading, Gardening and more. Thanks for visiting!

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