Tag: gardening

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The Benefits of Wood Chips in Raised Bed Gardens

Hey folks, Troy here to share one of the projects I’ve been working on: adding wood chips to my last two garden beds. When it comes to maintaining healthy and productive raised garden beds, there is a lot to consider when it comes to cover material. One of the best options available, in my opinion, is wood chips. Here are the top benefits that I’ve found of using wood chips as a cover material for my raised garden beds.

  1. Natural Insect Repellent

One of the primary benefits of using wood chips is their ability to help keep problematic insects away from your crops. The rough texture and dense cover of wood chips can deter pests from reaching the stems of your plants. Additionally, certain types of wood, such as cedar and pine, contain natural oils that are known to repel insects. This natural defense mechanism can help reduce the need for chemical pesticides, making your garden more eco-friendly and safe for beneficial insects like bees and butterflies.

  1. Light Reflection and Water Conservation

Especially if you have dark, peaty looking top soil like my garden beds have, using naturally light-colored wood chips can help reflect some of the sunlight, which in turn works to keep the soil cooler. This reflective property is particularly beneficial in hotter climates, as it can prevent the soil from drying out too quickly. By maintaining more consistent soil moisture levels, you can reduce the frequency of watering, which conserves water and saves time. Moreover, cooler soil temperatures can lead to healthier root systems and better overall plant growth.

  1. Weed Suppression

Weeds are a common nuisance in any garden, but wood chips provide an effective barrier against them. A thick layer of wood chips block sunlight from reaching the soil surface, which prevents weed seeds from germinating. This means less time spent weeding and more time enjoying your garden. But just make sure all of your veggies have sprouted before you add your wood chips, so that they don’t get smothered as well. That is why I had to wait before covering my last two beds. Additionally, as the wood chips break down over time, they add organic matter to the soil, improving its structure and fertility.

Make sure your seeds have all sprouted before adding wood chips.

Making Your Own Wood Chips

One of the great advantages of using wood chips is that you can easily make your own. Using a small electric wood chipper, I turn all of the small tree branches and other garden debris that I accrue when I do my pre-garden pruning into useful wood chips. This not only provides me with a constant supply of mulch but also helps in recycling garden waste efficiently, and lessens the amount of yard debris that I end up having to throw in the trash. This little Sunjoe chipper has been doing really well for me the last few years, and now that it’s slowing down I am looking at its new big brother as a replacement for next year.

Additional Benefits

* Soil Health Improvement: As wood chips decompose, they enrich the soil with organic matter, enhancing its structure, aeration, and water retention capacity. This leads to healthier, more robust plants.
* Aesthetic Appeal: Wood chips give your garden beds a neat and tidy appearance. They come in various colors and sizes, allowing you to choose the best option to match your garden’s aesthetics.
* Temperature Regulation: Wood chips act as an insulating layer, protecting plant roots from extreme temperature fluctuations. This is particularly useful during unexpected cold snaps or heatwaves.

Conclusion

I would encourage you to try incorporating wood chips as a cover material for your raised garden beds because of their many benefits, from natural pest control and water conservation to weed suppression and improved soil health. By choosing this organic and sustainable option, you can create a more efficient and beautiful garden space. Whether you are a seasoned gardener or just starting out, wood chips can be a valuable addition to your gardening toolkit. If you have had success with this kind of mulching in your garden, please let me know! I’d love to hear about your experience! Happy gardening!

References:
Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. (n.d.). Mulch and Mulching. Retrieved from https://www.tn.gov/environment/program-areas/sw-mm-organics/mulch.html
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. (n.d.). Mulching to improve soil health. Retrieved from https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/resources/guides-and-instructions/mulching-improve-soil-health.

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Modern Garden Tips: Balancing Nature and Science

Hey, it’s Troy here from the Hearty Henhouse, and I wanted to talk to you today about what we have been doing to get my garden ready this year. I practice a mix of gardening techniques that I think is a healthy balance of natural or passive gardening and intensive raised bed gardening. I think this is a good balance for me for a few reasons, so let’s dig into them.

I work a lot. It seems like every time I turn around, I am picking up another side gig or helping out someone with one of their projects, so I might have a few weekends where I can really put in the hours to set up a system, I don’t have the luxury of consistently spending half my weekends on maintenance. I feel like a lot of people who want to have a garden can relate, so here are some of the things I do that help me front load some effort to make my garden maintenance lower effort.

1- I try to reuse as much material as possible. When I limb my trees every year I let the fallen limbs lie until the leaves fall, and rake them into my compost, then I use a small electric wood chipper to turn the limbs into chips that I can use as cover. A couple of hours with a rake and a few Saturday afternoons with the chipper saved me probably twenty to forty dollars on wood chips and probably double that on soil. This year I added three new raised beds, and I while I did have to by a few bales of peat moss, I can’t fathom how much more it would have cost to fill all three without compost.


2- I try to automate any process I can. My watering is all done on timers. My older lot only has two hose bibs for the whole front yard and they both feed from the same line. So 2 four-way timers that I can set to water throughout the night can mean I am watering my garden and lawn throughout the night while I am asleep and the ground has the maximum time to soak up the water. I cover my crops with light-colored wood chips to help retain water and deter many kinds of common weeds and pests.


3- I try to make every part of my garden work for me. I have struggled for the last 9 years trying to revive a long-dead lawn on my property, and I have only started seeing marginal success when I pivoted my focus from traditional lawn grass to White Clover. Besides the fact it is the only thing that I can seem to get to grow in my lawn, the nitrogen-fixing properties of its clippings will be a great nutrient boost to my compost, and the white clover flowers will attract pollinating insects, which will help with plant fertility in my garden. I have also had a bare patch of soil next to a cement pad that only seems to be useful for growing weeds, and this year we are trying to “wild plant” Sunchokes (a.k.a. Jerusalem Artichokes)in that area to help crowd out the weeds. These are great species for wild planting because they are hearty in most grow zones, require little attention, and can be used from the flowers to their tubers. So, wish me luck, and I will report at the end of the year.

I’ve always found the debate between purely scientific planting and entirely naturalistic planting to be, at best, unnecessary and, at worst, counterproductive. By applying scientific analysis to natural systems, we can harness the strengths of both approaches. This allows us to optimize our gardens for our benefit rather than relying on the latest advertised miracle fertilizer.

If you have any questions or comments, please let us know here or on The Hearty Henhouse’s social media, I would love to hear your thoughts and input. Until I hear from you, happy planting!

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Letting Your Animals Help With Fall Clean Up

Fall is a great time of the year for animals. Everyone’s garden is nearing the end and it’s also time for yard clean up before the winter sets in. I don’t let anything go to waste as I do garden clean up and prepare for the inevitable cold and snow. My animals help me with clean up, and feeding all the excess garden produce and yard trimmings helps to cut some food costs. As I pull plants out of the garden, those that are edible go to the animals. I pick the last of the grapes for the chickens, and the goats get a few delicious meals of gourmet grape leaves. The goats and rabbits love the green bean plants and the chickens enjoy the tomatoes. Had your fill of cucumbers? Goats, chickens ducks, cows, horses and rabbits all enjoy a juicy cucumber. Bruised apples from the tree make great treats and the chickens love it when they find a worm in their apple! You don’t really need to worry too much about your animals eating apple seeds. While it is true that apple seeds contain cyanide, the seed has to be crushed or chewed to release the poison. Chickens swallow the seeds whole, so no problem there and your larger animals would need to consume quite a few apples to be affected by the cyanide. Your animals will feel lucky if your pumpkin patch was a success. Pumpkins are a pretty hardy crop and will store well until the bitter cold of winter. I often hit up the local pumpkin patch after Halloween and take home a truck load of pumpkins that I dole out over the next month to all of the animals for their eating pleasure.

truck bed full of pumpkins
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Caring for Christmas Cactus

I love it when I do something right without even really knowing what or how! I recently posted pictures of my Christmas Cactus that I started many years ago from a 100 year old plant. That brought about some questions about what I do to make it bloom. Uhhh, water it occasionally, let it sit comfortably in the window sill and give it a little fertilizer in the spring. That’s about it! Seemed like kind of a lame explanation and evidence of my total lack of understanding, so I decided to educate myself a little better on Christmas Cactus…after all I have two plants.

Christmas Cactus Flower
The vibrant blossoms will generally last from 6 to 9 days.
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Container Gardening

Along with my regular in-the-ground garden, I also include some container gardens. There are many reasons to include containers in your gardening efforts. They allow you to grow plants in small urban areas where an in-ground garden is not possible. There is less chance for spreading disease. Some plants that spread quickly, do well in containers where they can be controlled, like mint. They can be less labor intensive, there are generally not as many weeds in container gardening, and they conserve water. Containers can also be moved about if you want to change locations, and often the soil in a container garden can be worked before in-ground gardens. I’m sure you can think of other reasons that a container garden could work for you.

I have many container gardens and some are larger than others. I have two containers in my chicken run where I plant herbs, which the chickens keep beautifully trimmed for me. I have another herb garden in an old metal water trough and I have several large containers lining the edge of my in-ground garden fence. You can grow almost anything in a container: vegetables, flowers, herbs, and even trees and bushes. I happen to grow mostly vegetables, chicken friendly flowers and herbs.

Metal trough garden
A variety of herbs planted in an old water trough.
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Helpful Garden Supplies

One year my husband brought home some bales of oat hay. We stored it in a location that was, in retrospect, way too close to the garden! For the next two years, I had oat grass coming up everywhere, except for in the pasture where it would have been welcomed. Between the oat grass and the weed seeds that normally come into the garden via the irrigation and wind, I found that I was spending a lot of time weeding. Not that I mind a little weeding, it can be very therapeutic, but I was overwhelmed with the task. It was becoming not so much a task anymore as a burden! I incorporated a few simple tools into my gardening that have helped me to spend more time enjoying my garden, not just pulling weeds.

Garden with tire planters
Ground cover drastically reduced the weeds in my garden.
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Sprouts for Chickens

I am a firm believer in variety! I know that a chicken’s sense of taste is nowhere near as refined as a person’s, but it seems apparent, if you watch your chickens eat, that they seem to prefer some foods over others. In my flock for example, fresh raspberries are devoured a lot quicker than tomatoes, and they prefer spaghetti noodles over rice. It is also a fact that different foods contain different vitamins and minerals and in different amounts. I think that as long as your chickens are getting a variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, greens and herbs, in addition to their formulated feed, they will enjoy their diet and live long, healthy, productive lives.

One of the things that I like to feed my chickens is sprouts. Sprouts are easy to prepare, inexpensive, nutritious and my chickens enjoy them! They are especially good in the winter months when there is not a lot of grasses or garden produce available.

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Making Dirt

Making dirt is not something that we generally think of as a great pastime or fun hobby, and frankly, purchasing commercial garden fertilizers is easier. However, I have always been a fan of ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’! Trying to be a stay-at-home mom and raise a family required that I make our dollars stretch and not be wasteful with our resources. My husband built our first chicken coop out of wood pallets. The fruits, vegetables and leftover meals that had passed their prime went to the animals. All the organic material at our disposal went into a compost pit to be turned into free garden fertilizer. Every little bit helped! 

Flowering plant in planter
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Apple Pie

If the truth be known, I would much rather spend my time outside digging in the dirt, mending a fence, even cleaning a chicken coop, than be in the kitchen.  The only thing that I enjoy less than cooking is doing the dishes. I would classify myself as an okay cook and I do have some specialties, but I give a two thumbs up! to all of you who enjoy cooking, do it well and find dish washing therapeutic!! Because cooking isn’t my favorite, I prefer simple, no fail, not a lot of dirty dishes type of recipes. They are not hard to find and I’m grateful for them! Fresh cut up fruit is one of my favorite side dishes due to the fact that it’s delicious, easy, and not a lot of dirty dishes. Heck, watermelon comes with its own bowl! When you’re finished with it, just toss it to the chickens or bunnies and they’ll take care of the clean up. 


Of course fall is the time of year when apples are plentiful and also less expensive. You might even have a friend or neighbor who says, ‘please, come and pick all the apples you want!’ My husband’s friend is one of those guys, so when my husband came home with a big tub of apples that he had picked, I had to figure out what to do with all of them. 

bucket of fresh apples
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Frozen!

Grapes were a favorite fruit of my boys as they were growing up. We always had grapes. About 6 years ago I decided to plant a couple of vines and grow my own grapes! I did my research and selected two seedless table grape varieties. They were dormant, bare-root vines that I planted in the early spring after I could work the ground. To support my vines I put up four green T-posts and strung welded wire fencing. My grape trellis is about 5’6” tall and about 8’ long.  I didn’t really expect any grapes the first year, but I didn’t expect one of the plants to die either! The following spring I planted a champagne table grape. It is a smaller grape and pretty sweet. They make very tasty raisins.
 
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