maine garden: year 2

January in Maine means getting another ~10in of snow and missing when everything was warm and green as you pick out seeds online and over many catalogs. In an attempt to ignore how cold the house is, I sat down with my notes from last year and drew up a garden plan for 2023.

Overview

This year, my garden project will center on soil regeneration. While I will still be growing salad greens, herbs and veg on our side deck, the majority of my gardening time will focus on the back yard. With a new tractor lying in wait for the warm weather, though getting much practice snow blowing, this big gardening project should go smoothly.

This will also be my first attempt at hugelkultur which is a fancy way to say I’m going to use downed trees, leaves, compost and other organic materials to create informal raised beds that will be highly productive and teeming with life. I’ll be going more in depth in later posts. 🙂

Currently in the back yard there are stubborn birch saplings, cute clusters of yarrow, st. john’s wort, umbrella-like ferns and one oddly placed blueberry bush. Oh and like yards and yards of gravel and stone. It appears the previous owners weren’t big on yard upkeep/management and decided gravel was the way to go. Our first order of business will be to remove and rehome the bucket-loads of the stuff, reassigning it to driveway duty most likely.

After enough has been removed and we’ve reached what probably remains of the top soil, we’ll dig another foot down or so to prep the area for fallen trees. Between making space for a campsite last year and the natural progression of a thriving forest, there are many downed trees and stumps in need of something to do.

To give the areas a quick nutrient boost at the start of the growing season I’ll be scattering red clover seeds onto the top of the mound. Those helpful legumes will be a great cover crop to breakdown the top layers of the mound and provide green manure when I go to plant for the season. Only after these hugelkultur mounds have been built up in an forest-based lasagna and clovers have been scattered, it’s time to plant!

For this first year, I’ve split up the growing space into 5 areas and will be doing something different in each one.

Area 1: Red

I decided to color theme the zones for whatever reason. It’s probably a desire to add some color to the back yard so there can be something to breakup the unkempt mess. While three of the areas will have a different color theme, they’ll be growing a lot of the same things.

This area will consist of:

• Red Amaranth (red garnet)- great grain crop that the birds will enjoy and I’ve never grown it before so I’m very excited
• Boston Marrow Squash- a unusual looking squash with a great color and should be a pretty addition to the red zone
• Red chard & lettuces- ideally these will be safely tucked in the shadow of thriving amaranth plants once things are established and will be a nice edition to any salads or sauces I might whip up. Unless Potato gets to them first which is probably more likely~
• Flower mix (calendulas, marigolds, etc)- aside from food crops, a varieties of flowers and herbs will also be mixed into each area to provide plenty of opportunities for cross pollination

Area 2: Orange

This grow area will be close to the same as the previous one but with some dwarf sunflowers in the mix.

This area will consist of:

• Orange Amaranth (golden giant)- another plant for birds and maybe some grains or greens will make it to our plates

• White/Yellow/Orange Chard (fordhook, bright yellow, oriole orange)- more addendums to our salads in the summer and dried in sauces in the winter

• Small Gourds & Butternut squash (small gourd mix, honeynut)- To compete with the marrow squashes across the path, these small gourds and butternuts will help suppress any weeds and reward us with tasty fall jewels

• Dwarf & Regular Sunflowers ( topolino (d), misc sunflower varities from previous years)- I’ve been imagining this end of the garden bed as an entrance to the side yard so I’m using tall sunflowers on either side of the path as an arch with dwarf sunflowers filling in the middle heights between the pumpkins and seed giants. I’m also excited to see what wildlife we’ll attract back here even with two nosy dogs out and about~
• Flower mix (orange poppies, Northeast wildflower mixes, misc varieties from previous years)- Wildflowers will be a filler plant for these areas, the more the better!

Area 3: Yellow

This area will also be broken up by area four and will include a mix of flowers, herbs, and green (purple) bush beans.

This area will consist of:

• Sunflowers (mix varieties of tall sunflowers) – a continuation of the large sunflowers to create a wall at the northside of the garden
• Flowers, Herbs & Tea Plants (lemon balm, dill, dandelion (pink variety), yarrow, chamomile, Northeast wildflower mix) – A collecting place for delicious herbs that I’ll use in cooking, tea and other apothecary creations~
• Borage (blue variety) – another flowering plant that will continue in area four, growing for bees and me in an alternating pattern with the bush beans
• Bush Beans (purple teepee) – just something I know will thrive in smallish spaces and a garden favorite, especially to Potato~

Area 4: Blue

2/3rds of this area will be a regen crop staple and wildflower metropolis, providing the back garden and probably any other garden I maintain this year with comfrey~

This area will consist of:

• Comfrey (official variety) – when getting into permaculture, this bad boy was mentioned every time the topic gravitated towards soil regeneration, compost, small-scale permaculture, etc. For good reason too as it can help gardeners make the most of a growing season and expedite the process of building great soil. It’s lovingly referred to as a Chop-and-Drop plant since a common way to use this plant is by chopping any and all plant matter (leaves, flowers, stems) and dropping them where they stood or where you’d like them. And just like that you have a zero waste and minimal effort fertilizer and weed suppressant if left on soil surface. With roots similar to that of dandelion, comfrey roots will help breakup packed soil and improve water and air movement for future roots. All that to say, the majority of this area will be comfrey and will be wildly used throughout the garden~
• Wildflower mix (Northeast mix, misc seeds from previous grows) – mostly a way to attract more pollinators and good bugs but also to get rid of old seed that’s taking up space. Even if the old seeds don’t germinate, I intend to make sure there is no bee left without pollen.

Area 5: Experimental

see above photo for reference, it’s a lil spot~

It doesn’t have the most affectionate name but it’s the result of a brainblast I had while putting this plan together. Last summer was a good crash course on what can grow in mostly gravel and what can’t. I’m 99% the two apple trees I planted our first spring have gone to the great nursery in the sky and I’ll probably move them this year but I’ll also blame that on the gravel. In my attempts to dig proper holes for those trees, I ran into at least 6in of gravel followed by compacted clay soil and rounded off by proper granite pebbles and aspiring boulders. It was not encouraging and I wondered if we’d have to build raised beds till we were blue in the face. Then the stork brought a tractor and the gravel seems much less daunting.

In an attempt to make the efforts of my science teachers all for not, I’m going to run a soil regen experiment. I never could get past calculus to get that earth science degree but I’ll be damned if I can’t do my own plant science in the back yard~

While the other grow areas will be getting the dead tree treatment as their starting point, this ~1/3 of a grow area won’t. It will be rid of gravel to the best of the tractors ability and my patience but won’t have the added help of a hugelkultur mound. While the other 2/3rds of the garden bed will be mounded up, I will do my best to isolate enough of an area to get a good enough result.

This area will consist of:

• Comfrey – as a result of how hugelkultur is done, plants are bound to travel so by default, the comfrey planted in area four will spill over into area 5. This can only help the experiment as the root system will have a much bigger task of penetrating the dense clay and I can observe it in action after this year.
• Pygmy Amaranth (pygmy torch) – acts similar to comfrey and dandelion in that it also helps bring nutrients to the top of the soil. Will also help attract birds and add some fauna guano to dat soil biome~
  
  

The remaining portion of this grow area will be an interesting mix of legumes, ryegrass, mushrooms and sawdust.

• Spring – when the gravel has been removed and it’s warm enough to dig, plant trees and spread seeds, I’ll start with a cover crop of red clover. In the full sun that fills the backyard, I imagine they’ll come up in no time, fixing the nitrogen as they go. By memorial day or so (or sooner, since weather patterns have been out of sorts as of late), this legumes can be chopped up and added to the soil they came from.
• Summer – another layer of the nutrient-dense lasagna we’re making will be a sawdust and mushroom spawn mix. After spending some times on Permies.com (a very dated-looking message board but a treasure trove of people running their own backyard experiments) a lot of recommendations for soil regen were mushrooms. Seems obvious in hindsight but I was hesitant to add yet another factor into my garden. But after some convincing and checking surrounding plant heights, I decided to give it a shot. It couldn’t possibly make the soil any worse~
• Fall – as things are starting to dry where they grow but before a frost is all but imminent, I’ll move to the end of season portion of my experiment. With how much comfrey I’d like to plant and how well I imagine it’ll do in a full sun area, this area will probably be a couple of layers of mushrooms, sawdust and plant matter. Once thoroughly mixed together I’ll cast a fall cover crop of ryegrass, tend it till frost and let it be buried in the snow for the rest of the year.

Actual Science Numbers

Aside from all that daunting planting and tilling and layering, I do want to take some hard data readings of the soil before this kicks off. Last summer I had taken soil readings from my future medicine and culinary gardens and it can only help to repeat the process out back. Aside from the rock-riddled clay “soil” that’s there now, I want to know more about the soil composition. Visually it looks ill as they’re hardly any insects in any given clump and if there are, they’re ants. There’s quite a few pine trees in the back so I imagine the soil is pretty acidic as it is in the side yard but also the birch saplings may be affecting soil health as well.

For this first year, I’ll focus on your traditional NPK nutrients (Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium), get a test kit and note the readings. I may be able to get a Spring and Fall reading for a short before and after but the following years should show some sort of difference.

After Planting

Once gravel has been cleared, trees laid in their new beds and crops planted, I hope our backyard will look and feel a bit more inviting. In between the grow areas, I’m hoping to plant a creeping thyme and coriscan mint in the paths to add a lovely combo of smells and greenery to the experience. Pavers of some sort will also be added before the creeping plants and I’m sure the many rocks we’ll find while digging will also have a place between grow and walking areas.

I’m so excited to watch how unassuming plants can transform unused and sad soil to abundant colorful life.