Least Favorite Tool: the !@#$% tiller

The rented BCS 722 Harvester

So the curse of the blog has struck again! Last Friday, as I prepared for a busy weekend of preparing the raised beds for spring/summer plantings (they have to be tilled before the soil dries brick-hard) the tiller broke down again. This time is wasn't the motor, but the bearings of the fly wheel which engages the tines. C & L Saws was closed most of the weekend, and I'm still not sure if the parts are replaceable on such a cheap machine. The same day, I also noticed potentially terminal cracking around the hitch on my rusted 30 year-old trailer. Hauling manure and mixing it into the soil was looking like a nearly impossible proposition. My checkbook came to the rescue. Saturday morning I went down to Big Mike's and made arrangement to rent their BCS tiller for the weekend ($106 to rent; $3000+ to buy). Picking it up by 1 p.m., I had that awesome machine all weekend!

5 yards of fluffy horse manure

That just left the problem of manure. I'd exhausted my collection of previously collected and home-grown manure and needed quite a bit to blend into the largely un-amended native soil of my large backyard gardens. Checkbook again to the rescue. Holiday Nursery has a nice stockpile of well composted (with some green nuggets) horse manure for $20/cubic yard. I bought 5 yards worth (a dump truck holds 7 yards), and the guys at the nursery promptly delivered it to the driveway. With the standard in-town delivery fee of $30 and tax, I paid $140 for a healthy load of crap.

The tilled field before shaping into raised beds

The counter-spinning rear tine tiller was amazingly efficient, working in about a 1/6 of the time of my regular rototiller, I was able to save most of my energy for the task of hauling 48 full wheelbarrow loads of manure to various parts of the garden. Even with my best upper-body fitness of year from dozens of miles of cross-country skiing this winter, I was exhausted and in bed shortly after dark on both days. In the end, I had prepared the soil for 9, 25'x4' raised beds and felt the substantial hit to the checkbook was well worth it.

'Wild' (last years) green shallots saved from the tillers path

Transplanting Rhubarb

Blanched leaves eager for spring, sun, and some leg room

I'm not the biggest fan of sweet pies like rhubarb, but 2 years ago I couldn't help but pick up several packages of dormant (dry looking) rhubarb root-stock at the nursery. I had just finished re-reading a book about turn-of-the-century life in the mining camps above Telluride, CO (elev. 10,000+), Tomboy Bride by Harriet Fish Backus, and was intrigued that this leafy perennial (the leaves are poisonous!) was winter-hardy even in that extreme environment. Gallup's cold winters and spring nights should be no match for this tart vegetable! My mistake was trying to make these perennials portable. Contemplating a possible move in the future, I planted the roots in several large pots. They came vigorously to life that spring, but have always produced abundant but very skinny shoots and leaves. So, after two seasons of confinement, I decided this was the season to give them a permanent place in the garden. The small waffle garden in the backyard is where I've decided to plant most of my perennial herbs and vegetables, a perfect home for the rhubarb. The transplant went well with seemingly little damage to the burly roots, and the emerging leaves (blanched yellow from lack of light while the pots were stacked over the winter) are unfurling more each day.

The transplant stage is set

Favorite Garden Tools

My 3 favorite tools at work

As the number and size of my garden beds expand, and the labor pool--me and two dogs-- remains the same, I've really come to appreciate several of my trusty garden tools. All acquired locally, I don't think I could do without my wheelbarrow, pitchfork, and rototiller. The wheelbarrow has self-explanatory utility, a common 6 cubic-foot Tru-temper, was bought from Holiday Nursery at 1214 E. Aztec Ave. Spending a couple extra bucks to buy from a local dealer paid dividends when they gave me the contractor tip of installing a thick sheet of plywood below the pan to give it extra strength and longevity when hauling rocks. Keep in mind you'll have to buy 4 longer bolts to reach through the 3/4" plywood.

Partly composted leaf mold and straw

The pitchfork is the newest addition to my stable of hand-tools. It's turned out to be indispensable for handling compost and manures in the clumpy stages before in decomposes into soil-like particles best handled with a shovel. I picked mine up last fall at Big Mike's Sales, Rentals, and Service at 606 E. Hwy 66 in Gallup. It was made in-house out of square angle iron and has 3 tempered tines. You have to add your own handle padding, but the best part is it only cost $8!!!

The tiller without the removable wheels

I have a love/hate relationship with the rototiller. It's invaluable when breaking up clumps of soil and mixing in soil amendments, or chopping up compost and manure. However, the noisy, polluting, and temperamental 5 horsepower engine has had me pulling my hair out on more than one morning. Luckily, Gallup has a great small engine repair place, C & L Saws at the corner of Maloney and 2nd street. A basic tune-up runs $30 and an overhaul $110. Unfortunately, the cheap Briggs and Straton motor on my machine needs the latter just about every year. If you don't own one, you can save yourself the headaches and just rent a great self-propelled 8.5 HP rear-tine BCS tiller from Big Mikes for $107/day. Pick it up late on a Saturday and you can keep it until Monday morning for a single days rental fee.

Lettuce Cold-frame Update

Fr. to Bck: Mesculun mix, Black-seeded Simpson, and Green Onions

I just ate my first harvest of baby lettuce and green onions of the season. The cold-frame has worked well at keeping the freezing night-time lows (as low as 9 degrees) away from the plants. On nights below 20, I throw a fleece blanket over the box and turn on the light, on warmer nights, closing the lid suffices. Though, as the sun has crept further north in the sky each day, the abundant side windows of the frame, have turned the cold-frame into a hot-box some afternoons. Fearing bitter lettuce, I've added a shade-screen made from fine window mesh of another old screen door to the front. Reaching 4 feet tall, this screen mutes the sun just enough from 12-4 each afternoon, and keeps the soil surface temperature in a more temperate range. When the sun exposure makes the location of the cold-frame too warm for lettuce, I'll use the box for growing out seeds started in 6-packs for transplanting. I've also just seeded a large conventional bed of lettuce and spinach under the mid-day shade of a large elm tree.

Baby greens make any sandwich greener; condiments from the co-op

Home-grown farmer's brunch of eggs, onion, garlic and mushrooms with a salad on the side

Soil Fertility

Thankfully Rio chose to rest in the leaf mold mound, rather than the chicken poop in the foreground of the 6'x25' compost mixing bed

My biggest challenge in the ever expanding garden is building/encouraging healthy and productive soils. The native soils of Black Diamond Canyon and most of Gallup are heavy clay that's prone to compaction when watered and difficult to work (brick-like) when they dry out. Consequently, I'm constantly adding organic matter, sand, and gypsum for balance. The latter in an attempt to reduce the 'stickiness' of the inevitably high percentage of clay that will always remain in my garden beds. Anyway, the main thing is the organic matter, partly for the nutrients, but mostly for the structure and resilience it adds to the soil. Over the past several years I've added straw (too slow to break down/nutrient poor), sphagnum moss (too expensive at $13/bale), and trailer-loads of brown leaves hard to find/collect-- my favorite leaf producing trees and leaf catching fences in and around Gallup are a closely held secret). I've also added endless bags of $2 mushroom compost from Home De*, organic steer manure from the Holiday Nursery ($4), and chicken manure/kitchen compost from my own coop. And yet, my soil still leaves my wanting.

Dusty but rewarding crap

Luckily, I recently got some advice from Tom and Ella of Connections/CSA. They use manure (horse/cow/anything) gathered from local corrals to improve their soils. The decomposing hay and manure adds desperately needed porosity to the soil, and while the nutrient content may vary with different degrees of freshness/decomposition the slight potential to over or under-feed your plants is more than off-set by the long-term soil structure benefits of tilling manure into your soils.And so, after cleaning out my coop this spring and collecting leaves last fall, I'm on the hunt for sources of manure. Cow Town and M&R Trading Post on 491 have great corrals to empty. The 2 vets in town have corrals, but I avoid them fearing medications in the poop, and then there are an endless list of coworkers with livestock eager for a free barn-hand. There's plenty of manure in and around this town!

The pint-sized powerhead 550

Until I've developed the soils of my dreams, I've used compost tea to deliver nutrients/fertility to my undernourished and compacting soils. Compost tea is made by soaking compost or good soils in aerated water in order to encourage the beneficial bacteria, micro-organisms, fungi, etc (everything good in soil grows better with water and air) to multiply. The compost goes into a pillow case (loose compost will clog any pump/airstone) and the air is usually supplied by an aquarium pump supplying an air stone that diffuses the air into fine bubbles. The problem with that type of air pump is you have to get a pretty big one (expensive to buy and operate) to push any worthwhile amount of bubbles deep into a bucket or barrel, and then the airstones constantly get plugged. I've found a better solution is to use another aquarium tool: the power head. Powerheads are basically a submersible pump that uses the venturi effect to suck air into the out flowing water-stream. I've found they're much more efficient at delivering lots of oxygen to the water and rarely get clogged.

35 gallons of 'bubbly,' on the right.

Native Seeds SEARCH order

Navajo's believe that spring begins when the first thunder is heard on one of the four sacred mountains, and today, a day before the equinox, a loud storm swept through Gallup. Spring is definitely here. In tune with the season, my seed order from Native Seeds SEARCH also arrived today! NSS is a non-profit organization in Tucson that is dedicated to collecting and preserving indigenous varieties of crops, native to the Americas. I've ordered from them before, and been a member since 2007, and while slightly expensive, the results have never been disappointing. This year I ordered 3 varieties of winter squash (Navajo Hubbard, Navajo Grey Hubbard, Penasco Cheese) and a variety of popcorn called Navajo Copper. Most of these varieties were collected on the Navajo Nation (the Hubbards originally came from the 1901 Navajo Nation Fair in Shiprock) and have been grown-out and preserved by NSS. The NSS website/catalog describes the background and location of each seed variety sold, enabling gardeners to chose varieties that best suit the diverse growing conditions of their corner of the Southwest. In the past I've mostly stuck to Hopi and Navajo varieties, but have also had really good luck with blue corn and squash from other NM locales like Velarde and Penasco. NSS limits purchases to 3 packets of each variety, and provides free seeds to Native Americans.

Shitake Mushrooms Deep Freeze

Logs #20 and #28; white stuff is mushroom spawn

One of the biggest challenges with raising shiitake mushrooms from oak logs in the southwest is maintaining the high humidity of the midwest or Japan, where the cultivation technique is common. The internal moisture levels should be kept above 35%, but lacking a wood-moisture meter I follow the advice of trying to keeps cracks on the end of the logs at less than a 1/16" wide. In the spring, summer, and fall this means monthly soakings (for a day or two) in rainwater, but in the winter it's much easier; just bury the 40" logs in the deepest snow bank and forget about them until spring arrives.

What happened to the snow pack?

Eventually, I'll build a small mushroom shed to provide high humidity and protection from the drying winds and sun, without all of the physical effort and planning my current process requires. Remember, if your planning on starting your own mushrooms in oak logs, winter is the only time to harvest the logs and 'plant' the spawn in them. However, unlike established logs that can be kept beneath a cold blanket of snow, newly planted logs need to be kept warm and moist while the initial spawn-run occurs (about 6 months long).

Planting onions and snow peas

Planted sets before smoothing over the soil

Last week I planted 300+ mixed onion sets and a package of snow peas during a lull in the El Nino storm-track (since returned). The soil along a rock wall with good southern sun exposure had warmed to around 48 degrees, and I couldn't wait any longer to get the first (non-cold frame or garlic) crops in the ground. I may be gambling with the inevitable spring cold-snap still to come, but I plan to harvest all the onions as young scallions, and plant onions to grow-out to full size in a different bed (with more summer sun exposure) later in the spring, so these were spaced only a couple inches apart.

Snow pea 'seeds'

The snow peas are my first attempt at this cool-season legume, and a package of organic seeds from H.D. (Both the local nursery and ACE hardware were sold out of snow peas; evidently I'm not the only one in Gallup who knows of the frost-hardiness of this rare vegetable suited to Gallup's frigid spring nights) planted a 20' row. When they sprout I'll build the necessary trellis structure. Last year around April and May, as I waited patiently to get all my summer crops in the ground, I was more than a little jealous at the numerous reports of abundant snow pea harvests from around town.

Rio contemplates a life with snow peas

Winter Lettuce Cold-frame

2 week old sprouts reaching for NM sky

Nothing beats the crisp crunch of salad greens to balance out all the preserved meat and dried carbohydrates of a local winter diet-- actually, nothing really beats a salad at any time of the year. But back to late winter. Unfortunately, the co-op's greens aren't always that crunchy (please become a member and buy more frequently!) and the organic boxes of salad at the big stores aren't cheap in several respects. Either way, this time of year I can't get enough fresh leafy greens in my body and I find a convenient way is to grow your own.

The warming mass of the rock wall and neighbors garage

So in that theme, I recently remodeled my window-topped cold frame boxes of the past several years into a single, taller cold frame, the general dimensions of a storm-door. To be 'green,' and conserve some cash, I built the frame (the older ones had both broken their windows- at my errant hand.) with 100% recycled materials I had on hand (the screws were new, but recycled from a previous projects budget: the wood came from mom's old fence, the windows and glass panes I seem to collect cheaply without purpose, the storm door came off my house, and soil with my hens compost finished off the materials list. The storm door has clear windows on all but the western 20% of the lid, a large glass window fills the eastern end, and two slim windows fill the front, southern-exposed side of the box. The box, with diligent daily opening and nightly covering with fleece when below 20, keeps the soil temperature around 62 degrees, compared to diurnal fluctuations of between 42-52 for similar unprotected soil.

62 degree warm Romaine roots and sprouts

I planted various varieties of lettuce on Valentines day, including Bibb, Romaine, Black-seeded Simpson, and the ubiquitous Mesculun mix- colorful when young, and. . . exotic, almost scary when it bolts! First raking a rough micro-furrow pattern with a tined rake, I broadcast the seed, and smoothed over the low furrows with my palm. Within a week, the seeds nearest the 40 watt light were sprouting, and all the rest within the next week; the warmth really helps. I also planted 100 onion sets to harvest as scallions for salads and soups along the back wall, painted white for higher reflectance and an attempt to lower daytime temperatures. The latter triggering the bitter onset to the lettuce's bolt. By the time I post this, the tallest green onions are 5".

2010 Eggs

The lighter colored egg is a minute old

This week, my flock of five 2-3 year old hens came out of their winter egg-laying hiatus, and filled the first egg carton of the season. They stopped laying eggs around November, and I decided that unlike last year, I wouldn't light their coop with a compact florescent to stimulate laying through the winter. It works well, but I felt that these older birds certainly seemed to need to take a break. Though I'll admit, before they started laying, and wondering if they ever would again, I had started to eye the canning recipes for old hens. Old, tough birds being the perfect poultry to withstand the cooking rigors of the canning process (1.5 hrs. at 240), without just turning to mush. But, for now, with regular daily eggs, they've secured their keep in the garden for at least another few months.

Cows in Black Diamond Canyon

Cow Town, USA?

It's not the first time that cattle have wandered down from the hills north of town into my neighborhood along Wilson Ave, yet it was still a surprise to see them and the dog catcher at the end of the road last week. After 30 minutes or so to gather their posse, the animal control guys, ranchers, a couple cops herded a dozen or so cows back up to N. Country Club road and north along the mesa to the GAMERCO land with the grazing lease. I first saw the urban cows a couple years ago when I came home one summer evening to find them in my backyard (without planted gardens that year) munching on 4-wing saltbush and ripening wolfberry. Just as I began to shoo away the herd, the clearly winded dog catcher jogged around an adjoining building and as he continued to herd the cows up the steep slope, seemed to hesitate and struggle with whether or not to ask the question, if these were my cows. He did. And I replied that I only wished so. I felt proud just to be asked the question!

But, the full story is I have a history with the dog catcher. The same guy, who lives just a block down Wilson, had visited the year before, with his full rig and a coworker, to inform me that my front-yard free ranging flock of 9 hens, 5 guinea foul, and a turkey violated Gallup's rules that limit pets to, "three cats and three dogs." He gave me 2 weeks to slaughter or get rid of them, which I did with most of the hens, but I kept the guineas and the turkey till later that fall and never saw the guy again. I also kept them out of the front yard, and have never raised those tough, incredibly loud little African birds again. That turkey, a huge tom, was stolen Christmas eve later that year, the night before it was to be served. Not the most successful start to raising poultry, but I've kept at it. A little more successfully than that first year. More on that later.

Leeks, at long last

With an extended break between snow storms, the disappearing snow cover has allowed the bright days to warm the soil and reveal the last vegetable to harvest from under the deepest snowbanks in my garden; the little leeks.

I kept these transplanted leeks in the ground from spring through winter with the hopes that they would fatten through the late fall, and perhaps grow-out to full size early this spring. They've shown the incredible 'anti-freeze' properties of all alum (onion) family members, but I was still surprised at how healthy these plants did in their lightly mulched beds. However, as the soil warms and plans for this season's garden start to come together, it became clear that all but a few of the leeks (the lucky ones are interspersed with my perennial bed of young chard) are in beds I have different plans for this year and need to be harvested soon. They'll be a wonderful fresh vegetable addition to a number of early spring dishes/stews and yet I'm also excited to see how the few remaining leeks grow-out through this spring, and just maybe grow to a respectable size.