Our Woodchip Garden

05/09/2023

In gardens green and luscious fields afar,
Two lovelorn veggies grew beneath the sun.
Potatoes, plump and round, and peas a star,
Their flavors blend like summers just begun.

Beneath the soil, potatoes seek to find
A resting place beside the peas they know.
And in their beds, they dream of humankind
Who nurture and admire as they grow.

When plucked, they come together in a pot,
Their union bringing forth a melody.
A meal of peas and potatoes, piping hot,
A feast for all the senses, seen and heard and free.

So as you sit to dine with grace and care,
Remember English peas and potatoes pair.

05/04/2023

Pulling Yukon Gold potatoes out of the ground. This was the last of our potato plants. Even with good soil and the thick layer of wood chips these plants only produced about 3 to 4 potatoes each. They never did flower and they started to die back so we harvested all of them. 

I have a friend with a green thumb who lives up in Tennessee. He said I could still plant new potatoes down here in South Louisiana this late in the season. What do you think? 

05/03/2023

Raised bed garden using a cloth container. We decided to put this along a new fence on our property. The area gets a lot of sun in the morning and the midday, so it should be good for raising vegetables.

We are using a mixture of sphagnum peat moss, Black Cow manure, and perlite. All three were purchased from Home Depot today. 

We plan to put in some tomato plants, red beans, and Crowder peas. 

04/26/2023

April 26, 2023 update on Our Woodchip Garden
I spent several hours yesterday chipping more wood for use later this summer. The garden itself is growing fairly well. The potato plants are half harvested now. They produced four or five potatoes, each, which is OK, but not spectacular.

The Alaska early peas have done quite well, reaching heights of over 6 feet. We are getting plenty peas from them. The cauliflower and cabbages are both growing well for the first time ever. I attribute that to the wood chips.

Our tomato plants are going strong. We have four different kinds, a better boy, a beefsteak, a cherry, and a grape. 

The zucchini and squash plants are coming along nicely, but we have not had any large enough to eat yet. The pepper plants are doing well, with a red pepper making more and larger peppers then the green one.

Our eggplants are in two big buckets. We used the same soil that we had last year for them, when they grew large and produced abundantly. The only difference this year is that there are wood chips on top of the soil.

I will be out searching later today for some small okra plants, which you do not want to plant down here until late in April. They do not like the cold at all. 

All things considered, we are satisfied with the way this wood chip experiment is going. 

04/01/2023

This is what our garden looks like today, April 1, 2023.

03/03/2023

This is our Better Boy tomato plant. I just gave it a thorough watering and the excess water went down to the bottom of the container and dripped out onto the concrete. 

With the wood chips on top of the growing medium, this tomato plant will not need watering all that often. But since it is new, I wanted to give it a good start.

03/03/2023

Here is what our woodchip garden looks like on the afternoon of March 3, 2023. Everything is coming along kinda ok, but some plants look better than others!

03/03/2023

Here are some reasons why you should add used coffee grounds to your vegetable garden:

Used coffee grounds can be an excellent addition to any vegetable garden due to their rich nutrient content. Coffee grounds are an excellent source of nitrogen, which is an essential nutrient for plant growth. Nitrogen helps plants to produce chlorophyll, which they need to make food through photosynthesis.

Apart from nitrogen, coffee grounds are also a great source of other essential micronutrients such as phosphorus and potassium, which play a vital role in plant health. These nutrients, when added to the soil, help promote root growth, fruit development, and overall soil health.

Used coffee grounds also help to improve soil structure and drainage by adding organic matter to the soil. They can also attract earthworms, which are vital for creating healthy soil.

Overall, used coffee grounds are an excellent natural fertilizer that can benefit your vegetable garden in numerous ways. By incorporating them into the soil, you can enrich the soil, promote plant growth and increase yields.

03/02/2023

Planting Red Beans in what used to be a rose garden. We cleared out the rosebushes, and then put a mixture of sphagnum peat moss, cow manure, and perlite. 

Red beans are very easy to grow in south Louisiana. I just put them in the ground and barely cover them. Just make sure that they keep moist during the early growing season. They grow so easily down here that I have spilled some in the grass while planting them in my raised bed garden and they sprouted up right from the grass.

Red beans are very productive. Each bean will yield around 20 new beans at maturity. You will usually have four or five pods that contain around four or five beans in each one.  We got these from a bag that my wife purchased at the grocery store. 

This would be a great project to do with your family.

03/02/2023

Slugs have been eating the leaves of our cauliflower and cabbage plants. We spoke with a friend who suggested using small containers of beer to trap and kill the slugs. They are attracted to the yeast in the beer.

We set out three plastic containers of varying size. The results were equally good, with each container catching more than 10 slugs over a two-night period.

03/02/2023

Checking beneath the wood chips to see if they are helping the soil to retain moisture. It has not rained for eight or nine days and I just wanted to check, and the soil is quite moist still from the rains earlier this year. 

02/28/2023

https://youtu.be/6rPPUmStKQ4

Back to Eden Gardening Documentary Film - Learn how to grow a regenerative organic vegetable garden the best and easiest way! Grow fruits and veggies with le...