The Planting begins!

This afternoon, I transplanted 4 potato buds into the 2 containers that had so recently served as my composting bins. I chose the early maturing Kennewick variety for the containers, a harvest should be ready by late june if all goes well. The usage of double cropping will allow these containers to produce two potato harvests this year. Additional composting from now until the end of summer will be done entirely in the leaf composting area that was constructed last autumn. I re-grouped the leaf compost heaps into 2 larger heaps. One such heap will be used for the hot/active composting that the bins were used for.


In addition to the potatos, I set down 2 rows of turnip seeds on Garden beds 2 and 3. The turnip is a wonderful crop, every part of it is edible. When the turnip seeds were sown, I decided to go ahead and plant out some green onion seeds in garden bed 3. An organic garden survives due to it's diversity of life, and diversity also means a niche for the pests. No bio-intensive food producing system can avoid losing a share of it's produce to pest species. The point is to develop a miniature ecology in such a system that is resilient enough to keep the pests under control through predation and disease.

A truly resilient garden system thus resembles somewhat that of a rainforest. You have tall crops(tree canopy analog) to provide shade and the necessary support structure for a complex ecosystem. Then comes the medium height crops(bushes/shrubs analogy) to grow alongside the tall crops, usually these crops somehow support other crops through soil enrichment or pest control. Lastly you have the low-lying crops(grass/flower analogy) , these crops are grown around the "canopy/brush" and fills up the garden bed. A typical set up is the "Three Sisters" combination: Corn(Trees), Pole Beans(Bush), and Squash(grass). I plan to turn Garden bed 1 into a trial bed for the Three Sisters combination.

And speaking of miniature ecologies, it appears that a very simple one has evolved within my sapling "jungle" indoors. The cabbage saplings have been doing extremely well and now towersabove the onion chive saplings. Upon a routine examination of these plants, a minature world was discovered. Apparently, the cabbage saplings have been serving as a canopy of sorts. Scores of tiny flying herbivores were ascending out of the chives to feed upon the lettuce leaves. Perched upon one leaf of lettuce was a mature soldier bug. One could see the simple hardwired logic of the predator as it climbed endlessly around the lettuce plant eating one flying pest after another. This is almost as entertaining as one of those nature shows on the discovery channel!