Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Absentee Gardener Plot Startup



I've been gone from the garden. But nature never sleeps, so here are some things I do to make use of the continuous activity that happens while I'm running around. They involve preparing plots in a pretty throw-together manner:

Collecting dead plant material from everywhere. This is nothing new to my blog, but if you're gonna be around subdivisions, watch out for biomass that people are throwing away. This makes you a gatherer on the go, it only takes 2 minutes to toss those into the trunk. I mean logs and leaves.

Arranging or dumping these strategically. You want to create situations where decomposition and explosions of fecundity are likely to occur with minimal intervention. I arrange the logs (they are palm logs so they are really stringy inside) into triangles and squares and dump leaves inside, tell them to throw all compost there. Our chickens will mix them about.

Throwing seeds, transplanting, then growing some babies in pots. While preparing these mini-plots, you want to get small ones going. I get some herbs that are growing already, and recently got some legumes in. Ocassionally I throw some of the composting leaves in, to get the microparties started.

In the next coming days I will get some in. Really, instead of just giving up and saying, "sorry garden", about 5 minutes a day prepares me for a day or two of solid fun.

1 comment:

Diego said...

This is great. I've started a personal neighborhood project putting up a little garden in an unused area near one my community's parking lot. Glad to come across your blog, and thanks for leaving a comment on mine.