Timothy Norton

Some chorizo is nice.

Cotija is divine.

Wrap it in flour or corn to make taco Wednesday a wonderful time!

April showers bring May Flowers!

I for one am happy for it to be a new month.

My grandfather, who lived in the village so he didn't have room for a garden, had a garden located on a family friends offgrid property. He would drive us down there when I was a tike (eight years old maybe?) and teach me what he knew about gardening.

At one point in his life, gardening and hunting were critical for feeding his family as they grew up. This time around, it was more for the pleasures that gardening brings.

One particular day, and he reminds me of the story, there was a rabbit in the garden and he encouraged me to chase it out! I ran after it right into a big hedge of sumac. One that particular day, I learned what poison sumac was and it was a uncomfortable recovery experience!

He would cut the families hair and put it out to deter deer, hang up pie plates and even make a scarecrow to try and protect his crops from wild nibblers.

I look back fondly at those memories and I get a feeling of pride when he stops by my gardens and wanders around. It makes me feel connected to the past and the present.

I was just reading an article by Huw Richards where his explanation of the difference between his usage of mulch and compost is that compost is used to feed the plants while mulch feeds the soil.

Thank you so much for the sunroots (and seeds)! They arrived in perfect condition and were promptly planted without issue.

I'm excited to see how they fare in my climate.

I find that active thermophilic compost piles create compost the fastest. Turning the compost pile frequently will ensure material contact, plentiful oxygen, and will encourage the breakdown process. I do not usually struggle with moisture in my piles but it is an important element to encourage composting.

Every once and a while, adding some fresh nitrogen when the core temperature drops can help keep everything cooking.

I like to break down my garden vision similar to how I do my worky job.

I have an overarching long term goal (My backyard Permie Garden) that I break down into a couple of long term objectives for me to continuously strive towards. I have a main focus towards soil improvement in my gardening spaces, stopping a large stretch of hillside erosion from continuing, and working on tree/shrub succession.

These three focuses then get broken down into short term actionable things that I can do each year. It might involve planting certain plants, dedicating certain composts to a certain area, or just researching a topic so I can put ideas into action.

I'm not holding myself to a rigid structure because things change, but I have a general overarching idea of what I want to do to see future change.

It reminds me of Queen Anne's Lace but there are so many look-alikes, I don't have the knowledge to tell them all apart.

Really pretty leaves

With the accomplishment of cleaning out the chicken coop, the next stage is tackling the run.

I have been adding organic material throughout the year over several years. Wood chips, sawdust, wood shavings, twigs and much more have been added to help mitigate issues with spilt feed and manure. It is now to the point that there is a visible hump in the middle of the run that lowers as it gets towards the sides of the run. You cannot see the bottom supports of the run that were installed horizontally across the native soil as there is an overflow of material on top of them. The smallest of the material actually is spilling out from the hardware cloth walls!

The game plan is to shovel out the run, scrape it down to the original soil, and restart laying new carbon rich materials to build up over time. I've started the other day, removing about a quarter of the run, and have a large pile of beautiful material forming. There are still bits of straw and woodchip here and there but I don't mind it much. It will break down over time.

The plan, at the moment, is to use this compost-like materials to prep some new garden beds for next year. I figure letting it sit for a year will have it pretty well mellowed out for the next gardening season. I'll amend it with soil but this material looks really promising.

I created a bunch of wood sided raised beds for my garden and I'm on around year four or five with them. I utilized 2x12 rough cut pine where I affixed the screws through the boards similar to your option A.

I have just started to see some breakdown of the connections (Wood wearing where the screws are holding) but the beds are still holding together. I use mulch in the pathways between the beds and found that the mulch itself has helped keep the boards anchored in place.