After I last posted about my double digging being done, I went out to the hardware store and bought some 2x6s and built a little frame around the garden. I figured having a real border would help me know where (and where not) to weed and would keep me from straying into the wheat with the lawn mower. They went in without major issue, although my border lines were not very straight and needed to be trimmed up a bit.
My next free day, Saturday the 27th of March, I got ready for planting. My Hard Red Spring Wheat had arrived from Howe Seeds and I was ready. I started off by leveling the plot a bit. In my double digging there were sections that were higher and lower than others. I’m not sure what caused it exactly, but I used my birthday hoe (thanks Layla!) and got it fairly level. There were quite a few weeds too, but they were easy to pull up with the use of the hoe.
That also loosened up the top layer of the soil and made it easy to make little furrows. I wasn’t sure exactly how to make them, and wound up just using an old piece of scrap 1x4 fencing and dragging it along the soil. I tried to space them about 3-4” apart, but it was pretty hard to control the board. I also marked out for myself where the walkways through the plot would be, so that I could reach everywhere with the hoe at least, while still using as much of the area as possible.
Then I distributed the seed. I really had no idea how heavy to lay it on, so I just did it until it looked good. I tried to get most of the seed in the furrows, but especially where they had strayed apart from each other, I threw the seeds down where ever. I did it by hand, just taking large pinches of the grain and throwing them where I wanted them to go, often parallel with the furrows. By the time I had spread 5 cups, I still had a bit that I hadn’t covered yet, so in the end I used about 6 cups (which worked out to about 3.5 lbs.).
The last step was to rake. I pulled dirt into the furrows and generally spread things out. A lot of the seeds ended up on the surface, which disappointed me. I finished it off with a spray from the hose and called it a day.
I'll post pictures in a few days . . .
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Realizations from the reading
So I’ve been reading the two books I mentioned last time. Grow Your Own Grains is not much of a book, it’s a self-described white paper. But it has some very useful information, especially the large table in the back that lists the properties of some 20 or so different grains, including planting times, growing times, how much to plant, yields, and that sort of thing.
One of the interesting things I got out of that was that it suggested planting 6 1/3 Tablespoons of wheat per 100 square feet of garden space. At first consideration, that didn’t seem too bad. Tablespoons are pretty small, right?
Small Scale Grain Raising is a pretty neat book too, although it’s a bit . . . larger scale than I thought it would be. It’s written by a farmer with a great deal of experience doing commercial farming. It gives good advice, but to find it you have to read around all of the instructions about how to use tractors, combines, seed drills and the like. The book is written very casually and has a very unintimidating style (except when talking about big machines). It’s full of anecdotes and asides, as well as recipes for the produce of the various crops.
It too, makes recommendations for broadcasting wheat seeds -- 1-2 bushels per acre. That requires a little math.
Well, that’s in the same neighborhood, 5.5 T to 11 T. But I started thinking: Especially if I err on the high side and plant 11 T per 100 sq. ft, I’m going to plant 750 sq. feet, which would be 82.5 T . . . which is . . . just over 5 cups. (Who would have thought there was this much math in agriculture?)
Hmm. My harvest from last year was only 5.5 oz. Did I even have 5 cups? So I went and measured -- it was only 7 Tablespoons.
This was a huge surprise. So I had planted 115 sq. feet and only gotten 7 T? But, I knew I had harvested much more than I had planted. But I had only harvested as much as I should have planted. That meant that I didn’t plant nearly enough last spring.
As you can read here, I planted 2 little envelopes of spring wheat in 2009. The package said that it was more than enough for that amount of space . . . if you started them inside and transplanted them when they were 5” tall. Oh. At the time I hadn’t thought it would really matter, but obviously it does.
So I didn’t have enough seed. I needed more and I wanted it fast, because I was nearly done with my stupid, @#$% double digging. After trying and failing at two local coops, I found Howe Seeds online and ordered 6 lbs. of Spring Wheat. I paid by Paypal and they shipped within 12 hours.
One of the interesting things I got out of that was that it suggested planting 6 1/3 Tablespoons of wheat per 100 square feet of garden space. At first consideration, that didn’t seem too bad. Tablespoons are pretty small, right?
Small Scale Grain Raising is a pretty neat book too, although it’s a bit . . . larger scale than I thought it would be. It’s written by a farmer with a great deal of experience doing commercial farming. It gives good advice, but to find it you have to read around all of the instructions about how to use tractors, combines, seed drills and the like. The book is written very casually and has a very unintimidating style (except when talking about big machines). It’s full of anecdotes and asides, as well as recipes for the produce of the various crops.
It too, makes recommendations for broadcasting wheat seeds -- 1-2 bushels per acre. That requires a little math.
- There are 43,560 square feet in an acre
- There are 2,383 tablespoons in a bushel (isn’t the internet wonderful?)
- So, 2 bushels is 4766 T over 43,560 sq. ft is 10.95 T per 100 square feet.
Well, that’s in the same neighborhood, 5.5 T to 11 T. But I started thinking: Especially if I err on the high side and plant 11 T per 100 sq. ft, I’m going to plant 750 sq. feet, which would be 82.5 T . . . which is . . . just over 5 cups. (Who would have thought there was this much math in agriculture?)
Hmm. My harvest from last year was only 5.5 oz. Did I even have 5 cups? So I went and measured -- it was only 7 Tablespoons.
This was a huge surprise. So I had planted 115 sq. feet and only gotten 7 T? But, I knew I had harvested much more than I had planted. But I had only harvested as much as I should have planted. That meant that I didn’t plant nearly enough last spring.
As you can read here, I planted 2 little envelopes of spring wheat in 2009. The package said that it was more than enough for that amount of space . . . if you started them inside and transplanted them when they were 5” tall. Oh. At the time I hadn’t thought it would really matter, but obviously it does.
So I didn’t have enough seed. I needed more and I wanted it fast, because I was nearly done with my stupid, @#$% double digging. After trying and failing at two local coops, I found Howe Seeds online and ordered 6 lbs. of Spring Wheat. I paid by Paypal and they shipped within 12 hours.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Seeds!
I ordered the seeds that I plan to plant this spring. I got them from Bountiful Gardens again and they are:
Scarlet Emperor Bean, Runner
They didn’t list any heirloom varieties of beans, so I just had to pick one. This one sounded tasty.
Laxton’s Progress #9 Bush Pea, Shelling
Although they don’t call it an heirloom variety, the description calls it a “standard old variety” which sounded good.
Dwarf Grey Sugar Pea
This one is an heirloom, dating back to 1773.
Belgian White Carrot
Another heirloom variety, this one dating to 1885.
Carrot Mix
These are modern orange carrots, that I decided to get to please my daughter. I’m sure she won’t want to come anywhere close to a ‘mutant’ white carrot, so these are going in the garden for her.
EA Special Strain Celery
We use a lot of celery in our cooking (I absolutely love celery) and this one is here more for our table than for anything period.
Green French Lentil
Roman authors call them “poor man’s meat” and while I was never fed them while growing up, I have come to like them very much. And they are very period.
Cereal Rye
They sell this seed mainly as a cover crop, to help fight back erosion during the winter and then be plowed under in the spring. I’ve been intimidated for most of my life by dark rye breads, but have recently found some good recipes that I really like (I really need to post some here!).
Rye is not the highest yielding of the grains, but it will grow well on poor soil and is tolerant of cold conditions that wheat and other grains cannot stand.
Kamut Wheat, Ancient
A spring-planted wheat with a very old heritage. It is high in protein and has large grains of silvery-blue color.
Early Stone Age Wheat, Ancient
This heirloom variety of wheat is perhaps 12,000 years old. It is spring planted, hard to thresh and very high in protein and other vitamins.
I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with these last two. I may plant a little and see what happens, or I may hold off another year.
I also bought two books:
Booklet 33: Grow Your Own Grains
Small Scale Grain Raising
I’ll post book reviews shortly.
Scarlet Emperor Bean, Runner
They didn’t list any heirloom varieties of beans, so I just had to pick one. This one sounded tasty.
Laxton’s Progress #9 Bush Pea, Shelling
Although they don’t call it an heirloom variety, the description calls it a “standard old variety” which sounded good.
Dwarf Grey Sugar Pea
This one is an heirloom, dating back to 1773.
Belgian White Carrot
Another heirloom variety, this one dating to 1885.
Carrot Mix
These are modern orange carrots, that I decided to get to please my daughter. I’m sure she won’t want to come anywhere close to a ‘mutant’ white carrot, so these are going in the garden for her.
EA Special Strain Celery
We use a lot of celery in our cooking (I absolutely love celery) and this one is here more for our table than for anything period.
Green French Lentil
Roman authors call them “poor man’s meat” and while I was never fed them while growing up, I have come to like them very much. And they are very period.
Cereal Rye
They sell this seed mainly as a cover crop, to help fight back erosion during the winter and then be plowed under in the spring. I’ve been intimidated for most of my life by dark rye breads, but have recently found some good recipes that I really like (I really need to post some here!).
Rye is not the highest yielding of the grains, but it will grow well on poor soil and is tolerant of cold conditions that wheat and other grains cannot stand.
Kamut Wheat, Ancient
A spring-planted wheat with a very old heritage. It is high in protein and has large grains of silvery-blue color.
Early Stone Age Wheat, Ancient
This heirloom variety of wheat is perhaps 12,000 years old. It is spring planted, hard to thresh and very high in protein and other vitamins.
I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with these last two. I may plant a little and see what happens, or I may hold off another year.
I also bought two books:
Booklet 33: Grow Your Own Grains
Small Scale Grain Raising
I’ll post book reviews shortly.
Monday, March 22, 2010
I did it!
It took way too long and was a ton of work, but I finally did it.
I overdid it trying to finish up last night. My arms and back ache, but in a good way.
The new garden plot has been entirely double dug. 25 feet by 30 feet. 750 square feet.
Here are a few pictures. The dark patch in the upper right was the part that I actually worked on today. The patch of white near the bottom right is where I had a tarp laid out with the dirt of the first trench, so the grass that was under it has been dying.
I think tomorrow I’ll hit the hardware store and buy some 2x6 boards and put a border around it, to make it easier to mow around if nothing else. Then I need to actually decide what to plant!
It was a good experience that I will never forget, but a rototiller is looking awfully good right now.
I overdid it trying to finish up last night. My arms and back ache, but in a good way.
The new garden plot has been entirely double dug. 25 feet by 30 feet. 750 square feet.
Here are a few pictures. The dark patch in the upper right was the part that I actually worked on today. The patch of white near the bottom right is where I had a tarp laid out with the dirt of the first trench, so the grass that was under it has been dying.
I think tomorrow I’ll hit the hardware store and buy some 2x6 boards and put a border around it, to make it easier to mow around if nothing else. Then I need to actually decide what to plant!
It was a good experience that I will never forget, but a rototiller is looking awfully good right now.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
A Long Answer to a Simple Question
A friend of a friend, Wade, who responded to my last posting in my personal blog rather than here said: “In regards to your wheat post, you had a comment about wooden tools and double digging. Bear in mind that breaking through sod like you're doing was probably fairly uncommon. They were probably working fields that had been worked for generations. Even if they were kept fallow for one year, that's not going to produce the sort of root system that your lawn has. This is my opinion, no basis in historical fact. :)”
Wade is probably right here, depending on which part of the Middle Ages we’re talking about. My recent interests have really shifted away from the High MA to the early, Dark Ages period. Late Antiquity really. 500-900 AD. This is the period where Germanic, Celtic and Roman practices of settlement and cultivation are co-existing and mingling, and with the decline of the Roman administration, these methods are free to adapt to local conditions, rather than be dictated by Roman fiat. It is a time where people are thinking smaller -- no longer are there massive legions to feed or Imperial cities to maintain; smaller regions are figuring out what resources and manufactured goods they need, who will provide them and how they will be transported.
This period lays the foundation for all that comes after. Here, complex systems are created that have to answer these simple questions:
So, with that in mind, there are a few things to consider. First off, many early communities throughout Northern Europe (in Denmark, Germany and the Low Countries) continued a millennia-old way of life based on mobile settlements, which either packed up and moved along every generation or two, or that gradually shifted their boundaries, and moved, amoeba-like, around their territory. This had been common from the Bronze Age through the Roman Age and, although it was going out of style and the movements decreased in frequency, it continued even into Late Antiquity. The point being, that these people would be breaking new ground.
Secondly, even later in the medieval period, as populations increased, many villages expanded, either by adding new fields to their properties, or by creating dependant communities nearby. Often this new arable land was made from land thought inferior and not worth the trouble only a generation or two before. While these people are more likely to have access to plows and iron tools, it is worth keeping in mind.
Also, my experience is probably special, in that my backyard is completely free from tree roots or any thick vegetation. I can only assume that was was removed a century ago as the neighborhood was forming on the, then, outskirts of the city of Everett. I have noticed a thin layer of charcoal just above a layer of clay about a foot under the current level of the soil. There have also been small pieces of charred wood down there. A forested area would certainly require a mattock or axe to deal with roots.
So, yes. While the Medieval farmer might not have needed to hack into virgin soil very often, when he did he would need (or be greatly aided by) metal tools.
Wade is probably right here, depending on which part of the Middle Ages we’re talking about. My recent interests have really shifted away from the High MA to the early, Dark Ages period. Late Antiquity really. 500-900 AD. This is the period where Germanic, Celtic and Roman practices of settlement and cultivation are co-existing and mingling, and with the decline of the Roman administration, these methods are free to adapt to local conditions, rather than be dictated by Roman fiat. It is a time where people are thinking smaller -- no longer are there massive legions to feed or Imperial cities to maintain; smaller regions are figuring out what resources and manufactured goods they need, who will provide them and how they will be transported.
This period lays the foundation for all that comes after. Here, complex systems are created that have to answer these simple questions:
- Who are we?
- What do we need to survive?
- How do we make what we need? If we can’t make it, how do we get it?
- What do we want in addition to what we need (and how do we make/get it)?
- How do we all work together to make that happen?
So, with that in mind, there are a few things to consider. First off, many early communities throughout Northern Europe (in Denmark, Germany and the Low Countries) continued a millennia-old way of life based on mobile settlements, which either packed up and moved along every generation or two, or that gradually shifted their boundaries, and moved, amoeba-like, around their territory. This had been common from the Bronze Age through the Roman Age and, although it was going out of style and the movements decreased in frequency, it continued even into Late Antiquity. The point being, that these people would be breaking new ground.
Secondly, even later in the medieval period, as populations increased, many villages expanded, either by adding new fields to their properties, or by creating dependant communities nearby. Often this new arable land was made from land thought inferior and not worth the trouble only a generation or two before. While these people are more likely to have access to plows and iron tools, it is worth keeping in mind.
Also, my experience is probably special, in that my backyard is completely free from tree roots or any thick vegetation. I can only assume that was was removed a century ago as the neighborhood was forming on the, then, outskirts of the city of Everett. I have noticed a thin layer of charcoal just above a layer of clay about a foot under the current level of the soil. There have also been small pieces of charred wood down there. A forested area would certainly require a mattock or axe to deal with roots.
So, yes. While the Medieval farmer might not have needed to hack into virgin soil very often, when he did he would need (or be greatly aided by) metal tools.
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