Garden! or Dog For Sale

Well, that lasted a long time... Let me start at the beginning. This weekend I planted a garden. I was playing around on SproutRobot, realized once again that we have a ridiculously long planting season in this part of California, and decided to go for it and see what I could learn. 

SproutRobot is a handy site that lets you plug in your zip code for information on what, when, and how to plant vegetables.

The partially composted stuff-n-fluff that our dog had scattered around the yard seemed to make a good base/weed deterrent in the part of the garden that was not yet lasagna-ed. I picked up two 2 cu. ft bags of organic garden soil from the hardware store (for about $6.50 a bag if you're pricing it out). Then, I spread it out into three rows about 6' long by 2' wide by 3" deep. 

What bodies?? These are planting beds!

I planted parsnips, carrots, leaf lettuce, cilantro, arugula, radishes, and mesclun mix. Things dry out pretty quickly around here, so I also mulched over the top of them with some straw, and watered them really well. 

All tucked in and cozy

Oh, and I started another compost heap! This time waaay back in the corner away from the yard. No way could Sky reach through the fence and pull it out this time!

That bale of straw was a great investment!

It survived all day Sunday. This morning, I put Sky out while getting ready for work, like usual. When I went out to refill her water bowl, she had black feet! Urgh... I didn't put my beds far enough away from the wire fence. Within about fifteen minutes of being outside, she had reached through and stirred up the first few inches of one of the beds. But I could live with that, right? (I'm sure you've figured things out by now. Oh, Hindsight, my guileful foe!)

When I got home from work, I saw this...

*cry*

She managed to squeeze under the "gate" (a flap of wire fencing that I fold around the last fence post). This is the only section of the fence that I was not able to tie to the chicken wire on the ground, since I needed to be able to open it. The garden beds were all flung about, and the new compost heap had become the next layer of my lasagna garden. Oh... and she left me a lovely doggie surprise to top it off (I resisted taking a picture of that. You're welcome!). 

I have now wired an extra fence post to the bottom of my "gate" to make it less flexible, and sprinkled the ground generously with cayenne pepper, but this dog... this dog is so determined! I don't know how I can train her out of it since she only really gets destructive when I am not in the yard with her. (Here's a new internet meme! Passive Aggressive Pooch.) Unfortunately, I have to work! I'm so looking forward to the day when I can build something more permanent. 

I raked things back into place, more or less. Hopefully I'll still get a nice crop! Telling the plants apart will be a bit more interesting now. Can we just call it permaculture practice? Hehe.

Have you dealt with gardening with a dog before? How do you keep your hard work from being undone?

Defeated

Ok, Dogbeast, you win this round...

This is what is left of my compost heap. Isn't our dog industrious? She keeps managing to push the cardboard aside and pull bits of compost materials through the wire fence. And then fling them wildly about the yard, eat them, and leave me piles of unhappy tummy on her bed.

On the plus side, she has not actually gotten through the fence, so I still have hopes for being able to plant a garden once I have the beds prepared. 

Well, back to researching inexpensive compost container options...

Update: Lasagna Garden and Compost Heap

Well, it isn't much to look at just yet, but here is the progress I have made on my lasagna garden. I started out by chopping down the biggest weeds (some of them literally required a saw... ). Then I trampled the rest down as much as I could. 

A rainbow of grasshoppers went flying in every direction from the tall grass when I sprayed it down! First time I've ever seen a pink one. That was really neat. However, a friend of mine taught me that grasshoppers can be very destructive to a garden, so I'm glad that there seem to be fewer each day. 

Next step: papier mâ ché the ground with pages torn from an old phone book and spray it with water to keep them from flying everywhere. I scattered a thin layer of grass clippings on top of that for the "green" layer and then a few inches of straw on top of that for the "brown" layer. 

 

I covered about a third of my garden with one phone book

I plan to build it up layer by layer as we generate more materials. Mostly, it will consist of layers of grass clippings and shredded paper, since we have an abundant source of junk mail delivered to our house on the regular. :) Shredded newspaper, grocery ads, and credit card offers make great compost! Just be sure to rip out the little plastic windows first and avoid glossy things like magazines since some of their inks contain heavy metals that you won't want your future veggies soaking up. 

I started a compost in the other corner on the same day, and it's coming along nicely. It amazes me how much we used to throw away that we can put in that compost heap! I got it started with a small pile of about 1/3 grass clippings and weeds and 2/3 straw, and I'm trying to keep that ratio of greens to browns. Maintaining it only takes a few minutes to make sure it's as damp as a wrung out sponge and mix it up with a shovel.

Just added that cardboard in back today to keep the pooch from pulling straw through the fence. She thought that was a great game!

Since then, we've started keeping a labelled container in our fridge for scraps. The cold keeps things from getting smelly, and I only have to go mix it into the compost heap every day or two. Here are some examples of what we have been composting so far:

What you can and cannot compost seems to be a matter of debate. I've read a number of lists and some say you can compost anything organic up to roadkill (blech). Buuuut I haven't been able to generate a lot of heat with my compost heap yet. I'm guessing that's because it is small and not contained. So, although I have seen things begin to break down in the few weeks that I've been doing this, it's not as quick of a process as it could be. I'm going to stick to the safer stuff, which means no meat or dairy products.

Oh yeah, and remember the chicken wire I put down to dogproof the garden? It's working... but she's not giving up!

Right at the edge of the chicken wire... Yep. She's getting a snootful of cayenne next time.

What do you guys think? I'm new to composting, so I I'd love to get advice from my more experienced readers. And if you're new to this, too, I hope we can learn from each other's successes and mistakes as we go!

Dog-Proofing and Lasagna Gardening

My Dog Likes to Garden

When I first started this blog, my intention was to chronicle my attempts to learn to garden. Then we got a puppy. 

A puppy who liked to dig. 

What dirt?

She dug under the wire fence I had so carefully built around my new garden, and trampled and gnawed every last plant. Needless to say, I was pretty discouraged at that point. Fast forward to two years later... I've been daydreaming of having a garden, but there were a couple of obstacles keeping me from starting. The first was still the dog. I filled in her holes, but the lure of that mysterious, off-limits place was too much for her, and she'd just dig them right up again. 

Finally it occurred to me to dig-proof the base of the garden fence the same way I had the fence at the back of the yard. I bought a cheap roll of foot-wide chicken wire and some long metal stakes with hooks on one end from the local hardware store. 

Chicken Wire and Wire Stakes

I rolled the chicken wire out flat along the base of my garden fence and staked it down. Then, after she still managed to dig between the fence and the chicken wire the next day (gah!), I filled the dirt back in and used some more wire to tie the near edge of the chicken wire to the base of the garden fence. It's been several months and, as far as I know, the garden area has remained untouched by canine paw. 

Taming My Jungle

Next roadblock... weeds that are taller than I am. And yes, that leafy thing to the far left is a tree. Did you know trees could be weeds? I sure didn't! 

And this is after I spent an hour hacking at it earlier this week

I've put off starting a garden so far this summer because of the immense amount of work I imagined it would take to pull up all those weeds and turn over all of that heavy soil. I don't know why I didn't think of searching the web for an easier way to prep a garden bed before, but I'm sure glad I finally did! 

I came across something called Lasagna Gardening. It requires no digging and sounds just about my speed. Start out by chopping or ripping out the biggest weeds. Then, put down a layer of newspaper (I'm going to use phone book pages, since we have several of those laying around that I haven't quite gotten to recycling). The paper kills the remaining weeds and prevents new ones from sprouting up by blocking out the sun. Plus, it is biodegradable. And, my favorite, free! Then, you put down layers of "green" and "brown" plant clippings and vegetable scraps to form a compost lasagna. 

Depending on what time of year you start your lasagna garden, you can plant your seeds right in it or let it break down into fluffy, nutrient-rich soil for a few months first. My first attempt at a compost heap did not go so well, so I will leave the details to the experts. Here is the website that explained it to me. 

Have you ever tried lasagna gardening? What do you do to make gardening less work and more fun?