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How to Plant a Modern Organic Garden

Okay, from the video in my post a few days ago we now know how to plant a Victory Garden, but how about the modern version?

The Technique

Make a list of what you think would be good to grow. Don’t worry if you’re not sure, this list will change over time. It’s important to have a place to start however.

Research crop rotations. In particular, when you begin you will probably organize your crops into four groups; Roots (carrots, beets, etc), Solancae (tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, etc), Brassicas (cabbage family) and Other. There is possibly a fifth group, being perennials (plants that keep growing from one year to the next).

After researching crop rotations, go back to your list of what you want to grow and research how much space the plants need. Try to fit what you want to grow in each of their four (or five) groups, and plan roughly equal space for them in your garden according to a rotation schedule. This step can be very time consuming and frustrating, just try to do the best you can, and instead of being perfect commit yourself to improving it over time. Be sure to incorporate something that fixes nitrogen into your rotation plan.

Get the seeds. If you know of plant diseases in your area, look for resistant varieties. At the same time, if you don’t have a particular disease, getting a resistant variety won’t help and will limit your choices. Get to know your diseases and pests, and plan for them specifically. While there’s no reason you can’t grow commercial seeds, be sure to pick some OP/heirloom varieties so you can save seeds as discussed below. Be sure to check out the Bloggers Seed Network!

Make a garden layout plan. This too will probably change over time, so make the plan in a way changes can easily be incorporated. Also make a plan for when things get started, indoor or outdoors, and when they should be transplanted. Don’t forget to harden off your plants.

If possible, do a soil test. If this is not possible or desirable, inventory the weeds of the area, and see if they indicate problems with your soil. Make a plan for dealing with any problems you discover. If chemical fertilizer has been used recently, you will have special problems connected with this.

Be sure to make your own compost with your garden and other waste. Also look for locally obtained materials to use for mulch.

Collect your own rain water.  Water can be diverted from the roof of most structures into a barrel.  Home made systems can be made with recycled materials for almost no cost.  Purchased systems are also widely available.

Organize your garden into beds. These can be raised or not, with or without a border. The important thing to consider here is you should be able to easily reach all parts of the bed without having to step in them. This usually means they should not be wider than about 4-5 ft (1,5m), with access from both sides.

Don’t use chemical fertilizers, uncomposted manure or chemical pest controls. If you feel it’s necessary to use some fertilizer, try making your own like compost or green plant ‘teas’. If you want to buy a commercial product consider kelp or fish based products. Fertilizer of this nature is normally best applied directly on the leaves of the plants as needed.  Remember, the taste of fish can find it’s way into your vegetables, so use sparingly and not close to harvest time.

In particular in the case of plants in the cabbage family, be sure to research common insect and plant disease problems. It’s a good idea to do this with other plants as well. Be sure to ask around to other gardeners. In the case of the cabbage family you will likely need to pick caterpillars off by hand, keep the plants covered with a net or use a product called Bt. You may need to cover your carrots to protect them from the carrot fly. If you grow potatoes you should understand what blight looks like, and be prepared to promptly remove infected plants or their foliage. There are also some blight resistant varieties becoming available.

Be sure to save seeds from your OP varieties. By saving your own seeds, you create special varieties uniquely suited for your garden’s climate.

Extra for Experts

After establishing your garden, you may want to think about planning your garden so you have fresh food available for as much of the year as possible, as well as using season extending techniques like cold frames and greenhouses.

You may also wish to try cross pollinating some of your varieties, in order to try developing new ones. This can only be done with OP varieties.

Finally be sure to check out other organic bloggers and websites for growing techniques and plant ideas:

Daughter of the Soil
Fluffius Muppetus
In the Toad’s Garden
Mas Du Diable
MustardPlaster
Observer Organic Allotment Blog
Plan Be
The Vegetable Garden
Veggie Gardening Tips

There are many others! Be sure to check out my Blogroll.

Please let me know what I’m missing here!

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Mystery Weed

mystery_weed1

Okay, let’s see who’s the fastest.

Identifying weeds is not really my strong suit.  This picture was taken by Jo in North Carloina, but I have a similar looking weed in my garden here in Amsterdam.  It must be a very common weed.  Does anyone know the name of it?  It has fuzzy leaves, and a creeping growth habit.

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Foundation Trials and Tribulations and a Bad Constructeur

Some time ago, on a couple of occasions, I’ve posted about replacing the wooden foundation on my now nearly 330 year old house.  It’s funny how I’ve gotten so used to saying 325 years, that now 5 years later it’s a struggle to get used to the new number.  Since it’s truly become the bane of my existence over the last several months, it’s time to both post an update to let everyone interested know what’s going on, and to take the opportunity to publicly tell off Duyts, the architectural bureau that’s been the biggest source of problems as of late.  It’s really amazing how many problems can be caused by a bad architect!

Like I mentioned in my last post, I share a common wall with one of my neighbors.  It’s a complicated and age old problem.  I own the land under our common wall, and in fact a bit of the land under my neighbors house as well.  I have the larger house, and my house is older than my neighbors, by around 100 years.  Taking all of these things into account, the city said the common wall was my responsibility.  I have to take care of providing a foundation and support for this wall, but my neighbor has to pay the extra costs associated with supporting the weight of that part of his house.  In addition, my neighbor has the right to do his foundation together with mine if he wants.

While my neighbor is not very technical, and probably does not understand fully what’s going on, he said very firmly at the beginning he does not want any dependency between our houses, and he will pay the extra costs of my doing that wall, if that’s what’s necessary to keep our houses independent.  It’s worth noting that my neighbor taking that decision is turning out to be a very expensive one, as I warned him it probably would be.  In layman’s terms, it leaves him a house that has to be supported asymmetrically by his new foundation, as well as having to pay me the costs of supporting that side of his house from my foundation.

Then Comes the Constructeur

There are two architects working on this project.  The first one, who is also my advisor and project manager, made the initial drawings of my house that were the basis of the new foundation design.  The other architect is called a ‘constructeur’, and is a technical architect.  He is the one who actually designs my foundation, as well as the associated building plan.  He plans the number and layout of the piles, as well as how deep they have to be.  This is really a lot more complicated that it might seem, given the age of my house, the common wall with my neighbor as well as all the stresses a new foundation will put on the house itself, both during and after the building work.  If this is done wrong, my house could collapse or I could have long term structural problems.  On the other hand all the safety supports which are part of the building plan are very expensive, and erring on the cautious side could costs tens of thousands of euros unnecessarily.  A number of steel beams have to be placed before and after the work, and these have to be planned very carefully.

At the beginning we asked for a number of quotes from constructeurs, and we choose Duyts, mostly because they were the least expensive.  They started by making a draft drawing of a proposed foundation, that we could use to get feedback from contractors and others, so that minor changes could be incorporated later into a final version.  This draft was also used as a way to get quotes from contractors for the work, and in this way we have already chosen a contractor.  This draft seemed okay, but honestly there were some problems, mostly requiring extensive work around the existing stairway that didn’t seem necessary.  We also had a number of rather stupid issues, like the constructeur forgot an important support structure, during a new phase I was asked to accept extra charges that in fact we had in writing were part of the original quote, and some other smaller things that are a little hard to explain clearly here.

Then it was time.  We had accepted a quote for the work from a contractor, had a tentative start date for the work, and signalled the constructeur to do the final drawing incorporating the feedback on needed changes.  We were promised the drawing in a week (it was complicated enough that he probably spent most of that time working on it), and even though he was a week late he finished and sent the drawing directly to the city for their final approval before the work would begin.

The only problem was the constructeur totally changed the drawings in the meantime!

Since my neighbor who decided did not want a connection between our foundations also started work on his foundation, and choose the same architectural bureau, the constructeur decided to combine our houses.  When I called on the constructeur to explain himself, explain why he didn’t let us know in advance he was going to do that, and correct the mistake by redoing the drawings, he was indignant.  It was simply better, he said.  He said that because he now had the drawings from my neighbor, he had new information of the situation being different and he didn’t need to tell us he was going to change anything.  I’m still seething at the arrogance that lies behind a statement like that, and the idea that whatever this architect says he thinks I have to accept, because he knows better what my house needs than me.

Besides the fundamental problem of combining my foundation with my neighbors, there are other obvious technical problems in the latest drawings, including not enough space being left for my stairway, the only means of getting into my house.

Starting Over

So now I’m in a situation where I realize what a total idiot this constructeur is, I guess it’s my fault for choosing the cheapest, and I suppose you get what you pay for.

His position is still that he hasn’t done anything wrong, and while perhaps I could eventually convince him to redo the drawings, I’m far beyond that now.  My house is too important for such an idiot to plan my foundation, so I will look for someone else to do the drawings and do the building plan.

Of course he is expecting me to pay thousands of euros for the incorrect drawings, which I won’t, and this may lead to confrontation in court.

Of course there is no guarantee another constructeur will be able to use the original draft drawings as a basis for my foundation, because they may be wrong or the constructeur may simply have a different methodology.  This would mean the current quote that I’ve accepted for the foundation work can’t go forward, that may result in the contractor asking me to pay compensation.

It’s also very likely starting from scratch could mean it takes a month or more extra time, delaying the project that much further.

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More Garden Space

new_garden

While I’m slowly recovering from the news of the new White House garden, I have a few minutes to post about my own garden news.  I have a bit more space now.

My current community garden plot is actually a double plot (300m2).  Another nearby single plot (150m2) became available, so I asked for it and they said I could have it.  It’s officially against the rules, but I guess they like me, so they made an exception.  It was a badly neglected plot, and I’m almost doing them a favor by taking it.  Now with 450m2 (4800ft2), I’ll have enough space for a while.  My big problem was garlic, because I grow a lot of it and it needs a lot of space for rotations.

As is traditional here, the garden comes with a free pile of trash.  Under the pile of trash is an old poured concrete foundation from a building that’s not there any more.  In the far corner is what’s now a pile of compost, but it was made from weeds that had gone to seed and the seeds are surely still there.  Because it was neglected someone had to come into the garden and cut back all the weeds, then they made the pile.  The roots of the same weeds are firmly established in the ground, meaning I’ll have both the seeds and the roots to deal with.  Ah, I guess a new garden wouldn’t be the same if there weren’t some challenges that came with it.

I mentioned quietly to a few people earlier I had found another plot in a different community garden.  I did this quietly, again because it’s not officially allowed, but I was pretty sure if I kept quiet they wouldn’t notice.  The two gardens are run by different organizations.  Anyway, this didn’t work out because the plot they gave me ended up being shaded.  I accepted the plot a few days from the winter solstice in the middle of a rain storm, so I couldn’t tell it didn’t get any light.

I guess there are enough people around who want to use their gardens as a place to go and sit that there’s enough demand for shaded plots.  It’s also a bit of an issue for something like community gardens which are government subsidized.  As long as the government runs things, they only count the number of plots and don’t care if they’re usable.  As far as they’re concerned empty plots mean they don’t need to subsidize new ones, because there’s not enough demand.

More garden pictures and posts coming soon.  So many things to do lately!  It’s been hard to keep up with the blog.  There’s lots to write about, so stay tuned.