Scorching the Garden 2021
Part 3
April
We are celebrating our 4th documented grow. Not much is going to change, but there is still a ton to learn. Let’s see if we can learn a few pounds.
We began to harden off our plants this month. It seems that threat of frost may be over, but you can’t be too careful. In 2019, there was a 3 day cool down during the second to the last week of may where it snowed and killed a lot of what we put into the ground. Nothing is getting planted until the last week of May.
That being said, we got a message on Thursday that the gardens would be opening this weekend. So Saturday morning, we got up and rushed over to take a look them, and someone backed a HUGE truck into one of our plots and got stuck. These divets were big enough to put a body in. Luckily, there was a front loader handy to fill in the gouges and smooth it out.
We then rushed over to our building, loaded up all the cardboard we had been collecting over the winter and FILLED the Scorch Wagon with the sheets.
Just because we aren’t going to plant for another month and a half doesn’t mean we can’t get a head start and do our thing. Come on now, you all know the routine by now…
- Flatten anything that sticks up
- Carpet everything with a layer of overlapping cardboard
- Cover all the cardboard with a thick layer of raw wood chips
- Move some wood chips so the cardboard is exposed and dump a 5 gallon bucket of compost the plant is gonna be
- Sprinkle a little mineral meal mix on the compost
- Plant plant in the compost
- Cover the compost with woodchips and water
- Broadcast scatter herb and flower seeds around the garden
- Enjoy not having to weed until August
Being able to start working on the garden in April is going to pay off huge this year. It also may have helped us point out a miscalulation on our part. I know the old Scorch Wagon was full of cardboard, floor to ceiling and wall to wall, but it may not be enough.
If that is the case, its early enough that we may be able to get enough to finish. Last year, we didn’t. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it didn’t help that some patches had to patched throughout the season.
The only reason we bring this us is because as we were setting up the perimeter, it sure seemed like the pile we brought with us was getting small pretty fast. We didn’t bother to count how many we used to set up the outline of the fences, but the 6, count ’em, 6 (six) cans of wood chips didn’t go far.
We are estemating that we will need about 175 to 184 cans all together. Time to call in a CHIP DROP.
One more benefit we hope to capitalize on is an extra month of catching the rain. Our first rain catcher worked out great, but we didn’t have much of a reservoir. This year, we pulled out our 275 gallon IBC tanks and our rain catchers from last year and had them ready to capture in no time at all.
The plan is to have them filled by June. We still need to get the rest of the cardboard down and covered with wood chips as well as the fencing and compost, then we can put the plants in and plop down the tomato cages.
