Create a Grow Heap This Fall For Squash Next Year

One of the speakers who I had the pleasure of seeing several times at the Mother Earth News Fair was Barbara Pleasant. It almost felt like I was listening to an old friend speak since I had read so many of her articles in Mother Earth News.

In her workshop about composting, Barbara talked about how easy it is to grow squash in a Grow Heap. A Grow Heap is basically a giant compost pile that you create in the fall. You can either nestle transplants in the heap in the spring, or simply bury open-pollinated (remember - hybrids will not reproduce true) squash in the compost in the fall. The squash itself will decay into the pile during the winter, but the seeds will sprout in the spring.

Here's where she really got my attention: Barbara said she raised 100 lb of pumpkins this year in one Grow Heap.  That's a ton of food for very little effort, so I knew we had to give it a go.

Our grow heap under construction

When we started to clear our garden of summer annuals as the first frost became imminent, we carried the garden waste over to a 12' x 4' spot that is contiguous to our sunflower patch. We layered brown materials (such as completely dried leaves and sunflower stalks) with luscious green materials (basil, marigolds, borage, comfrey, etc.). We made sure not to remove too much dirt from the roots of the plants we pulled out of the garden because, according to Barbara's book, The Complete Compost Gardening Guide, it is best to have about 20% of your pile consist of soil because it will help keep the plants from wilting under water stress. We did not include any plants from the Cucubit family (cucumbers, watermelon, squash, etc.) in the pile because we do not want to introduce any diseases that could affect next year's pumpkin crop.

We also had two compost bins of semi-composted rabbit manure and chicken litter available. We dumped that over the top of the Grow Heap. At that point, the pile stood about 2-1/2 feet tall.

A couple of chickens check out the newly-emptied compost bins. We've started
 filling the bin on the left with the Cucubits we did not add to the Grow Heap. 

We plan to add yet more to the Grow Heap as fall progresses. We will add a couple bags of shredded leaves and grass clippings plus the remains of the hardy garden plants (cabbage, chard) when we pull them out.  The Grow Heap will be reduced in height by half when spring comes around, so it is good to make the pile large to begin with.We'll start pumpkin seedlings indoors sometime in April, and plant them in the heap in mid to late May. I'm hopeful that we'll get the biggest pumpkin crop we've ever had.

This was incredibly easy, so if it works, I'm sure Grow Heaps will become my go-to method for growing squash. If squash isn't your thing, you can also grow tomatoes in a Grow Heap. Any members of the Cucurbit or Solanaceae families should thrive in this environment.

Reference:

The Complete Compost Gardening Guide by Barbara Pleasant and Deborah L. Martin. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

March 2012 in Review, Part III: A Whole Lot of Gardening

With the late Spring/early Summer-type weather we've been having, everything is about a month ahead of schedule. Our daffodils and forsythia have come and gone. The grass is lush and green and we've been working outside everyday. Here's what's going on in the garden. 

March Orchard Improvements

Our pitiful little cherry tree is finally getting some TLC

One of my goals this year is to make major strides towards establishing a survival orchard. I thought I should probably try and do something for this cherry tree I got for free four years ago before I start spending money on new trees! I pulled all the grass and weeds from around it in a 2' diameter. Then I bought some organic fruit tree fertilizer and gave it a generous serving. I'm pretty sure this is the first time I have ever fertilized this tree. Gee, I wonder why it is still 3 feet tall? ;) 
I learned from my orchard bible, The Holistic Orchard: Tree Fruits and Berries the Biological Way,that putting mulch right up against a fruit tree is a bad idea. It holds too much moisture against the trunk and is prime habitat for rodents that munch on bark. It is also a bad idea to lay down a circle of weed cloth underneath wood mulch or stone. Weed cloth creates an environment that favors bacteria at the expense of the fungi that are key to tree health. So, yes, I did that wrong when I planted my pecan trees last fall! It is better to put a thick layer of pea stone down and then mulch in a wider circle around that. Much more about mulch this month. (Hehe)

Spritzing and Spraying
I've spent a significant amount of my prepping budget over the last couple of  months on equipment and spray ingredients recommended in The Holistic Orchard for our fruit trees and berry bushes. The sprays aren't toxic pesticides or chemical fertilizers but are aimed at improving the overall health of the plants. It's all about helping the plant's own immune system fight off potential pathogens and insect pressure. Does this sound a bit New Age-y or otherwise weird? It's not, I promise! Read this for a bit more explanation.  

Solo 4 Gallon Backpack Sprayer

The weather has accelerated the spraying timetable so I've already sprayed two of four total spring sprays. I loaded up my nifty new backpack sprayer with a pungent concoction of water, neem oil, liquid fish, liquid kelp, effective microbes, and blackstrap molasses and slid on the 40+ lb contraption. It felt like a stubborn, smelly toddler was clinging to my back as I staggered across our homestead, spraying our cherry and pecan trees as well as the blackberry and raspberry bushes. Luckily, I'm used to stubborn, smelly toddlers so this was a breeze! 

Raspberries in the foreground, blackberries in the middle. Hopefully the holistic sprays will encourage bountiful harvests. 

Composting
We set up a compost bin primarily for chicken and rabbit waste. The majority of our food waste will be consumed by the chickens as they get older and we plan to use many of our spent garden plants as mulch in the chicken run.  

The bin is close to the coop and to the garden. 

When we were deciding where to set up the compost bin, we debated putting it somewhere that would be a bit out of the way but wouldn't be visible from the house. But then we remembered that our giant chicken run isn't exactly discreet! The compost bin is practically invisible in comparison.  
I'm looking forward to reducing the number of bags of compost we'll have to buy in the future for our garden endeavors. 

The Vegetable Garden

Hardly a day goes by when we're not planting something.

We planted onion transplants this year rather than trying to grow them from seed. 

Growing onions from transplants instead of seed seems like cheating, but maybe we'll actually get some good sized onions this year.

"Music" variety garlic

The garlic we planted last fall all sprouted and is doing great.

"Encore" lettuce mix and "Corvair" spinach

The first of many boxes of salad greens have sprouted. 

My usually June-bearing strawberries are in bloom

Last year's strawberries are blooming. In addition, we planted 75 new plants.

Peas! We outsmarted the mice this year

Hubby Dear's relentless trapping of mice in our garden has resulted in many more seeds surviving long enough to sprout. Yippee for peas!

I love our garden 

If you've been following my garden adventures, you might notice that we switched out the wooden lattice-style square foot grids for ones made of twine. We decided that the wooden grids simply take up too much room and make weeding and planting difficult. Hubby Dear installed metal screw eyes to the sides of the boxes and ran the twine through. We are much happier with the result.

Seed Starting Results

The seeds we planted in the little Jiffy Pot greenhouse took off rapidly. We're now in the process of hardening off the seedlings. 

Rosemary I overwintered indoors, the seedlings, and one of our new blueberry bushes

The sunflowers aren't enjoying the process very much and everything else is pretty leggy and windblown, but we may end up with a few successful transplants. We hedged our bets by directly sowing the same seeds in the garden and we'll keep whichever are the best looking plants in the whole lot. 
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The beat goes on in April. More planting, hopefully we'll start harvesting! Coming soon: planting apple trees and blueberries.


Have you started your garden yet? What's growing at your house?