Last week's lesson

Dear Students,

During last week's lesson in the computer room,  I was happy to see that you finished the grammar part so quickly (although the online quiz was not perfect!). It was good that we were in the computer room, because after the grammar lesson, you could easily practice the "Green Street" summary using online bilingual dictionaries, while we discussed the writing techniques together.

To practice gerunds and infinitives with stop, try, remember etc., let's write about traveling and make sentences like these:

On the way home...
On the way to (a place, a city)...

I'll go first.
On the way home today, I saw a strange guy in the Metro. At the end station, he tried to say goodbye to all the passengers, but nobody would speak to him!
On the way to Prague in the train this summer, the Spanish passengers in my compartment almost never stopped talking! Sometimes they stopped to play with their Blackberry, but most of the time they talked and talked.

Now it's your turn...

Grammar for you!

Today we are practicing infinitives and gerunds with a change of meaning.

First do the quiz. What was you score? Tell your neighbor!

Now read about this grammar rule.

Do the quiz again. Was your score better? Tell your teacher!

Now, don't forget to use these grammar forms in writing and speaking!

Now here's the song "Remember to Forget" by Play. Enjoy!

Well, I, too, am still here. It's a good summer, full of new "roots" going down (I mean, some new kinds of English teaching). I set up a 2-week intensive course, and soon I will do a workshop about technology in teaching.

I went up to "Virág's" flower garden just below the "A" building this week. Things are awfully dry, not much blooming. But there is plenty of "bablevelű várjúháj" (Sedum maximum, apparently called orpine in English - but it's really an Eastern European plant). The orpine is doing very well in spite of the intense heat. Hey, translators! How do you say bablevelű várjúháj in English?

Mary

I'm still here - and so is the garden.

It's been quite a while since I put anything up here, but I haven't been idle - just posting elsewhere.

The 2009 Garden saga continues on my personal website -

http://warrenbuckles.com/

Where you can also find this creature:

As well as one of the key questions of our time.

wb

Our spring has been wet enough since late April, but it was dry before that - from late March to late April we had no rain at all and things got pretty dry.

So dry, in fact, that I almost burned my woodshed down!

We usually burn our previous year's accumulation of brush in the spring. This year we did it during the second week of April. There was a lot of very dry brush so it was a very hot fire. It got into an old stump on the fenceline. I sprayed the stump with water and got it (mostly) out. A few hours later it burst back into flame and set off the dry grass that had collected under the fence over the winter. By the time we noticed it the flames were several meters high and heading for our woodshed. But I had kept the hose out and got the fire under control in a few minutes.

It didn't rain from late March to late April - about five weeks. But the last three weeks have been at or above normal (about 25 mm/week), so things are greening up very well, as you can see below.

Watering

Hy

I'm just courious about your weather, becouse we have got very dry spring.

A visitor

We had a visitor on Sunday - a black swallowtail butterfly. These are common this time of year http://wisconsinbutterflies.org/butterfly/species/3-black-swallowtail

Reply to Balu's 1 April post

Balu posted a comment on 1 April that I didn't notice until Mary pointed it out to me.

Here is his question:

I study landscape architecture not horticulture, so I'm interested in the whole area close to your garden.
Can you write some words about how you in the county take care of the natural fauna? (Regulations-for example in horticulture, conservation, rehabilitation of the natural state-using native species.......)
Are there any National Park or other areas under other kind of protection etc.?

I know that its a big topic, and I would be satisfied if you can post some links where I can find some information.

-----------------
The conservation situation in Wisconsin is quite fragmented, just as it is on the National level. The US is a patchwork of overlapping administrative districts: Federal (National), State, County, City, Township. Each has its own set of regulations and there are different rules regarding whose regulations are in force where.

At the State level there are a few protected species of plants and the regulations concerning them are weak on private lands.

Here is a link to one of the State agencies responsible for environmental protection:

http://www.datcp.state.wi.us/core/environment/environment.jsp

Basically the State tells us what we can't have on our property rather than what we must leave on our property. There are a number of invasive species that we are supposed to control, but enforcement is sporadic. See my post "Weeds and more weeds," below.

Many people attempt to rehabilitate native prairie areas, with varying success. We are doing a bit of that in the area around our garden. We plant native species and control invasive and non-native plants, but a project like this is endless. Here's a photo of part of our 'no-mow' area taken on 30 July last year:



It looks a bit 'weedy,' yes? (The resolution of the posted image is poor, so you may have to use your imagination to see the items I'm talking about.) Most of the plants are pasture grasses - orchard grass, perennial rye and brome - that are non-native but well established. Others are native plants that we have planted over the years - the yellow flowers on the left and center right are a form of prairie dock while the orange flowers on the right are called butterfly weed. The bush near the birdbath is a non-native plant that we put in several years ago to provide cover for birds visiting the birdbath. The tall green plant to the right of the birdbath is a native yellow coneflower that blooms in late summer. The nastiest plant in the photo is hard to see. It's in the lower center, to the right of the dead tree and below the orange flowers. It is birdsfoot trefoil, a yellow flowering creeper planted on many highway rights-of-way to control erosion. It can take over a field in a decade, strangling native plants and forming a mat several feet deep. We pull it out when we see it (we must not have been looking very hard in late July!) but the roots are deep. Constant vigilance is the price of prairie restoration (not that we are restoring a prairie here - just putting in nice flowers).

Still, we have made some progress in 10 years - here's a photo of the same area taken in July 1999:



This photo was taken looking in the opposite direction - the house and trees in the background are located were our present deck is now, but the foreground area is almost exactly where the birdbath is located in the photo above. The plants are mostly giant ragweed with some burdock, fleabane daisy, bladderpod and others thrown in.


Part of our property is enrolled in a State of Wisconsin program intended to manage forest lands for timber production, with a (very) secondary goal of plant management. This program is called Managed Forest Law (MFL) and is incredibly complicated (what government program isn't?). Here's a link to the MFL site:

http://dnr.wi.gov/forestry/feeds/faqsFull.asp?s1=ForestTax&s2=MFL&inc=ftax

The MFL program is designed to encourage timber production through property tax abatement. Each MFL project has an associated land use plan, with a (very small) part devoted to faunal protections. Since each MFL project is specific to the landowner and property, there is an incredible patchwork of regulation and practices on different sites.



Regarding parks, there aren't any National Parks in Wisconsin, but the US National Park System (NPS) is perhaps different than the one in Hungary. The big NPS parks are mostly in the American West, with few east of the Rocky Mountains. Here's a link to a US National Park Service website that has an interactive map of the various parks - http://www.nps.gov/

This doesn't mean there aren't any parks in Wisconsin, they are just at a lower administrative level. Wisconsin has State parks and County parks. Here is a map of the State parks in Wisconsin:



It came from this site:http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/parks/specific/findapark.html

The State Park nearest to our farm is Wildcat Mountain, about 16 km away.

http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/parks/specific/wildcat/

I could talk about this forever, so I will quit while I'm ahead...

wb

Back again

Hello Everybody,

It has been a while since I put anything new here.

The portulaca seedlings are doing well.



And the strawberries also.



The garden doesn't look much different but we have planted peas, lettuce(s), spinach, beets, shallots and carrots. The garlic is coming up but it's still very small.

Progressive Sprouting

The strawberries and portulaca are moving along.

The strawberries have developed full secondary leaves.



But the portulaca are still making do with their original pairs. As I recall it will be a few weeks before they begin to develop a stem and more leaves.

No (well, amost no) snow

The snow is gone, at least for now.




Here is the garden on 22 March. I have just taken off the mulch that covers the rows and put it in the walkways between them. The upper layer (2-3 cm) of soil is frozen but will thaw out in the next few days. At this time of year exposed soil thaws quickly but the upper crust will often re-freeze at night. Very cold weather can drive the frost deeper into the ground. Repeated expansion/relaxation of this layer, called frost heaving, can break plants where the stem and root join. This can be a problem in alfalfa fields, especially if they were cut late in the fall and did not produce enough growth to insulate the soil around the stem.

We don't have anything in our garden that can be damaged by frost heaving. We use mulch to reduces winter frost depth and keep soil organisms active. However, this benefit is somewhat offset by delayed thawing of the upper soil layer.

In past years I have measured soil temperatures during the winter and spring. You can find this information on my personal website (http://warrenbuckles.com/). Look in the section 'Warren and Wendy Garden' and find the article titled 'W & W Garden Soil Temperatures - how hot is our dirt?'

Weeds and more weeds

Vera asked about our weeds and about wild species and/or protected plants we have in the area.

Here is my rather long-winded answer:

First - weeds.

Our Amish neighbor says a weed is a plant that's growing in the wrong place.

By that definition we have a few misplaced plants in our garden. I actually don't know the botanical names of most of them.  

Since we are trying to keep our land in organic certification, we don't usually use herbicides. Still, cutting, digging or mowing in the right season can do a lot to control undesirable plants. Like all gardening/farming, patience is a key part of the strategy. If we don't do it this year, we can do it next year...

We try to keep the open soil in the garden covered with mulch (straw). This keeps light off anything that germinates and keeps the soil moist so weeds are easy to pull. We try to pull things before they are very large so I don't recognize most of the plants I remove, but many are grasses from the nearby pastures and hayfields. This would include various rye grasses, quack grass(Elytrigia repens) and a local rye variant called 'court grass.' 
One of the most common weeds is not a grass but a forb: giant ragweed (Ambrosia trifida). The seedling of this weed (weedling?) closely resembles the full grown plant and we often see these in the garden. Fortunately, they are very easy to pull up, even when well along.

We almost never allow a weed to go to seed in the garden, so all the seeds have to come in some other way - wind, birds, on our clothes or in the compost and mulch we use. As a result we don't have an overwhelming number of weeds in the garden itself. Still, we pull quite a few small plants every week.

Outside the garden but close to the house, our biggest problem is with invasive plants (obviously very far from where they belong). These include burdock, white sweet clover (Melilotus alba), birdsfoot trefoil ((Lotus corniculatus) and Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense).  

Burdock (Arctium, family Asteraceae) is an invasive plant that came from Europe. When we first bought the farm the area around the old house was a solid burdock forest, with plants 2 m high in places. We have mostly eliminated it from the area around the garden but a few seeds manage to sneak in. They can be very hard to pull out if I don't catch them quickly - the taproot can go down a meter or more. However, burdock is a biennial and is easy to kill in the second year - I use a sharpened trench shovel and cut diagonally through the taproot about 10 cm below ground level, pulling off the leafy top and leaving the taproot as a feast for insects.  

We spend a lot of time each year controlling non-native invasive plants. We learn more about them each year and the list keeps getting longer.  

A particularly nasty invasive plant is wild parsnip (Pastinaca sativa). The sap of this plant is a potent skin irritant - but only after sun exposure. You can handle it all day as long as you are not exposed to sunlight and/or wash the sap off before being in the sun. (But who does gardening in the dark?) Anyway, with sun exposure to affected skin, wild parsnip sap can cause skin irritation that resembles second to third degree burns and can cause permanent scarring.  

Second: wild species and/or protected plants we have in the area.

The 'official' Wisconsin threatened plant list follows:

Dwarf lake iris (Iris lacustris) 
Status:Threatened

Eastern prairie fringed orchid (Platanthera leucophaea)
Status:Threatened

Fassett's locoweed (Oxytropis campestris var. chartacea) 
Status:Threatened 

Mead's milkweed (Asclepias meadii)
Status:Threatened 

Northern wild monkshood (Aconitum noveboracense)
Status:Threatened 

Pitcher's thistle (Cirsium pitcheri) 
Status:Threatened 

Prairie bush-clover (Lespedeza leptostachya)
Status:Threatened


I have to confess that I don't know if any of these grow on our land, but we do have some trillium in the woods. Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) is a ground- hugging plant that blooms in mid spring. They have lovely three-petaled flowers (hence trillium) and can form a carpet of flowers in a oak forest. Unfortunately, white tailed deer eat trillium, and, just like all of Wisconsin, we have far too many deer on our property.

Other wild species that I am familiar with include hepatica, pasque flowers and many species of berries (blackberry, red and black raspberry and elderberries). The blackberries and black raspberries are native and very good eating. The red raspberries are a mix of native and imports. We also cultivate raspberries - there is a 100 m long row of summer and fall bearing raspberry plants along our south fence. 

An interesting wild species of mushroom grows in our forest. These are called morels and resemble truffles in that they grow around trees (in the case of morels, elm trees) and are earthy in taste. We are on the edge of the morel season right now - they show up in mid spring. I put them on my grill along with a piece of steak - very good...

Warren

A little less snow

There was a little less snow on the garden last Thursday (12 March):

Sprouting seeds inside

Hello All:

We have been sprouting seeds inside since 16 February.

Here are some photos of our setup. We use a shelving unit equipped with ordinary 4 x 40 W fluorescent light fixtures. We set this up in our guest apartment and keep the temperature at 20-21C. Here is the shelving unit and lights:



We start the seeds in 5 x 5 x 5 cm plastic containers. These come in interconnected sets of 36 containers and are supported by water tight plastic trays about 3 cm deep. Each container has a small slot in the bottom to allow water to flow in or out. They are filled with a 'sterile' growing medium. It is about 50% ground sphagnum moss and 50% vermiculite buffered to neutral pH with lime. This medium has no added fertilizer/nutrients. I wet the medium to the consistency of a damp sponge before filling the containers.

Then we put seeds in the containers - pushing them into the medium to the requied depth or, in the case of very fine seed, sprinkling them over the surface.

Once the seeds are in the containers we cover the surface with plastic film and newspaper and wait for them to sprout. Here are some trays we put up on Sunday, 15 March. They contain flower seeds: portulaca, hybrid lupines (dwarf red) and some hybrid morning glory varietals:



Once the seeds germinate I take off the plastic film and newspaper and place the tray under the light units. The lights are left on 24 hours a day - no rest allowed! The first few days after germination are critical - the seedlings are very small and have very little root to absorb water. During this period we use a water sprayer to 'mist' the trays several times a day as well as adding water to the trays to keep the growing medium damp (but not too wet or the roots will rot).

About a week after germination we start fertilizing the plants with a 25% diluted fish emulsion (1-0-0), increasing the strength of the fertilizer over the next weeks to 100% in four steps.

I started some wild lupine and lobelia seeds on 16 February. The lobelia haven't shown much action (they are 'erratic' but average - 21-28 days to sprouting, according to the package) but the lupines are beginning to germinate. I scratched their very hard seed coats with Wendy's diamond nail file and, clearly, did a better job on some than others.

Here is a closeup of the wild lupines - one seedling is doing well, while another is just emerging:



(BTW, the growing medium in this photo is ordinary potting soil, not the stuff I described above - hence the large white chunks of pearlite)

On 3 and 4 March I started some alpine strawberries and parsley. I soaked the parsley seeds in water overnight to encourage germination. These are in the tray on the shelving unit in the upper photo and, if you look closely, you can see the parsley seedlings in the right center (the lupines are just beyond them, in a separate tray).

Here is a closeup of some alpine strawberry seedlings:



Pretty small, yes?

The position of the light unit is critical for good growth - it should be as close as possible without touching the leaves. During the first few days after germination of the strawberry seeds I had the light unit set too high above them and some of the seedlings show the result. They were on the window side of the shelving unit and got a trifle 'leggy' trying to get closer to the sunny window...



Notice how long the stems are and how the seedlings are tilted to the right. I have since corrected this problem and they should turn out OK.

The alpine strawberries are a 'hobby' plant - we put them on the edges of our flower beds and they yield tiny but extremely flavorful berries. They are perennials but tend to fade after several seasons. I last started these in 2003, I think, and the plants from that batch were starting to fade last year. We should have plenty of new ones by May...

We will add seed trays over the next six weeks until the shelving unit is completely filled with plants.

We have an 11 day trip to Arizona and New Mexico coming up, leaving 26 March and returning 5 April. I hope these seeds germinate before then - otherwise I will have to rely on my tenants to do all the fussy business of watching for germination, misting, etc. We shall see...

wb

This is a response to Peter's post:


Hello Peter:

You asked about clay soil:

There are many articles on line about improving clay soil, but the basics are:

- add compost

- mulch where possible

- if you aren't growing something in a particular area, compost it anyway and cover the compost with layers of straw or shredded bark and let these work in slowly

- avoid compacting the soil (walking on it, over tilling it)

- be careful with water to avoid saturation (see my raised bed post)

- be patient - this is true of all work with plants, of course!

Some people suggest adding sand. This will usually make things worse - you will make something resembling concrete, which is a mixture of cement and aggregate [sand or gravel]!  

Soil nutrients/conditioning:

When we first started a garden, in 2001, we had a soil analysis done by the University of Wisconsin soil lab. I only had one sample tested and since then have done testing myself. The results are pretty consistent – low nitrogen levels, good phosphorus levels and low potassium levels. They also tested for organic matter and reported 4%, not a bad number, but they used a loss-on-ignition method that overestimates organic content. The biggest surprise was the pH – it was 6.8, slightly acid and unusual for our area (which, as I said earlier, is usually alkaline – 7.2 or so).  

I have since done pH testing myself and always come up with readings over 7, but the resolution of my test is not very good.

We plan to have more samples tested by a laboratory this year and I will list the results when they come in.

In order to correct the low potassium level and help with the clay soil we used a soil amendment called green sand (the mineral glauconite). We dug in about 100 kg over three seasons, using about 14 kg/row (the rows are about 9 m long and 1 m wide). I’m not sure what green sand is called in Hungary, but here is a link: green sand

We use a couple of kinds of organic fertilizers as nitrogen sources. One is made from sewage plant solids – this is a bit controversial these days as all kinds of strange things can show up in sewage plant wastes (medications, heavy metals, (in)organic chemicals). The stuff we used is certified organic for US use but I’m a bit skeptical about anything certified by the government… Still, it is 10-1-5 (N-P-K) and the plants seem to like it. It has little or no odor. We also use a fish-derived fertilizer. This is less potent, at 2-0-1, and a bit smelly, too.

Time:

As far as time goes, we live in Madison and go to our farm on the weekends, spending Friday and Saturday night there. During the gardening season we sometimes spend 12 hours working on Saturday and another 3-4 on Sunday, but this is extreme. I would guess we put in 8-10 hours each week, on average. Sometimes I go to the farm during the week and mess around by myself (being a professional dilettante, I can do pretty much what I please but Wendy still works and is a bit more responsible). Right now I am spending quite a bit of time tending our sprouting seeds – putting up starting trays, watering, messing with the lights, etc. That counts for a few hours a week, too, but only in the March through May period.

Things we have learned:

The most important thing we have learned is to slow down – gardens work at the speed of the seasons, not at our speed. A corollary to this is to plan ahead. If you don’t plant garlic cloves in October you won’t have whole bulbs in July.

Next, I guess, is not to plant more than we can eat. Twenty tomato plants are easy to start but we can’t eat that many tomatoes, let alone take care of that many plants. The same goes for cucumbers and zucchini. Good cantaloupe and watermelon, on the other hand, can be eaten at any time – breakfast, lunch and dinner, so we plant lots of them. 

Another key thing is to tolerate a few bugs – it’s better to have a few leaves munched off than to poison all the insects in the plot. Some insects, on the other hand, cannot be tolerated. This is especially true of Colorado potato beetles (see potato beetles). Once I see one of these I get out the rotenone and keep spraying until there are no more beetles. They can get of hand and destroy a potato crop in two weeks (that happened to my Amish neighbor a couple of years ago).

There are many other things we have learned but I have forgotten most of them and have to re-learn each one again.

wb

Response to Bogi's question about raised beds

Hello Everyone:

Bogi asked me:

Why do you plant in raised planting beds?
Why do the beds need to be raised?

As I did with Virág, I will post my reply to his query for all to see.

The primary purpose of raised beds is the regulation of soil moisture. Our soil is a clay loam and tends to hold more water than is healthy for many plants. In the extreme, raised beds prevent plantings being ‘drowned’ in standing water. Of course, overly wet soil promotes disease and makes life easier for slugs.  

  The hills drain excess surface water into the walkways. This creates a small-scale erosion problem and we mulch the slopes to minimize it. In addition, excess water in the soil drains into the walkways much as water will ooze from a sponge placed on a flat surface. We keep the walkways mulched, as well. This keeps the mud off out feet and helps hold moisture in dry periods.

The raised beds also make it easier for us to work the plantings – less bending – and I can sit or lie on the straw mulch of the walkway.

wb

Dear Warren!

You say that the soil of your farm is clay loam. The soil of my garden is also clay and I have a lot of problem with it.What kind of methods do you use for soil conditioning? How do you improve the nutrient of the soil?
How much time do you work daily on the farm and besides that do you have any other occupation?
Since 2001 you have planted seven gardens and learn new lessons every year. What are your most important findings?

Best regards:
Peter

Answer to Virág's question re: diseases

On 15 March Virág asked the following quesiton:

Hy! What kind of diseases have you had in your garden? And what have you done against them?

I have taken the liberty of posting my answer here for all to see.

wb

Hello  Virág:

The biggest problem disease we have is septoria (septoria lycopersici) leaf spot in our tomato plants.  

This fungus is endemic in the soil of our garden and we control it by a number of methods. Culturally we rotate plantings and keep them open and uncrowded. For example, last year we planted five plants in an 8 m long row and used a ‘Florida weave’ trellis method. 

We do not water at night or in the early morning – this helps keep the leaves dry. We also try to water near the ground, using a ‘leaky hose’ technique or spot hand watering. If the weather cooperates we don’t have to water at all, but it is necessary from time to time.
We also prune heavily, especially near the ground, an tie up sagging fruiting branches.  

If possible we plant ‘septoria resistant’ cultivars but not all of our favorite tomato types are available in this form.  

Since the spores come from the soil, we cover the soil around the plantings with straw mulch. This keeps mud from getting splashed up onto the leaves in heavy rains and keeps sagging branches from coming in direct contact with the soil.  

The only chemical we use is copper-octanoate in a soap solution. I spray the plants weekly, starting with the initial outdoor planting until mid August.  

This combination of measures has given us reasonable control of septoria during the past few seasons.  

In earlier seasons we have lost significant production to septoria (in 2003, I think, we lost nearly the entire crop – after that we started dealing with it aggressively). The last year I can recall much infection was 2005 but constant vigilance is the price of freedom (from septoria as well). If you look carefully at the 2005 Garden photo sequence, especially the ‘W&W 2005 Garden Southeast Views’ set, images 11, 12 and 13, you will see the progress of black, wilted leaves in the tomato plants located in the third row from the west end. The plants bore fruit – you can see the fruit exposed as the leaves wilt – but the fruit was not in peak condition. As you can see, other plantings in that year were not as severely affected. These were ‘septoria resistant’ cultivars and were on an outer row (the location helped them dry more quickly after rain and watering, too). That year I did not spray the copper octanoate solution until the septoria was well established and by then it was too late to achieve good control.

We have had other diseases at times but none of them compare with septoria in severity. There is a mysterious wilt that sometimes affects our basil plantings – it can kill a plant in a week or two. It, too, is a fungus, possibly related to septoria, but I haven’t researched it thoroughly. My control measure is to plant plenty of basil and remove affected plants as soon as possible.

Corn (maize) is affected by a very strange disease that the local farmers call ‘smut.’ The disease converts the seeds to fungus-like structures that are filled with black spores that scatter like dust when the dry ear is opened. See corn smut.

We no longer grow corn, not because of smut but because it takes up a lot of space and the production is spotty – it is easier to buy excellent (heavenly!) corn from roadside stands when it is in season. Last year we substituted sunflowers for our corn crop – a pretty field but the 10 kg of sunflower seeds we harvested weren’t worth the trouble.

This year we plan to work the former cornfield into an area suitable for planting raspberry and blackberry plants, which will go in either in the fall of 2009 or the spring of 2010. Farmers have to think for the long term!

This is a very long answer to a simple question.   I hope it's not boring.

Have fun,

Warren Buckles

Wisconsin Garden Introduction

Hello Everybody:

I am Warren Buckles, Mary Sousa's brother. I live in Madison, Wisconsin, USA with my wife, Wendy. We own a farm about 100 miles (160 km) Northwest of Madison.

Here’s a map of the North Central part of the US with placemarks showing Madison and our farm.


View Larger Map

Here's an aerial photo of our farm, taken in the Summer of 2008:

As you know, soil reflects the history of a place, and our farm's soil is no exception. As of today it is an alkaline (pH 7.2-7.4) clay loam. 

Europeans settled the area in the mid-19th century and our farm was homesteaded in 1856. At that time the hilltops were open prairie dotted with a few large oak trees (an oak savanna ecosystem) and the valleys were dense forests.

The early European settlers plowed the hilltop prairies, breaking up the thick mat of roots formed by the native grasses. This exposed the soil to erosion by wind and rain.

Wasteful farming practices, such as frequent plowing, poor drainage control, overgrazing and overplanting, stripped the hilltops of soil.

Today there are many places on our farm where the clay base layer is covered with just a few centimeters of soil. The original prairies are gone. Much of the original topsoil was carried away by the wind or washed into the valleys. The valleys have been stripped of their original trees. Although trees have grown back in the valleys, the diversity and quality of the former woodlands has not returned.

By the late 19th century Wisconsin was primarily a wheat producing state, but, as in other parts of the world, this monoculture contributed to the spread of wheat rust, and the wheat-based farm economy collapsed.

Over the next few decades a new economic base was built. This was based on dairy farming. Here is a simplified version of the five-year dairy farm crop cycle:

First year: corn (maize)
Second year: oats or other annual oversown with alfalfa
Third through fifth years: alfalfa hay production and/or grazing
Sixth year: repeat first year
.
.
.

The alfalfa hay planting usually includes other perennial grains (rye, for example) and pasture forbs. These offset the decline in alfalfa production during the latter part of the cycle.

We bought our farm in September 1999. At that time the area where we built our new house was alfalfa pasture near the end of its planting cycle. During 2000 we planted grass around the house along with some trees and a few native prairie plants. We also worked to clear a space for our garden.

Our neighbors plowed the pasture for us. We used a mechanical tiller and shovels to form seven raised planting beds. These beds are about 9 meters long and about a meter wide and are hilled up about 30 cm above the walkways. We also put in a low fence to keep out the local fauna.

Our first garden was planted in the spring of 2001. We have planted seven more gardens since then and learn new lessons every year.

As of last week (28 February 2009) our garden was still covered with snow. Here’s what it looks like from the roof of our porch (looking to the South):





We have made a diagram of our plantings each year. Here is our 2001 garden:

During the 2005 season I kept a photographic record of the garden. This started in June shortly after the sweet corn patch went in and continued into November when the first snow fell. Here is a diagram of our 2005 garden:

The garden photos are arraigned in four sets of views – the cornfield alone, the whole garden looking North, the whole garden looking Northwest and the whole garden looking Southeast. The photos are setup in slideshows, so you can either look at them one-by-one or click on the ‘view – slideshow’ dropdown in the upper left or use the ‘>’ play button on the bottom center. Also note that I use the US Month-Day-Year dating sequence, so a photograph labeled ‘6-10-05’ was taken on 10 June 2005, not 6 October (!).

W&W 2005 Garden Corn Patch Views

W&W 2005 Garden North Views

W&W 2005 Garden Northwest Views

W&W 2005 Garden Southeast Views

If you are interested in further information about our farm as well as many (too many?) more photographs, visit my website at: http://warrenbuckles.com/

Regards,

Warren Buckles