by Comrade Simba
http://www.comradesimba.com/blog/?p=87

It Can Be Done

This is our fifth growing season out here. The first two years was
mainly hacking out scrub and mending fences from 20 years of neglect
on the "Old Bartley Rental House" as it is known by the locals. Goofed
up a few times trying to work with somebody else's lack of vision just
because it was there and seemed easier at the time. Back in the early
50's electricity and propane was all the rage so retrofitting this
place to accommodate all things peak oil hasn't been very easy, and
some of it is just going to have to be put up with. Like the garden
area being uphill from where the gray water line runs out of the
house, shade trees being on the southeast, and the long axis of the
house being oriented to taking full advantage of that summer afternoon
sun blast. But five years of planting stuff in all kinds of
experimental ways has shown me what works well and gives indications
that this self sufficiency thing is doable.

Right now we have enough raw calories in storage, canned up, and in
the ground to make it through to next spring even if an EMP turned all
things fucko bazzoo.

The key was to finally wrap my head around the idea that ultimately,
everything has to go to the garden. How and when to put what where is
like a puzzle - and I spent a lot of time trying to fill in large
hunks of similar background colors instead of finding the corners and
edge pieces first. Here is the first installment of the mechanics of
what worked…

Raking up the fall leaves and dumping them into in four foot wide
windrows covered with a two inch layer of manure is the place to plant
the early squash. No matter how much rain you get the squash roots
don't rot and there is a super rich humus zone where the dead leaves
come into contact with the manure. The best part is the pile stays
moist with very little water in dry spells since it's basically mulch
pile. So the yard gets raked making the wife happy, the barn gets
cleaned out for good critter housekeeping, abundant squash to eat and
lots left over to feed the pig and chickens. Once the plants are
exhausted in late summer, fork or till the whole row into the ground
(noting about 5 billion earthworms) and its a cowpea patch. And if you
don't know about cowpeas - learn up. Ultimate doomer crop. Grows
anywhere under any conditions. Inoculate them the first year to make
sure nitrogen fixing bacteria are in the ground, pick the pods when
they dry up brown and stuff `em into feed sacks for shelling during
the long winter nights by the fire (family bonding and all that shit).
Once the cowpeas get done with their thing sow winter wheat or rye or
some other cover crop in the bed. There's your corn bed for mid spring
planting.

Spring is nice to see after spending all winter in battle with the
woodstove but it quickly becomes a nightmare of too much to do all at
once. So far, every year I have fucked up and tilled up the whole
garden plot with grand visions of thousands of square feet of lush
kitchen vegetables only to wind up with a giant weed patch from all
the disturbed earth not getting planted in time `cuz the damn lawn
needs mowed or some shit. No more of that insanity - winter wheat over
everything besides the squash/melon leaf windrows. Chop it into the
ground when something is ready to plant, and if it has headed up it's
chicken feed and straw for nest boxes and corn mulch. Where I planted
winter wheat last year I did not have a weed problem this year. Repeat
- no weed problem, just a nice loose earthworm laden bed suitable for
the early spinach and peas or whatever. But I wanna talk corn… and
that's a post all by itself.