Can you grow the majority of the food you eat?

      
     Thinking about trying to grow a ton of food on our urban lot recently led us to a discussion of how much food we eat in a year.  According to the USDA the average american adult eats about 4.7 lbs of food a day.  So in a year the average person is eating 1717 pounds of food!  That means if my wife and I are "average americans" we will consume a combined 3434 pounds of food.

     If we are able to achieve the "Urban Ton," and we eat what we produce, we would be growing 58% of our food by weight from our urban lot!

     That means the Urban Ton Project is also a demonstration to the ability of an urban couple to produce the majority of their food from their own city lot.

      

The Wednesday Weigh-In : Week #8

        
     This week our chickens laid 34 eggs totaling a weight of 3.9 lbs.  With that addition we're at 30.1 lbs of food so far this year.

     We're ready to start harvesting lettuce again so hopefully next week we can add another crop into the mix.

Only 1969.9 lbs to go!  

        

Indoor Winter Farming

 

     For the past two years we have been growing some of our food indoors during the winter.  We use our main seed starting setup, until it's needed for starting garden plants, to produce herbs, lettuce, and micro greens.  It takes about 4 weeks from planting lettuce seeds to making salads.  Once the lettuce is established it can be cut and grows back fast enough to be cut again 10 days later.  We've found cutting a third of a flat yeilds enough lettuce to make a side salad for two people.  By growing two flats of lettuce we are able to each have 18 salads a month!

     We also have a flat dedicated to micro-greens.  They take 2-3 weeks from seed to harvest and make great additions to salads, burgers, egg-sandwiches and the like.  Some of our favorites are Orach, Mizuna, and Amaranth.  They are pretty expensive when you can get them at the co-op, and a single flat of micro-greens easily pays for the $18 cost of running the setup each month.

     With the last flat we usually grow herbs.  Dried basil, cilantro, thyme, and parsley are so inferior to their fresh counterparts we don't even keep them around.  But buying thyme, cilantro, parsley, and basil at the co-op adds up quickly at $2.99 a bunch.  Dried oregano and sage are ok, but fresh is still much better so we grow those too.  The lettuce and micro greens we usually harvest directly from the flats, but we find transplanting herbs into large pots and growing them further in a window greatly increases yeilds.  They get a little leggy after a couple months in the window, but by then we've usually used most up, and are replacing them with the next batch.  By growing a flat indoors and using some window space we almost always have enough on hand for any culinary preparation.  If we wanted to always have these 6 herbs fresh it would cost around $36 a month at the co-op (if you assume store bought fresh herbs last two weeks in the fridge wrapped in a damp paper towel).

     We had not been weighing these crops before we started the Urban Ton Project but will start counting them now.  We had a brief problem with some aphids at the end of January and wanted to nip it in the bud before vegetable seed starting time, so we shut the entire system down, and let the chickens devour everything.  A month later we are ready to start harvesting again.  We should get a good amount of lettuce, micro-greens, and herbs before we have to make room for the summer vegetable seeds.

                

Seed Savers Requests Start to Arrive

  

     A little while back I posted about the Seed Savers Exchange and requested some pretty unique seeds from other members.  Those requests started arriving, and we've got some really exciting new plants to try this year!  Here's a couple hi-lights of what's arrived so far:

1. Bhut Jolokia Pepper: 

The worlds hottest pepper!  Five times hotter than a Scotch Bonnet!  Going to have to be careful with this one. 

2. Red Bull Brussels Sprout:

A red variety of brussels sprout.  This will look great alternating with more typical green varieties in the garden.

3. Opal Creek Golden Snap:

A yellow sugar snap pea.  One of the only yellow sugar snaps.  Can't wait to have salads topped with yellow and green sugar snaps.  Yummy!

4. Berkeley Tie-Dye Tomato: 

Just looking at the photo of this one makes my mouth water.  It's been too long since we've had tomatoes!  

5. Exploding Cucumber

This one is mostly a novelty but is also edible.  The cucumbers on this plant literally EXPLODE if you touch them when they are ripe.  I'm sure we'll have fun with this one, but I doubt it's going to add much to the Urban Ton.

The Cost of Starting Plants Indoors

       

     Discussing starting plants indoors for the past couple days got us thinking about the cost of that endeavor...

     The first big cost is electricity to run the lights, heat mats, and fans.  For the main set-up the fluorescent lights use 320 watts.  The lights are on a timer for 14 hrs a day.  The 4 heat mats consume 17 Watts each and are on 24 hrs a day.  Lastly the 2 air circulation fans each use 13 Watts and are on continuously.  The total electricity use then comes to 6.73 KW pr day.  

     For the secondary set-up the fluorescent lights use 240 watts.  The LED light consumes 100 Watts.  Both lights are on for 14 hours each day.  The heat mat consumes 107 Watts and the two fans add another 13 Watts each.  Just as with the other set-up they are in continuous use.  The total for the secondary set-up then comes to 7.95 KW pr day.

     Running both set-ups then consumes 14.68 KW pr day.  Over an average month that's 446 KW.  Electricity costs average just slightly less than $0.09 pr KW in our area.  The total average monthly cost then is $40.00, with $18 of it going to the main set-up and $22 going to running the secondary set-up.

     This year we are doing some experiments with the secondary set-up but normally the secondary set-up wont need to be on until the 1st overflows with plants at the end of March.  The first seedlings were started a couple days ago in the main set-up and it will run until planting time in mid May.  That means main set-up will run for 3 months and the secondary set-up will run for a little less than 2 months.  

     The electricity cost of starting our seedlings will be about $98.  

     If we add the other costs we've spent $140 for the heating mats, $120 for the LED light, around $150 for the fluorescent lights and another $100 on timers, tubing, trays and the like.  A total of $480 with an expected operational life of at least 10 years adds another $48 to the table.

     A pack of seeds lasts a long time, and often seeds can be saved from the previous years crop with a little effort, but we still spend on average another $60 on seeds each year.

     Come planting time we will have $206 invested in our seedlings for this year.  While we could not buy seedlings for many of the variates of plants we'll grow, it will be interesting to go to the farmers market and see what it would cost to plant seedlings for similar plants.  We'll be sure to update on that when seedlings start going for sale at the market!

Indoor Seed Starting

       

     A couple years ago we decided to begin starting our own vegetable plants rather than buying seedlings.  We had a lot of fun going to farmers markets in the spring, and picking out our vegetable seedlings but ultimately the options were rather limited compared to those in the seed catalogues.  We still love to go to the farmers market, but now the bulk of our plants come from our own basement!

     After moving to Saint Paul we expanded our seed starting set-up to a mobile table build from wood scraps that holds 4 flats of seed starting trays.  We have an array of sixteen 24 inch fluorescent lights, with four lights for each tray providing plenty of light to start strong healthy plants.  We added heating mats with thermostat to keep the soil warm and at ideal growing temperatures.  The set-up is in our basement where ambient temperatures fluctuate between 55 and 60 so the heating mats make a big impact.  With a couple old computer fans we add air circulation to prevent damping off and to develop strong stems.  The set-up is enclosed and the air from the fans is recalculated thereby helping to keep the the ambient temperatures around the plants higher than in the rest of the basement.  Additionally, we add and automated watering with a garden sprinkler timer, some tubing, and a large rubbermaid container.  Here is what the set-up looks like:

     As you can see it's a little rough around the edges but it's only a prototype and we recycled as many materials to build it as we could!

     The inside walls have reflective insulating material on them.  This helps reflect stray light back onto the plants and adds a little more heat retention.

     The air recirculation is accomplished with flexible tubing from and old dryer vent pipe.  The blue cistern on top holds about 20 gallons of water and needs refilling every three weeks or so.  We have a hose that runs from the laundry room sink to the cistern that makes refilling it very easy.

     This year we added a second, less elaborate seed starting area that will also hold four flats of seedlings.  To start all the plants for our garden, four flats (72 plants/flat) were not sufficient!  The expanded set-up is also an experiment with LED grow lights.  They are super-efficient converting over 90% of the energy use into light.  The LED grow lights are also narrow spectrum set to the chlorophyl absorption peaks of most plants.   Allegedly it will provide sufficient light to grow and ripen tomatoes indoors while consuming only 100 Watts! 

     Since the LED grow lights are so narrow spectrum we add supplemental full spectrum light with four 24 inch and four 48 inch fluorescent lights.  The reasoning behind this is that while the LED light's spectrum is optimized for chlorophyl production, other spectrums also contribute to healthy plant growth.  

     It looks EERY with just the LED lights on!  The LED lights are actually so bright that we wear sunglasses when they are on.  How many people put sunglasses on to go into their basement? We started some tomatoes at the end of January in the primary seed starting area and moved the seedlings into the secondary set-up at the beginning of February as a test so see how plants would grow. 

     Under full spectrum lighting conditions you can see we have a heating mat under the seedling trays and two fans to keep air circulating.  We also built walls and covered them with aluminum foil to reflect stray light back onto the plants. 

     We plan to start seeds in the other set-up and move the seedlings into this one as space demands.  If all goes well we will be overflowing both set-ups with seedings by planting time!

It's Planting Time In Minnesota!

     

     We're not talking about planting outside, but starting the first batch of seeds inside.  May 14th is the last frost date in the Twin Cities (the 90% chance frost free date that is).  That means we are likely 12 weeks from the last frost, and it's time to start some seedlings.  Most plants won't be started for several more weeks, but there are a few that need to get started this early.  Specifically:

Bulb Onions
 Shallots
 Artichokes

Lavender

     If you are planting onions or shallots from sets (looks like a baby onion) they just go right in the ground in the spring, but starting from seed requires a jump-start on the growing season.  The advantage of starting from seed is that both onions and shallots tend to store much longer when grown from seed.  There is also greater diversity available from seed than sets. Artichokes usually take two seasons to produce, but if you start them 14 weeks before planting (they go in the ground 2 weeks after the last frost date) and expose them to 35-50 deg F temperatures for 6 weeks preceding planting they can be tricked into thinking they are already on their second season and will produce in one year.  Lavender is notorious for a long germination time so also needs to be started this early.

     I start both onions and shallots in small, Glad containers with holes in the bottom.  The seedlings don't need individual cells and are easy to separate at planting time.  I make two troughs in the soil and spread about 30 seeds into each trough (as below). 

     The artichokes and lavender each get their own cells and go into standard seed starting trays.  Artichokes are planted at one seed to a cell and lavender at three to a cell.  Since lavender does not always germinate well the extra seeds will hopefully provide a viable plant in each cell.  Multiple plants can always be thinned down after the seedlings emerge.

     Starting the first seedlings for the 2010 planting season sure makes it feel like spring is just around the corner!

Composting Inside with Worms

 
     Did you know you can compost indoors?  We're not talking about a big pile of smelly rotting food but instead odor-free, indoor composting year-round.  Living in Minnesota, our compost pile freezes solid in the winter and really only breaks down from April through November.  The solution?  Vermicomposting or worm composting!  While the idea of keeping a bunch of worms inside your house may sound strange at first, it is an incredible way to break down food scraps into a rich compost.  Red Wriggler worms (commonly used for fishing bait) are well adapted to indoor composting and can break down nearly their own weight in food scraps each day.  They like all vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, paper towels, newspaper and eggshells.  The finished compost is usually known as worm castings (it's really worm poop!) is quite expensive in garden stores.  As a compost it's one of the best out there, and makes and excellent foliar spray for plants.  

     We decided to try vermicomposting early last fall.  While you can buy commercial setups we opted to build our own.  All you need is one of those large rubber tubs you can find at any hardware store and about fifteen minutes.  Easy directions can be found on sever sites online, but we used this site:  Cheap and Easy Worm Bin.

     It's generally recommended to buy one pound of worms to get started but that usually costs around $40-$50 so instead we bought 100 red wiggler worms for $5.00 off e-bay.  Worms will double in population every month if there is adequate food.  Once they find an equilibrium with the amount of food you give the population will stabilize.  So we figured our 100 worms, provided plenty of food, would reach a population of 6400 in 6 months (there are about 5000 to a pound).  It's been around 6 months and there sure are a lot of worms in there!

     So far we have had a great experience with vermicomposting.  While most of our food scraps go to the chickens, any excess can be added to the worm bin.  That means our coffee grounds, egg shells, onion scraps, paper towels, and food that got moldy.  The set-up is completely odorless and hassle free.  Additionally, we will never have to buy worms to go fishing again!

Here are some photos of our setup:

This the whole thing.  Just a Rubbermaid container we keep in the basement.  Small, neat, and easy.

Looking inside cardboard is kept on top to hold moisture in and keep the bedding a little compressed.

Removing the cover, you can see wet newspaper.  It serves as the bedding for the worms and keeps fruit flies away from the food below.  Since we started vermicomposting we have not had any problems with fruit flies.

Lastly, pulling away top layer of newspaper reveals a mixture of food scraps, worms (upper center of photo) and already composted material.

     We plan to primarily use the worm-casting compost to make worm-casting teas.  The tea will be used as a foliar spray to organically fertilize crops during the summer.  Even in the winter a lot is quietly happening behind the scenes to prepare for the growing season!

  

The Wednesday Weigh-In : Week #7

  

     This is the first of what will be weekly updates on how we are coming towards the urban ton goal.  We're calling it the Wednesday Weigh-In and, you guessed it, we'll do it every Wednesday.  This is our first official weigh-in update but we're on the 7th Wednesday of the year so it's #7.

     Every Wednesday the slider at the top of the page will be updated, and we'll give a review on what we grew that week and how the project is going.

     With a little over 2 feet of snow on the ground we're not really growing much right now.  Fortunately, we are still producing food on our urban lot, or should I say, our chickens are.  Over the course of the last week they laid 36 eggs with a total weight of 4.25 lbs.  That brigs the total from 22 lbs to 26.26 lbs of eggs.  We also harvested 1 oz of herbs from our windowsill herb garden bringing the total food production for the year to 26.3 lbs.  (Ok, the herbs really did not add much!)

     At the current rate it would take 10 years to reach a ton!  It's a good thing winter is not year-round...

  

Our Chickens

  

     It's time to introduce the seven chickens living on our urban farm!  They arrived June 3rd, 2009 at only 2 days old.  After spending the first month in a brooder setup in the basement, they moved to into the chicken coop in the backyard.  Here is what they of looked like a few days after arriving:

     We choose five different breeds to make up our urban flock.  They were selected for egg laying color, cold hardiness, appearance, and friendliness.  So without further ado, appearing in alphabetical order...

DAISY

Daisy is a White Crested Black Polish chicken who lays white eggs.  She is the most friendly and will hop up on your shoulder like a parrot on a pirate if you let her!

FANNIE MAE

Fannie Mae is an Easter Egger cross who lays blue/green tinted eggs.  Her exotic eggs really stand out and often shock people who have only seen white and brown store-bought eggs.

MABEL

Mabel is a Silver Laced Wyandotte who lays medium brown colored eggs.  She is the queen of the roost and gets along extremely well with our dog Emma.

OLIVE

Olive is an Australorp who lays brown colored eggs.  She is crazy about tomatoes and fresh fruit.  It's awfully dangerous to eat either of them outside if she is running around the yard.

ROSE

Rose is a Buff Laced Polish who lays white eggs.  She is the diva of the group and the low bird on the totem pole.  Her crazy plumage gives her limited visibility and the others like to sneak up and scare her, but they do it in good fun.  She is also the most vocal of the group asking for treats or screaming when the others wander off and she does not see where they went.  She sometimes prefers to sleep outside the coop which has lead to several flashlight hunts for her on cold winter nights! 

RUBY

Ruby is a Cukoo Marans who lays deep chocolate brown colored eggs.  She is the most kind hearted sweet mamma chicken of the group.  If you pet her like a cat she sometimes purrs.

VERA

Vera, is an Easter Egger cross who lays light pink colored eggs.  For the first few months she was very timid and did not come near us but now she is the first at the door to greet us in the morning.

     They have been an absolute joy, and our neighbors really seem to like them too, often stopping over to checkup on them.  They eat most all of our food scraps, including any meat that our dog does not claim.  It's really nice to turn our food scraps into fresh eggs!  

     

     Everyone was laying eggs by thanksgiving except Rose who waited until just after New Years.  Since Rose started laying eggs we have been getting between 3 and 7 eggs a day, averaging around 32 a week.  We eat about 2/3 of them and reserve the other 1/3 for friends and family.   Their eggs are the primary source of food produced on our urban farm in the winter.   We can thank them for the 23 pounds towards the urban ton so far this year!

The Chicken Coop

    
     If you have read our profile bio you know we have chickens on our urban farm!  You may have also noticed our chicken coop in the background of photos from the excavation post.  We thought it was time to do a post on building our coop, and we'll follow that with one on our chickens.

     We built our chicken coop last spring before starting the excavation work in the backyard.  Our chickens were coming in June, and we wanted to have everything set-up well before they arrived.  We got most of the wood off craigslist from a guy who had a garage full of cedar and was looking to reclaim space for his car.  We designed the coop ourselves but found looking at the coops others have built on backyardchickens.com to be a great resource for ideas.  Construction started in the garage and quickly moved to the backyard where the coop would be located as we realized it was going to be very heavy!

     We insulated the coop so warmth would be retained during the cold Minnesota winters.  

     We found a double pane, argon-filled window on craigslist and incorporated it into our design to allow light into the coop, let the chickens look outside, and for additional ventilation and cooling in the summer.  Despite the fact that our house lacks insulation in the walls and has old single pane windows, we wanted nothing but the best for our chickens!  Opposite the window we built three nesting boxes with an access door from behind.  The girls like to lay their eggs in the boxes so its really easy to collect eggs each day!

     We put in-floor heat in the nesting boxes using pipe heating tape with a built-in thermostat set to 38 deg F.  This keeps the eggs from freezing if we are slow to collect them (even on those cold -10 deg days)!

     Once the walls were built we covered the exterior with a water barrier before adding siding.

     When we purchased the cedar off craigslist we were just looking for 4x4's but the lot we purchased came with enough cedar fencing materials to use cedar as the siding for our coop too.  It sure looks nice, and we know it will last!

     One of the first major projects we did inside our house was to install a slate floor in the kitchen.  We had a bunch of leftover slate from that project and put it to good use as roofing material for the coop.  Who say's slate roofs are only for churches?!

     We designed the coop to have space for plenty of food and water inside so when it was really cold the chickens would not have to exit the coop for food or water.  We learned this winter they don't mind the cold all that much but they really don't like snow.  After each time it snows they refuse to go outside until we shovel the snow out of their run and put leaves down.  It's a good thing I have a lot of bagged leaves on hand from my neighbor!

     With the coop siding stained and sealed we were really happy with the final result.  We added an enclosed run so the chickens could be outside and protected from predators.  There is space for them under the coop where they can cool off in summer heat or stay dry while being outside in the rain.  

     In front of the run we made a garden bed and incorporated several young blueberry bushes.  We really love blueberry plants and believe they are among the best landscaping shrubs in urban settings.  Depending on the variety they can stay as small as a foot tall, or grow as large as six feet tall allowing interesting layering effects using multiple plants.  But what's really great about blueberry bushes is that in the spring they are covered with beautiful white flowers, in the summer they yield a wonderful crop of blueberries, and in the fall the leaves turn the most brilliant colors of red.  That sure beats an azalea or rhododendron any day in our book! 

Our Planting Guide for 2010

     In the last post we discussed crop rotations in an urban setting.  We currently have two garden beds with a third (the compass bed) being added early this spring.  We have broken those three beds into 25 separate zones with each zone having one planting group.  Here are the maps of our zones [If the diagrams are too hard to make out, click on them and they will enlarge!]:

The Main Garden Bed

Side Bed A

Side Bed B - The Compass Bed

     With our zonal layout it's really easy to assign our planting groups (see table in previous post) to individual zones, and then rotate the groups each year into a different zone.  Here are the group locations for 2010:

The Main Garden Bed

Side Bed A

Side Bed B - The Compass Bed

     Then within each zone we plan the individual plants that will make up that zone.  We try to create interesting ascetically pleasing plantings while distributing crops in the quantities we desire.  We'll give a little detail of each bed as follows.

The Main Garden Bed

     In this bed the tomatoes, cucumbers, and peas will be supported by 7 ft tall trellises that will connect and form a pergola over the patio as shown below:

     The pergola will allow the tomatoes to grow vertically to 7 feet then horizontally across the pergola providing summer shade and a privacy screen within the patio.  It's worth noting that we employ some sequential plantings where early season crops are interplanted with long season crops.  This works well in high density plantings as the early season crop is gone before the long season crop gets large and needs more room.  You will see this with the artichoke and head lettuce or the bulb onions and spinach.  

Side Bed A

     This bed and all it's zones are planted with garlic.  We like garlic a lot and are growing 28 different variates this year!  Actually the garlic is planted in the fall so it's already there, but most of the growing takes place the following season so we always consider garlic to be from the year of harvest rather than year of planting.

Side Bed B - The Compass Bed

     The compass bed will be built from repurposed antique quartzite street pavers as soon as the ground can be worked. It will be arranged such that the pavers forming each quadrant are aligned with north, south, east, and west forming a compass.  The corn in the center of the garden will be interplanted with lima beans.  The lima beans will climb up the corn using it as a trellis and maximizing the use of that space.

Urban Crop Rotations

     As we start to plan the layout for our vegetable garden this year, crop rotations come to mind.  Crop rotations are standard practice on large scale farms but many urban farmers and gardeners struggle to effectively rotate crops.  This can lead to significant reductions in crop yield over time.  There are two main reasons for rotating crops.  The first being that different families of plants utilize different nutrients so planting the same crop in the same space year after year can lead to deficiencies in the soil.  This can be partly overcome with generous additions of compost and organic foliar spraying throughout the season.  Unfortunately, the second reason for crop rotating cannot be easily overcome.  Plants of the same family tend to be susceptible to similar pests and diseases.  By planting the same plants in the same location every year those pests and diseases can build-up in the soil.  Many can overwinter and feast on your plants the following season.  By rotating the location of plants within the same family those pests and diseases lose their food source from one year to the next, thereby significantly reducing their numbers.  Ideally crops in the same family would not be planted in the same location for at least 3 years to substantially reduce the pest and disease build-up in the soil.

     On an urban farm where people often only have one or two beds this can be quite challenging.  But effective crop rotation can be accomplished even within a small garden bed.  By breaking up a single bed into several zones and rotating each family of crops into a different zone each year the benefits of crop rotation can be realized!

Most vegetables fit into 9 different family's as follows:

     Some vegetables that don't fit into these 9 family's are basil, okra, sorrel, and sweet potatoes but the vast majority of annual edible crops fit into these categories. 

     From the 9 plant families we decided to group some to better fit the ratios of crops we want to plant in our yard.  We grouped as follows:

     Because we grow a lot of peppers and tomatoes we but them in two separate groups (G1 & G2).  We group corn, beans, peas, and cucumbers (G4) because we either plan to grow them together (using the corn as a trellis for the beans) or as phased plantings as in peas and cucumbers.  We also grow a lot of garlic (G6) so it gets it's own grouping.  The last group (G7) will make exceptions from the rotation as it has short season crops, herbs, and edible flowers that ultimately will get mingled in with other crops for sequential planting and ascetics.  Groups 1 - 4 all require about the same amount of space in the proportions we plan to plant.  Groups 5 - 7 are each about double the space requirements of the first 4 groups.  We have our main raised bed that we installed last year and will have 2 smaller side beds near ground level.  With the 3 beds we break it down into 25 zones allowing easy rotation between the groups!

   

Seed Savers 2010 Yearbook

     A couple days ago the 2010 edition of the Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook arrived.  If you don't know about The Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) it's definitely worth taking a few moments to check out.  Besides being one of the best sources for organic seed in the midwest they run a seed exchange between members keeping rare and unique varieties of edible plants around for future generations.  This year there are over 700 members listing 13,571 different varieties of plants!  There are 4,639 varieties of Tomato alone!

     While I have been a member for a couple years now, this is my first year as a listed member.  I'm MN VI D in the SSE Yearbook. This year I am offering 3 types of garlic, and if all goes will I will be listing more next year!  Flipping through the 500 page yearbook really gets us excited about planting the garden in the spring.  Ultimately we decided to request seeds from 18 other members.  We'll be trying out some unusual variates of tomatoes, peppers, garlic (for fall 2010), pod peas, kale, wheat, eggplant and brussels sprouts.  Yum!

24 Yards of Earth

     Before starting to fill the garden with soil we ran a water line from the house to the garden.  This allowed us to install a faucet within the garden and a hydrant outside the garden.  The faucet within the garden will allow the future addition of a drip irrigation system.  The hydrant outside the garden will give water access to the back half of the yard without having to drag a hose from the house.  And the hydrant is a nice reminder of the farm in Pennsylvania where I grew up (where they have one just like this) and started to learn about gardening from my Mom!

     During our excavation we discovered the top 6 - 8 inches of our soil has plenty of organic material but below that lies solid clay running at least 8 feet deep.  Drainage is not too much of a problem as our house sits on a bluff several hundred feet above the Mississippi.  However, growing vegetables in pure clay can be quite a challenge!  To fill our raised bed we knew we'd have to import a lot of dirt, and we took that as an opportunity to create more ideal soil conditions within the bed.  We had a blend of 50% loamy topsoil, 10% sand and 40% compost delivered.  With shovels and a wheelbarrow we moved 24 cubic yards of earth into the garden over the next couple days.

     By the time we had the garden completed it was too late to get any full season crops planted so we opted to plant a cover crop instead.  We planted red clover and will till it under in the spring to enrich the soil before planting time.

     While Kate and I did not get to enjoy any fruits or veggies from the raised bed garden this year our chickens sure enjoyed feasting on the clover whenever we would allow them into the garden!  It's not even mid February yet but we're anxiously awaiting planting time, especially as we flip through the garden seed catalogues that are arriving in the mail.