Organic Gardening Info from Peaceful Valley

Hi Everyone,  

I am new to the Peaceful Valley Farm Blog site, but will be offering ideas and comments regularly.  Hope I can be of help with your farm and garden questions.

I  have a new homestead that I just moved into last May, so this winter was my first opportunity to plant fruit trees.  The soil is red clay dirt, typical to the California Sierra Foothills.  We dug our holes about 10 times the size of the root ball, amended our soil with compost, worm castings, oyster shell lime, gypsum, kelp, greensand and some microbial inoculant to get the microbial activity going in the soil.  The root ball now has a good amount of room for the roots to move out and food to nourish the young trees.

We created a new fenced in area for this orchard, so the whole area has not been amended.  My plan is to rototill the area surrounding the trees, amend the soil with similar amendments and plant a summer cover crop.  This will aid the surrounding soil into having more tilth and nutrients, so that when the young trees roots reach the edge of their prepared hole they will find a healthier, easier to move into soil, instead of hard red clay.  

We will have the opportunity to amend the surrounding soil by planting summer and winter cover crops this summer and winter.  Next summer I will probably use the area between the young trees to plant a summer vegetable garden.

Good Growing,  Kalita

I used to scoff at lawns… I thought that a real, lush, soft, bed of grass was only possible with lots of chemical fertilizer and far too much water. Despite my past prejudice I decided last fall to give this organic lawn idea a try. So we dug up a small patch near our house, flattened it out the best we could, added Soft Rock Phosphate, CalCM+ Gypsum and Peaceful Valley Compost and tilled it together. We spread Tough Turf Lawn Seed at the suggested distribution rate once in fall, then again in winter and then one more time in spring. The reason for some of the extra seed was that we had some run off that would carry the seed away. But I would say that even without the run-off issue I would have doubled the suggested distribution rate (I really wanted a lush lawn).

A lush lawn I got! See for yourself:

This lawn was planted in the fall of 07, this picture was taken in April of 08… no chemical fertilizers used, just a little compost tea every other month or so. I water with a Gardena Hydro Fan Sprinkler for 5 minutes a day. I have to admit it turned out better than I thought it would… especially in the first year… now if I could get out of that hammock long enough to mow it (maybe next year).