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Building
Healthy Soil
03.02.08
Our first workshop at the Sustainable Homestead!
It was a slightly chilly and rather windy day in Palmdale (hardly an ideal day for handling large amounts of straw and newspaper), but a few brave souls made the trek up to our place for the workshop.
We began by explaining the process of Composting (photo left) before making our way out to our frontyard garden to begin the biggest project of the day:
Sheet Mulching our largest frontyard garden bed...
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| Raw bed, ready for Sheet Mulch. This bed has been left untouched since the last season, see HERE. | Laying in slashed vegetation - mainly Hairy Vetch, Yarrow and Dandelions - from nearby beds for base layer of green/nitrogen material. | Putting in layer of straw bedding infused with sheep manure (nitrogen material), provided by our friends at Animal Acres. |
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| Spreading out a layer of newspaper (carbon material) to help shade out weeds. | Soaking newspaper layer. | Raking out layer of compost (nitrogen material), provided by a local horse ranch. |
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| Covering compost with a thick layer of straw (carbon material). | Covering straw with another layer of compost (nitrogen). | Admiring the nearly-finished sheet mulch. |
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| Once the final layer of straw is added (carbon), Mr. Lizard stops by to issue approval. | A deep mulched garden bed. | Explaining Cover Cropping; following this, Medium Red Clover and Speckled Field Pea seeds were broadcast into the sheet mulched bed. |
A
shot of the new Front Garden,
June, 2008! |
At the end of the day, everyone left tired but enthused that they had learned a fair bit about how to look after the soil, and we were grateful for the help! Thanks to all who made the trip! Watch this site to see how this bed progresses... |
