“Let food be your medicine.” Hippocrates
Last Fall my hubby and I decided to make a no-till herbs and vegetable garden in our backyard. The area was covered with thick and very tall weeds. We cut the weeds and covered the assigned area with corrugated cardboard. Then we covered the cardboard with about a 6″ layer of horse manure. Later we found out that we should have mixed the manure with black top soil. However, it really didn’t make a big difference. Fortuneately, the manure we used was well composted (2 years). We could have also mixed black top soil with mushroom dust instead of horse manure. Well, we covered the manure with layers of hay and straw. Later we found out that with just straw, we had better chance of less weeds. However, we didn’t have many weeds anyway. Since we have lots of deer, groundhogs, and rabbits, we had a six foot tall fence installed around it.
The end of winter and beginning of spring we bought a shelf with LED grow lights and germination heat pads at reasonable cost started our seeds in the basement.
We live in USDA Zone 6 and we started to transplant our plants in May. We also sowed some seeds directly in the garden. The underlying soil was rich, wet and black, and full of worms. This year due late spring being colder than normal, we had late start and and as a result a late harvest. Nevertheless, we had enough rain and few weeds and we had more than enough produce for our use, giving away, pickling, and preserving.
We also made a flower and herb garden attached to the vegetable garden and we covered it with shredded bark and leaf mulch (brown and green). Weeding was so easy and flowers were abundant. Bumblebees, all kinds of butterflies, hummingbirds, goldfinches, bluebirds, cardinals, and mocking birds love to hang out in our garden. Happy gardening my friends. 🙂
“Let’s always eat and drink healthful food and beverages and do it in moderation.” Dr. Sii
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