I started the Simple Garden 6 years ago to explore ways to grow food that took a lot less time,
as well as getting away from the more complicated planting plans,
and successional cropping that I was trying to do in the other family scale gardens.
And I wanted to have a garden that didn’t involve frequent harvesting and care throughout the year.
And it has become one of the most productive gardens as measured by the amount of food
we are able to harvest compared to the amount of time that we need to put in.
And it is also one of the more productive growing spaces that we have in terms of the
amount of explorations and learning and the number of videos that are
based on this garden, which I find interesting. There is something about the focus of the ideas,
the simplification of what I need to keep track of, and the simple repeated cycles
that I can observe over time that has been very useful for learning.
And this Simple Garden has enough space for each crop to be able to do larger variety trials,
which makes things a lot more interesting, and all of this allows me to get a lot more food,
experience and learning out of a lot less work.
There is a really simple layout to this garden, and a fairly basic processes for managing it,
which makes it different from the other gardens, and this simplicity and consistency has provided
a lot of opportunities for learning. I have followed the same basic three year
crop rotation for 6 seasons, starting with squash, followed by potatoes,
which are then followed by carrots and onions, before returning to squash again.
And sheet composting is integrated into the squash rotation as the main way of providing
fertility for all these crops, which is quite different from the fertility and
soil management of all of the other gardens. The soil is only dug in the section before the
potatoes, and while harvesting, which prepares the soil for the more delicate onions and carrots
that follow in the rotation, which is a form multi-season integration that I don’t often use.
The ground cover fabric that we used to help start the garden is still being used to cover the sheet
composting, and to cover the whole garden in the winter to reduce weeding and time preparing beds.
Having only four crops to focus on has been useful, especially as each of them can be
problematic to grow for various reasons, and having a large enough batch of each
crop helps to spot more localised issues. But having such a large crop increases
the loss when pests or diseases become an issue for the whole crop.
The consistent crop rotation over 6 seasons has made it easier to spot trends over the years,
and to have a better sense of the impact of the variable weather that we get each year.
This is the only garden that we grow main-crop potatoes in, and we grow 4 varieties each year
to give us a more diverse selection of potatoes for use in the kitchen, as well as being able to
test the differences between the varieties. And there was more than enough space to do
large variety trials for both the carrots and onion crops this past year, something that I
want to repeat for at least another year. There is even enough space to grow a wider
variety of squash, although we only grew two varieties in this garden this past year.
So this garden stands out from the other growing spaces quite a bit, but is also
simple enough to be more successful, but any issues that do arise can have a bigger impact.
Beyond the simplicity of the crop rotation, it is the sheet composting covered with ground
cover fabric that I probably find most interesting and useful in this garden.
The squash plants seems to really benefit from having their roots growing under and
up through the decomposing organic matter, and the vines and squash
fruit have no problem growing over the surface of the ground cover fabric.
I don’t need to worry about weeds becoming established among the vines,
and this part of the garden is ready to overwinter once the squash are harvested.
This sheet composting is the fertility engine for the whole garden, providing all of the
organic matter and most of the fertility for the squash plants, as well as for the potatoes,
carrots and onions in the following two seasons. And it has also become a very useful feature in
the wider landscape that we manage, in ways that I didn’t really expect.
It is the place where we put so much of the rough and problematic grasses, weeds,
and other organic matter that we collect when clearing the surrounding landscape.
This type of rough material can be problematic to add to the usual compost piles unless it
is chopped up first, and we usually end up with large amounts of it at
one time which would ideally be layered in with other material in the compost.
But with such a large area for the sheet composting this bulk material can simply be spread
out over whatever is already there, and left to decompose without any more effort or processing.
In the spring I have started to collect nettles from a few of the large patches in the area,
and to cut back the comfrey plants to add to the sheet compost, and then to top it off with
layers of grass clippings from the first few cuttings of the grass surrounding the gardens.
This fresh spring growth would contain a lot of nitrogen, which would generally be quite
low in the higher carbon material that we collect during the autumn and winter.
And of course all of the carrot tops,
damaged potatoes and other crop wastes from this garden get added to the sheet compost,
though I often forget and haul this stuff up to the main compost that I use for the other gardens.
After six years this sheet mulching method is working reasonably well, and I have not noticed
any serious issues, but the ground cover fabric that covers it all prevents the damaged potatoes
and weed roots regrowing and causing problems. I haven’t noticed any issue with additional weeds
from the seeds that might be in the grasses that we bring in, but most of this material
is usually collected in the late autumn or the winter when a lot of the seeds would have fallen
off, or in the spring or early summer before the next batch of seeds has a chance to mature.
And it is very useful to have a convenient place to put any material like this from
when the onions are harvested in August or September until the squash plants start to
really grow in the following May or June. So there is generally only about 3 months
of the year when it is not so convenient to use this spot as a place to put all the surplus and
bulk organic matter, but at that time of year it is often mainly grass clippings.
This sheet composting is easy enough, if I don’t count the amount of work required
to collect all of the material, but most of that work is going to be done anyway.
And although the plants are all growing reasonably well,
I am beginning to realise that there probably isn’t enough fertility left
after the squash to feed the hungry potato plants the following season.
I have learned from the potato grow bag trials that extra fertility during
the growing season can really help to boost the yield of the potato plants.
I have been adding some chicken manure pellets to the furrows when planting the
seed potatoes in this garden, to add additional fertility, but this has only been the equivalent
of about 6 grams of nitrogen per square meter, which I don’t think is enough for the plants.
We ended up with a lot of small potatoes last year, which I think is a good indication that
they didn’t have enough fertility to continue to grow during the later part of the season.
I think one of the issues is that the sheet composting method hasn’t been building up the
same levels of soil organic matter that the other gardens get with loads of imported compost, so
there is possibly less in reserve for the plants. I could add even more of the high nitrogen organic
material to the sheet composting each year, and any that isn’t used by squash plants
would be leftover for the potato the following year, assuming that it isn’t washed down into
the subsoil below by the heavy winter rains. I could also add more concentrated fertility
at several times during the growing season, and the easiest option would be
to simply throw some more chicken manure pellets into the established potato bed.
But I want to explore using more undecomposed organic matter in this garden, and I now realise
that the best option might be to use fresh grass clipping at the base of the potato plants, as this
mulch would also help to keep the sun off of the developing tubers so that they don’t turn green.
We already do the work of earthing up these potato plants with soil, so doing at least part of this
task with freely available material that I need to put somewhere, which can also boost the fertility
at the same time, makes a lot of sense to me. It might be a bit tricky with timing to be
able to add enough layers of fresh grass clippings to be able to build
up a deep enough mulch that will last the full season, before the potato plants get too big.
But as the grass clippings decompose it will release an additional supply of nitrogen for
the large plants, which should boost the yield, and hopefully there would
be enough nitrogen left in the soil for the onion and carrot crops the following year.
Managing the fertility of this garden is easy enough, especially if I don’t count the time that
is spent collecting all of that organic matter, which is generally work that I would do anyway.
I could collect a lot more of the fresh growth of nettles, comfrey and other plants in the spring
and early summer which would bring a lot more fertility and trace elements to the garden.
That would take additional time and effort, but I think the increased productivity and
health of the plants could be worth it, and it would be less time than
it takes to manage and turn compost piles. There seems to be significant benefits of growing
the squash plants with sheet composting because the plants in this garden consistently seem to do
better than the same plants in the other gardens. The ground cover fabric definitely helps to make
this garden easier to manage, helping the sheet compost to fully decompose,
preventing weeds from becoming an issue, and protecting the soil over winter.
I think it’s possible to manage the garden like this without using these plastic coverings,
and I would be interested to explore using green manures to cover the soil over the winter instead,
especially after the squash is harvested, and before the potato rotation the following year.
As we already dig this section of the garden before planting the potatoes,
we could also be incorporating any green manure, but there might be an issue getting
the seed to germinate that late in the autumn. Sowing a green manure in late summer or early
autumn after the onions are harvested would be more successful, but I would then be giving
up this space to put all of the rough organic material that we collect in the autumn and winter.
So I think for now I will stick to using this fabric to cover the garden over the winter,
but in another context I think it would be really interesting to explore the use of
green manures as a soil and fertility building component of a simple crop rotation like this.
The overall yield from this Simple Garden was highest in 2022,
with over 600kg of food harvested, compared to approximately 500kg from previous seasons.
This translates to about 6 kilograms per square meter which is a decent overall yield, and with
only 32 hours of work, this means that there is about 19kg of vegetables harvested for every
hour worked throughout the year, which is great and much higher than any of the other gardens.
This garden is definitely an efficient way to get a lot of staple vegetables
for eating from the autumn through the winter and into the spring,
but of course we didn’t get any of the higher value summer crops out of this garden.
We could have been more efficient with our time, and as always the yields could have been higher.
We didn’t weigh any of the green or damaged potatoes, and the yields from these plants
could definitely have been higher with more fertility, and mulching with grass
clippings should help with both of these. The carrots produced close to the best yield
in the 6 years, and with a range of different varieties some did a lot better than others.
There is still some issues with forking, but the damage by carrot fly larvae is still the
big problem and I need to make sure that the netting is in place right after sowing next year.
We planted half of the large squash crop with the usual Crown Prince hybrid variety, and grew
4 plants of the Delicata variety, the seeds of which had unfortunately been cross pollinated.
There was still a reasonable yield, but one plant produced a lot less than the others,
and the fruit of another plant was not edible. The onion crop had the biggest improvement,
and we didn’t have any issues with mildew, which really affected the crops a few years ago.
But biggest change was growing from seeds instead of onion sets, and this was much
more successful than I though it would be, and most of the 15 varieties did better from
seed than I would have expected from sets. So, with the squash and potato yields fairly
stable from year to year, it was the much better crops of carrots and onions that made 2022 the
best harvest from this Simple Garden, and I wonder if the upward trend will be able to continue.
I think there is still a benefit in letting this experiment run for another couple of
years with only minor changes, unlike in the other gardens where I am going
to be making significant changes in the planting plans again this year.
I want to explore a few other varieties of potatoes, to find ones that produce
well and that we really like to eat. I am planning to grow 4 varieties of squash,
which will probably reduce the yield a bit because the Crown Prince hybrid that
we have relied on seems to be one of the more productive varieties we can grow in this climate.
We will continue with the onion and carrot variety trials for at least another season,
and we will need to put in the work to get the carrot fly under control.
But the biggest change that I want to make is to use grass clippings to mulch the potatoes plants,
to help to move away from using chicken manure pellets or some other form of concentrated
amendments to boost the fertility for the plants. I like the idea of managing the fertility
of this garden entirely with biomass collected from the surrounding landscape,
which really differentiates it from the other gardens which all rely on our own compost,
imported municipal compost and a range of different concentrated amendments that I buy in.
So, we will be continuing with essentially the same garden for a seventh year, with
minor refinements, and closer observations, and I think it is a sign of a successful garden that
I don’t feel the need to change so much. I just seems to work, which is great,
and I find it interesting that we get so much out of this garden, both in terms of food,
and in terms of explorations and learning. It is the easiest garden to summarise,
or to talk about as an integrated system or design, whereas the other gardens have
so many more crops, and a much more complicated planting plan, which we don’t always complete.
The stability and reliability of this Simple Garden is a nice anchor within
this RED Gardens Project, and it continues to provide us with lots to eat, as well as lots to
learn and explore, and a few videos, despite its simplicity, or perhaps because of it.