cc >> Thank you very much for
allowing me to speak
My name is Noel Valdes. I live out in Cambridge.
I think most of you know where
east of here. You just Cambridge is, but it's 20 miles
head east. The first get on the Beltline,
Cambridge, Wisconsin. I'm a home gardener.
I'm not a horticulturalist or a professional gardener in any
way, but I talk about my garden and the raised bed method I use
of growing vegetables. It's proven to me and a lot of
people to be a very efficient and sustainable method of
gardening. So I'll jump right into my slide
show. The talk is called Open Raised
Bed Gardening: Growing
There's a picture of my garden, there's my neighbors behind me,
and you can see the open beds that I'm talking about here that
are just mounded soil in my good
southern Wisconsin that old gmost of us have here.ve in
The method of growing in raised beds is such that unlike linear
rows where, the traditional gardens where you grow in linear
rows, you're growing a cover of a crop that just fills the space
of the bed with foliage once it's mature.
So it cuts down on weeds. It
water that you need. It's a cvery efficient method off
getting a lot of food production
And I'm talking about open beds. out of a very small space.
containers, you're in the wrong class because I'm not talking
about boxed beds. I'm not talking about
containerized beds. I'm not talking about raised
beds where you bring the
I'm talking about not this, not this, not this, and not this.
[LAUGHTER] Okay?
These beds can be great and they
containerized beds, if you may can be extremely useful, these
be able to bend down, you may have bad soil that your soil in
an urban situation, you don't know what's underneath the
ground or you're over gravel or bedrock or something like that.
Those containers are ideal
But what I'm saying is that in for that type of gardening.
crop and getting the most out with the least input, these open
raised beds are far more
efficient. Here's a little statistic I likee
to throw out there. There's a lot of grass there,
and I think everybody knows that
much lawn in this country. And we probably grow a little too
million acres of turf grass grown in the United States.
Triple the acreage
Here in Wisconsin, you drive of irrigated crops.
up by Stevens Point and you dowill see these huge overheade
irrigation systems. You fly over Colorado, you will
see circles a quarter mile
The same thing in California, and that's a lot of land, but
you take all of that land,
we grow in this country. And triple it, that's how much grass
be a little bit of a waste of resources, so I'm saying, hey,
turn some of that turf
There's my neighbor's house. grass into garden space.
of the lawn in my backyard. ThThe methods that I'm talkingt
about have been around
I didn't invent this. All I'm doing is showing you
what I'm doing with it. But these raised bed gardens,
the Chinese did it, the Greeks
Aztecs civilizations in Mexico did it, both the Mayan and
they had cities of a quarter and Central America thrived, and
of these raised bed gardens. million people were living off
this really came French market gardens is where
Paris, about 200 years ago, was ringed by small market farmers,
what we would call today truck
and they had a system using faalmost totally raised beds.rs,
They fed their beds with manure,
is what they used in those days, obviously oxes and horses which
huge production and keep huge production going in intensive
ways using manure as the
I use plant compost as my feed, but the principle is the same.
There's a person that, if you're
technology, named Alan Chadwick. really interested in to this
a fellowship to the University He's a British professor who got
1960. And he came to California,
codified this raised bed thing, and it really took off in
California first. He
founder of what you would call could be considered the
intensive vegetable growing. the open raised bed technique of
I'd like to make, especially if you're a beginning garden this
is extremely important. We
garden, but if you're starting all learn our way as we
more than you can chew. ouDon't start out with a hugeoff
garden. You will
You won't be able to be disappointed.
You won't be able to keep up with the harvesting.
You won't be able to keep up with the insect control.
You'll get mad, you'll get
gardening. That's discounot a good thing.y quit
So the principle with this or any type of garden, you start
small, get your hands around it,
expand and then grow as you see what Alan says you get it right
and then grow more. Alan
ago, but his legacy is still Chadwick died a few years
Grow Biointensive, well, Ecology alive with this group called
Grow Biointensive. That's Acttheir garden in north ofte,
San Francisco. And you
not anything there, other than can see that there is
something growing on it. They pause a lot of trellising.ve
They use a lot of vertical gardening.
They rotate through. Of course they're in California
so they grow 12 months a year.
We get a vacation We're in the wintertime.onsin.
[LAUGHTER] But the
the same. And this is a book.
I'm sure a lot of people
It's written by a guy named John have seen this book.
associate and the direct linear descendant of the philosophies
of Alan Chadwick. And this
the bible or the how-to for this is kind of considered
It tells you plant spaces, how raised bed system of gardening.
maintain your garden, etc. And to set up your beds, how to
if what I don't say in you wouldn't be in this room
Gardening is expanding this slide were not true.
Especially food gardening. and growing.
food. That's the fastest growing
segment of the gardening
And the people that run garden industry right now.
garden catalogs will all tell you that their money today iso
coming from vegetables
It's not coming afrom ornamentals.n.
It's not coming from trees. It's not coming from
landscaping. It's from
That's the fastest growing growing your own food.
And that's the segment that was sdying for years and years and.
years. Back in World
1943, the United States grew War II, back in
live food, of produce, in their ovebackyards in the victoryof
gardens. Of course, that fell off and now
it's down less than 10%, it's about 8%, but it's growing again
and people are getting back into
listed here. The farm the gamarkets are booming.that I
Here in Madison we have a perfect example, and even the
little small towns
Urban gardens. I grew up in Detroit, and that
could be a good or a bad thing, but Detroit ran into problems,
as people know, but Detroit has more community gardens and more
land under cultivation than any city in the United States, and
that's because the people, after
said, hey, we'll take matters thinto our own hands and we'llst
start growing our own food. And you'll see that in a lot of
cities, inner-city people saying
food. You'll see it we'rein rural areas asr own
well where there's all kinds of interest in growing your own
food. Also, people
where their food comes from. are questioning
agriculture and whether they're doing the right thing or not.
I won't get too much into politics, but if you want to
talk to me on the side, I'm more than happy to tell you my
opinion. But younger
environmental aspects sof gardening.ve
Gardening is a good thing.
We live in Wisconsin. Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa,
Illinois, doesn't matter where
and miles and miles of you go, you see miles and miles
if it's not corn and soy beans, it's soy beans and corn.
It's not the way the
It's totally dependent world should go around.
It's totally dependent on petrochemicals.
It's totally dependent on nonsustainable inputs to keep it
alive. What's going to happen when it
crashes? So there is an argument out
there that the most single
a human being is sustainable thing you can do as
And it's a good argument. I say it's the second most
sustainable thing you can do. The most sustainable thing you
can do as a human is have children, obviously, because you
wouldn't sustain the race if you didn't do that.
But it's a very ecologically
healthy method of taking sound method, and it's a very
And the beds that I'm talking about, the method that I'm
talking about, it grows more
require a rototiller, it doesn't food in less space, it doesn't
kind of like gardening require any power tools, it's
It's how much you want to put into it as far as how you do it
but gardeners are creative, and if you can be creative, you can
keep your costs extremely minimal with this type of
system. And it
water and other resources. There definitely conserves
growing up. I do a lot is some melons that I have
garden, and because I'm growing in an intensive space, I have to
figure out ways to get the
You can see here I've got potatoes, but here there are
some pepper plants that are just
mature, they will fill up that coming up, and when those get
and what that does is it reduces whole garden space with green,
to put in those beds versus running a linear row of plants,
and it reduces the amount of
out the weeds. So I weedinghave a big garden,s shade
obviously. It's my
and bigger than I need and I'm hobby, it's my passion
like this, but the concepts that not saying you need a big garden
applied to a single bed, and, honestly, if I was just starting
out as a gardener, I would
Get that under control start small with a bed or two.
Depends on how much energy and then expand it.
This is relatively you have, of course.
I think my beds are just about right.
They're about the same
Ecology Action talk about. dimensions as the guys that
space across the top of the bed. About three feet of growing
more than six feet between one And about five feet, eight, not
center of the path, and about a foot of slope coming down on the
beds. If you get
you're not going to be able to wider than that,
side, and you're going reach across your bed from one
If you want reach more than halfway across your bed, you
have a problem because what are you going to do with that stuff
that's in the middle. And my
wide. That's totally arbitrary.
You can make your paths as
But mine are about the width of a steel rake, and I just find.
that a nice, easy dimension to use.
Your paths can be, you can
I use leaf mulch, and I'll cover your paths with mulch.
But my beds are long. They're about 21 feet long.
I'd, again, tell a beginning
about half of that because if you have a long bed it means you
got to walk all the way around
other side so 10 feet is easier. it if you want to go to the
got more production in a smaller The advantage of long beds is I
you have, the less space so obviously the more path
There's a 21-foot long bed. There's a 10-foot long bed.
Between those two stakes
That's my maximum growing space, is about three feet.
across the top of the bed. This is the part that if you're
just starting out, I want to
There's no magic to it. eYou don't have to buildy.
anything. It's really laying your paths
out, and if you have an existing
because you don't even have any gmajor weed growth to pull out.y
You just lay out where your paths are going to be, the area
that you're going to walk on, and the area in between becomes
your bed. And there you can see.
I've got my paths here. This
this is where I don't walk. isAnd those are my beds.n
About three feet of crop across the top.
These are 21 feet long beds.
that's hard clay there. That And that hard packed space,
mean it always gets walked on. never gets walked on, I
of the time except It's as hard as a dirt road most
And that's dense. That's soft.
There you can see asparagus. An open bed.
Getting ready to plant and
As we said, find your cpaths. Weed your paths..
Take the extra soil from that weeding, that becomes your first
bed. The dirt from
back into your beds. I compost your paths goes
I don't worry about if it's this everything I pull out.
weed or a good weed kind ofor a bad weed.kind of
I compost it. I don't worry about it.
I stay ahead of my weeding, and I don't even worry about whether
my compost gets cooked to the right temperature.
It just goes back in. But this is very important.
More compost you can generate,
to be. You can't the better your garden is going
You can grow in a pure compost. There's no such thing as an
upper limit of how much compost you can see use.
You can grow in pure compost and
I treat my plants and everything plants will grow extremely well.
back into food, I treat it as material for my compost pile.
And then this you try to
Walk on the paths, don't observe as much as possible.
And you will find over time, walk on the beds.
soft. When you first as you move your beds will get
beds may only be about start off your
The difference between the path and the bed, maybe not even
that. It will just
But as the years go by you can be a little slope.
shaving the weeds off the path, kthe beds will get higher.nd
You can see now some of my beds I'll have a foot difference
between the path and the top of the bed, and it's just, the soil
gets more friable over time, the
rotating different crops through soil gets more workable, you're
And you can see there's quite a vertical rise here.
That's about 10 inches of rise
the bed. I start a lot between the path and the top of
I do a lot of seed planting. of my own plants.
if you're a new gardener It's not necessary, especially
Seed starting is easy, don't let and you're worried.
advantage to starting your own it scare you, but there's an
First of all, there's a seed,huge cost advantage.ges.
You can by a whole pack of seeds
50 to a thousand seeds in it. foWhen you buy a single plant,ve
it's three dollars when you buy a plant that's ready to put in
the ground. So, obviously,
there. The other, and in my opinion
even more important advantage,
you can plant whatever you want. is if you start your own seed
market is selling you. If you Youwant some fancy heirloomthe
tomato that only you are growing
this is really cool and I want or it's something really neat,
seeds, and you won't always find to grow it, you can do it with
market. Obviously, those plants when you go to the
about weeding. There are gardening is all
that you don't have to weed, methods for gardening
But they exist and you can but I'm not going there.
but most gardeners will tell you follow that path if you want to,
weeding. And I do mostas much as I can topent
keep my weeds down, and I cover my beds in the fall with leaves
and then I rake those leaves
spring, and those become a weed mulch for most, they eventually
break down, but they become a very good weed mulch for,
certainly, half of the
[INAUDIBLE] >> Pardon me?
I don't chop them up. I just bring them in.
Some people don't have good access to leaves, but almost any
kind of a live material, grass
hay can work. Straw is clippings can work, straw and
straw or you have an ideal if you can afford
That's probably the best of all if you can afford it.
This is important. It doesn't happen for nothing.
Okay? You can't just
at Memorial Day and then go harvest them on Labor Day.
It isn't huge amount of work, but you have to devote some time
to it, and you have to be there on a regular basis to make sure
your plants don't dry out. You
isn't some bug or animal that's destroying your plants, and you
have to be there to harvest your
out fruit because most plants, plants when they start putting
fruit you get. A lot of the them will keep puttingmore
fruit out so you have to
So you have to put have continuous harvest.
The idea of spacing the crops in these raised beds is very
simple. You want these
are mature and fully grown to just be touching each other with
their leaves in all directions. So if you're used to planning in
a linear row and you grow your
together and the spacing is, plants so they're just close
this way but they say the rows let's say, is 12 inches apart
three feet apart, forget that stwo feet apart, just keepr
everything about 12 inches in all directions to cover your
three foot space. And you have to learn this.
It will take some practice. There are books like that book I
showed you, and there's a lot of
what this ideal spacing is, but stuyou'll have to learn that.ou
And you can't cheat on that.
inches apart I'm going to plant them five inches apart or four
inches apart so I can get more
don't like it. They in can't be overcrowded.nts
If they're overcrowded, you'll have two problems.
Your plants will get
They won't be getting senough sunshine..
They won't be getting enough air in between.
And another thing is the
They have to be healthy, and insects will get more to them.
packed in, they're when they're tight and they're
So that's very important. Overcrowding will diminish your
yield. So you got to find your ideal
yield or your ideal space.
space but you don't want to be You don't want to waste any
for the plant. Here, any tighter than would be good
picture before. There's apeppers that are goings
to bloom. There's horseradish.
I don't know what's behind
things, just filling up the therbed with a green canopy.hose
There you can see I'm doing it with corn.
Corn, as it grows, it's shading out any weeds below.
There's garlic planted with other stuff shading out things
below. And now I'm
some specific crops and how I grow and few things, and it will
give you a lot of ideas about how the system works.
I grow sweet potatoes and a lot of people say you don't grow
sweet potatoes in Wisconsin.
state for sweet potatoes. It Actually, Wisconsin is a good
industry. You see actualwhat I'm doing?potato
I'm growing them under
I'm not a fan of polyethylene. I a black plastic mulch.
and everything like that. I knbought a 500-foot roll atct
Menards years ago; I haven't
three seasons out of it. used it up yet, and I get about
biodegradable mulches, and if I were starting over again, I
would certainly look at those.
technology, when it's first out Ththere it's very expensive.w
So these biodegradable mulches
work and if you're really into are very expensive, but they do
thing, that is certainly the the ecological sustainable
But a black mulch does two direction I would look at.
One is a weed suppressant thwhen you first start out.s.
And you can see the sweet potatoes are 18 inches apart
here. Kind of spread out.
Also, that black is the solar collector.
So it soaks up the sun. So
they're in Louisiana. They the sweet potatoes think
Wisconsin anymore, and it makes a huge, huge difference because
sweet potatoes like it hot. They're a South American plant,
and the hotter the better.
the heat they can tolerate. I Tstart mine in jars like youon
see here. I start them
After a while they'll start to around the January.
potato leaf. When they put out that beautiful sweet
half inches tall, I just take a single-edged razor blade, slice
it right off perpendicular
I repot those little cuttings into soft potting soil, deep
potting soil. It's got
deep. Let them grow to until May, keepoot
them well watered, and Memorial Day I stick them in the ground.
And there they are under
And the reason they're under that black plastic.
plants that I grow in my garden, that white cover is of all the
the best. They like deer lithem better thanleaves
anything. They like sweet potatoes.
And sweet potato
Down south they didn't like collards and other greens.
So I found that that
Sweet potatoes are discourages the deer.
They're related to morning glories.
They put out a very beautiful morning glory looking flower.
And that's what my bed looks
You can see it's totally like after it matures.
And these are long, long, long, long vines.
And when I'm ready to harvest,
frost because sweet potatoes which is just before the first
they will just shrivel up when will not tolerate frost at all,
loppers, my garden loppers, thand cut them all off. my
There's my vine in the cart there that I'm going to carry
over to the compost pile. Pull back the plastic and dig
out my sweet potatoes. And
sweet potatoes out of I'll one of these beds.s of
And sweet potatoes are
They're one of the healthiest, good for a couple reasons.
Carver, the healthiest thing you remember George Washington
peanuts. So anyway, can they're very healthy.s and
The other good thing about them is they're the longest lasting
crop for storage
They'll last a year. They will last a year in a
normal basement. You don't
You don't need any need a cold cellar.
All we do is we dry these out. refrigeration.
a couple weeks, and then we wrap Clean them up, dry them out for
We use the little stringy ones the big tubers up in newspaper.
we want to keep, we wrap them uup and just crumple them up in
newspaper, and keep them
Sixty degrees and a year later down in the basement.
and eat it. So that's we canwhat's nice aboutato out
sweet potatoes. And they are good.
I grow a lot of strawberries. I do a three-year rotation on
strawberries. You can't grow strawberries in
the same spot year after year.
diminish. The berries After will get so smalls will
they'll start to look like
So you have to keep replenishing wild strawberries again.
them from bed to bed. They're yoa hard thing to keep theve
weeds out of there. You can see I got a lot of grass
and chickweed in my strawberries, so I spend a
little bit of time
But the strawberries that you grow yourself are not the same
as the strawberries you buy in the store.
There's no comparison.
are made out of StrawStyrofoam. [LAUGHTER]store
The strawberries that you grow yourself are delicious,
delicious, delicious. There is just no comparison.
I grow a lot of garlic. My
You can't be a good cook wife is an excellent cook.
And this is a method without using garlic.
My son was actually a professional horticulturalist
for quite a while, and he learned this method of growing
garlic in rows at the peaks of these raised beds.
See what I have? I have three peaks or two
valleys that I just take my raised bed and made these
trenches with. I plant
apart, and I just push the my garlic six inches
clovsoil there. I do my own.oft
I save my own garlic
I'm growing hardneck garlic now. from year to year.
There's what's called hardneck There's two types of garlic.
Mostly what you see in and what's called softneck.
The reason they have it in the the store is softneck.
the hardneck. It actually storesstores longer, butr than
it doesn't taste as good. It's
The hardneck garlic is the one good but it's not as good.
flavors and more varieties. wSo we're growing hardneckcy
varieties now. And I put
I don't need those markers to do them six inches apart.
kick one time to know thawhere my six inches were.r a
Then, and this is done in October, if you wanted to grow
garlic this year, you can.
April, but it won't be as big, You can start some garlic in
start your garlic it wothe October before.f you
And I cover it with straw. The whole bed.
And then very first thing in the
not even melted here, the garlic spring, you can see the snow is
through the straw. And is starting to work its way
back so the sun can get tin there and heat it up.
And there you can see. And
I'll talk about this later, is then what I will do, and
between those rows and around and on the sides, greens and
lettuces and things like that so
same bed. Garlic gets I get mready about July.t of the
Around the middle of
You got to dry it out for a little while, and we clean it
up, wash it, chop it off at about six inches, and again we
store it in the basement. And the hardneck, as I said,
doesn't last quite as long as the softneck, but you can get up
to about six months, and then it
I talked about interplanting. Here I have garlic interplanted.
with lettuces and greens
And that helps keep the greens and Asian greens.
And obviously you get more from bolting, going to seed.
you would if you just produgrew a single crop.d than
Here's peas that I'm growing and
the peas. I do a I've got lettuces in and around
I showed you that slide before lot of trellising.
vertically. I grow growing squashes and melons up
squashes. Some of the squashes, the real
big ones I don't trellis. You can trellis huge squashes.
You have to make cradles for
much work. You just them, butlet those run.ittle too
But the smaller squashes like these, oops, I'm sorry, I will
trellis. Big squashes,
those can get huge. I don't know if you know but
Hubbard squashes and squash,
another crop that will hard squash, by the way, is
You can get six months last almost a year.
I interplant corn and cucumbers, easy out of a good squash.
raised bed system that I use: if and here's a negative to this
know that corn has a tendency, you've grown corn before, you
over and blow over. Well, whenit's even more likely tofall
do it in these raised beds
soft soil and you've got because you've got this super
I've had many experiences where a thunderstorm comes through and
my corn is laying over. It
You've got to physically go out dthere and stand it back up..
So I actually now have decided
from happening, and I made these that I'm going to prevent that
posts, running some jute through little corn corrals using T
storm comes through, that so corn's going to be there.wind
It's not going to fall over.
all around the edges, and they'll work their way through,
and the cucumbers seem to do
corn. I grow a lot of beans.
And my pole greens I grow up these tripod things.
You can see there's a couple
They're really good growing gubeans up for the pole beans..
I find them ideal for that. And there you can see my pole
beans just climbing up those
down below. Tomatoes, tripoI've found that withbeans
tomatoes I can get a huge amount
I'll grow about 30 plants of in one of these beds.is.
About 18 to 20 inches apart.
tomatoes, though. They You have to be careful with
circulation. I think you got to get a lot of air
gardener, a couple years ago we had a bad situation here with
what was called blight, and it wiped out most people's
tomatoes. It got me for about 75% of my
tomatoes, which is
from an old gardener out in New Ulm, Minnesota, that the more
air space you can get between your tomatoes, the less likely
you are to have issues with blight and rot and any of those
things. So what I've
sloping my tomatoes, one center, started doing is
sloping this way, and then I try one sloping this way, one
posts and just run wooden structure across the top and try
to force everything up. I keep the bottom clean.
Any tomatoes or vine that wants to lay on the ground, I snip
them away, I prune them away. You can prune the heck out of
tomatoes. You can prune those like a fruit
tree. They'll tolerate a lot of
pruning. So I keep it clean.
I tried mulching
In my opinion, it was a huge mistake.
The slugs got into the tomatoes and used that mulch, and then
all my tomatoes were
If you don't know what a slug is, it's a snail without a
shell. So they're very prevalent in
Wisconsin and they like wet.
So there you can see my Thetomatoes growing up.s.
Getting them up as high as I can.
The nice thing about growing
grow tomatoes you won't your find in the store.u can
The big thing these days is what are called heirlooms.
Heirlooms are really nothing
pollinated seeds more than what are called open
And usually they've been around for a hundred years or longer.
Although, they're still produced
coming all the time. So the and best tomato sandwiches,ties
of course, use these old German golds and brandy wines and
tomatoes that you just do not find in the store.
We dry a lot of tomatoes. We preserve a lot of food.
This is an excellent system,
You can see that I've got three feet between the poles, and then
this is that two-foot fencing,
you find it at Menards and Farm and Fleet and things like that.
And I just use some jute
I put my peas two inches apart twine to ring it up.
side of the fence. And the down at the bottom on either
system is as the peas climb, it puts the peas when it's time to
harvest right where I want to pick them.
They're right out there in front of me.
Peas can be hard to harvest.
you know that. You can't If any of you have grown them,
You really lose the yield. So this gets them right up where
I want to harvest them. And I do want to talk just a
second about a very unique
purple pea here. It's varietcalled Capucijner.s this
It's a soup pea. It's not a green pea that you
eat right now. It's a pea that you let dry in
the shell, and then you use it
delicious pea. Everybody as a soup pea, and it's the most
pea, and it's a Dutch pea. I in Holland knows this
ago. And I save the bought seed year afters years
year after year. Peas are super easy to save if
you're into saving seeds. And I don't see it in the
catalogs anymore, but if you
suggest you look it up. It's want to find some, I would
monks, because when you open the called Capucijner, like the
like a monk's hood. You peadon't have to trellis bit
asparagus. I just put the posts around it
because when I'm working with my
and so I just rope it off so asparagus it wants to fall over,
I grow a lot of it donions and leeks. way.
There you can see a full bed of onions.
And there's leeks in half a bed and onions in the other half a
bed. And, again, if you want to be a
good cook, you got to have leeks
The French have becausknown it forever. thing.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
How far apart do
We've tried to do intensive gardening and our onions were
small. >> They have to be four and a
half to five inches apart for a good bulb.
And leeks should be five and
If your onions are getting too a half to six inches apart.
out a good size bulb. I cloactually rotate rhubarb.put
A lot of people say,
You can leave it there for 60 years, and it just keeps coming
up. I find that by
four year rotation through these rotating it on a
rhubarb and a half of bed of beds, I do a half of bed of
more production and bigger, rasfatter stalks by moving itget
through the garden rather than
after year. So leaving it in one space year
I grow a lot of potatoes, and, that's why I do it.
say, why do you grow again, potatoes is a crop people
You can grow all the potatoes you could possibly want for
Wisconsin, but I can grow exactly what I want.
And I like potatoes. I use
method of getting to the deep tilling because I'm not into
deep tilling anymore of moving the soil around.
About six or seven years these
And you can grow whatever beds getpotato you want.hrough.
And there's a lot of potatoes you'll never see in the the
stores. You will
farmers market, especially the find them at the
And this is a little thing I do. farmers market here in Madison.
from an organic I actufarmer in Madison.otato
People will say, well, you got
The guy said, look, you'll to buy certified seed potato.
You can't let it run off because get a year out of it.
start to pick up scabs and after a while the potatoes will
potato from him for $2 to $3 a diseases, but I can buy seed
catalog and buy organic seed pound; whereas if you go to the
pound, and I'll take my chances. potato, they're $10 to $15 a
I'm not telling you have to do I haven't had any issues.
issues, and I've been doing it that, but I haven't had any
and years. I buy it for yfrom him before theyears
shut the market down on Mifflin Street there, and he has a huge
assortment of potatoes. There's a couple of guys there
that have a huge
So I can do the blue potatoes and the little fingerlings and
these fancy potatoes that you just can't grow elsewhere.
So I grow a lot of
And here's a very interesting thing.
Here I am, I said never walk on my bed, well I'm up on my bed
planting peas. You can
I got my yardstick out there and see me going across.
them labeled and I'm just allmoving from front to back.ot
If you've ever seen guys work cement, they'll get up on top of
the concrete and they'll be standing on a big piece of
plywood but they won't
Same principle exactly. You get on a board and the board
floats over this whole bed so I'm not compressing my soil, and
I can get up there and work, and
that I'll use, and I have a Ilittle garden pad here, anyd
garden pad will work, but then
getting my knee prints into I cthe sides of these beds.out
And so I just drag these things around when, I only use the big
one when I'm planting, but this I'll use all the time when I'm,
whoops, come on back, when
That's a great little kneeler for kneeling against the sides
of these beds without destroying the beds.
If you're familiar with the British gardeners from England,
you know that they're into
deeply digging your soil double digging, and that means
from one spot in your compgarden to the next.ng it
That kind of practice is falling
reasons. People say out ofthat the smartot of
practice today in soil is disturb your soil as little as
possible. And you'll
boys, even the guys that are say, even the big
doing these no till methods. growing huge acreage, they're
chisel plow tilling They'rof gardening.he deep
They're finding now that the
is let the earthworms best tdo the work for you.garden
Let the microbes do the work for you.
The more structure you have in
that's why rototillers, people your soil without destroying,
rototillers because they're churning that soil up, where
this method does very little soil damage.
The only time my soil really
digging out my potatoes getand my sweet potatoes.'m
So there you can see it really
otherwise all I do is, I'll go gets churned up there, but
otherwise all I do is back just bring my soil up.ond,
I use a tool called a broadfork to get some air in down there
once a year and then just shallowly work in the compost.
You can grow artichokes in Wisconsin.
I know it's a California crop.
I'm not going to recommend I've grown them a couple times.
It takes a lot of time. But iyou can grow whatever youe.
want and that's another advantage of being your own
gardener, of course. If you want to try something,
artichokes are good.
recommend. You'll Thisee it all around.ly
Almost every store carries
You can find used copies it around here in Wisconsin.
Jerry -- is an organic of it everywhere.
He writes for the newspapers gardener. He's pretty famous.
around for a long, long time. I ause it because it's my guide
for when you should stick your
should start your seeds, and plants in the ground, when you
southern Wisconsin garden, it's specifically tailored to
So it's a very good actualguide book to use.ening.
I've been gardening all my life,
I go to it constantly. So you can see that I can grow
all of these different
as I said, if you want to start vesmall you can cut it down to,
just grow what you want. I
cabbages. I grow grow all kinds of different
raspberries, bean, sweet carrots, strawberries,
It doesn't matter. potatoes Jerusalem artichokes.
The benefits of this system are your soil never gets compacted,
unlike when you're walking in rows where your soil gets very
hardly compacted. It's an easy crop rotation which
is spelled out on the back of that handout.
Everything that I don't eat goes back into the garden.
It becomes part of the compost. I don't need to bring in
fertilizer. I use very little sprays.
I'm playing around with this
normally I don't use any spray called neem oil, but
Weeding actually becomes less of sprays at all on my insects.
mature. And it is a choas close as you cant more
hope for in a closed loop system
all about. So here you which is what sustainability is
lot of T posts. I use a lot of hand tools.
This is a broadfork. This broadfork was made by a guy
that used to live in Black
He now lives down in Kentucky. Earth named Larry Cooper.
going to get into This raised bed gardens.you're
What you do is you just work
It gets air down deep in your soil without turning your soil
over. It originally came out of
Bavaria Switzerland about 200 years ago.
There's a lot of broadforks on
Larry Cooper's gulland the market, but in my opinion
Tools down in Kentucky, broadforkis the best.by Earth
I still use this old tool, if you remember this one that
grandma had. I use it for breaking up my top
soil. I use a lot of different forks.
I designed a couple tools that I
weeding tools. And, of really like that I use mainly as
input. You can't course, you do need some
input, but buckets, hoses, garden without any
gardeners need. That's and all the other stuff that
that red thing there. So called a T post puller,
posts, you can make your if you want to work with T
want, but if you want to work swith T posts, you definitelyu
going to need one of those things.
They'll sell them at farm and fleet and places like that, and
then you'll need a T
There's T posts for my peas. T post and the pounders.
working with these T posts is when the frosts do come, it
makes a very easy system for
your stuff protected wrapping up your stuff to get
And leaves, and this is just from the frost.
I bring all the leaves I can about the end of my talk.
Totally cover it with leaves. This year we didn't see this
very much. I don't
It's not over yet, but we haven't seen much snow.
But snow is a good thing, but as
away, I can rake soon as the snow starts to go
They become mulch in the soil, back the leaves.
earlier than anybody can and I can get into my garden
I use a lot of compost. Bring it out of the house.
I put it into a 55-gallon drum
Dump it out. It's full of worms.
I mix this whole thing
And so compost becomes into my dry compost.
I also make, what can I say, a totally integral.
so I don't have to run pile of just weeds in my garden
And, of course, you know this as to the compost pile.
gardyour crops. [LAUGHTER]tect
This was a tomatillo, but mama woodchuck got it.
So you have to worry about
agricultural fabric is ideal. They sell this now, everybody is
starting to sell this. It used to be just the growers
used to have access to it. Now
eit. It lets light through.o
It lets rain through. Keeps bugs out.
Keeps animals out. Warms
so you can actually use upit like a hoop house.bit
There's a little hoop house that
Just laying some PVC over some my son told me how to design.
hoop house or a little miniature rebar and you can knock out a
that method. Got to greenprotect your animals. with
If you have an dog you won't
It's that simple. If you have a worry about a deer.
your yard, you don't can let a dog run around
Otherwise, you've got to have any deer issues.
Japanese beetles, all kinds of protect them from deer.
live with the bugs. But buyou got to remember, thisto
little trap I designed, Japanese
out there in the morning or late beetles are stupid, if you get
can just knock them into this funnel and they meet their doom.
But most insects are either good or of no problem.
The entomologists would tell you
yard are either good for you that 97% of the insects in your
There's only 3% of the bad guys, or they're doing no damage.
97% of the good so whyguys to get to 3%? kill
So there you go. I grow a lot of plants that
bring in bees and beneficial insects.
I strongly recommend if you want to get to be a really good
gardener, you get to know this guy.
He's a garden guru out of Maine named Elliot Coleman.
I follow his practices a lot. I use his rotation which I
talked about. I try to
know where I am going keefrom year to year.k,
I tried using it on a computer, but I found it's easier to use a
pencil and paper. But it's kind of like herding
cats. [LAUGHTER]
What goes where. So you have to take your
chances. But it works.
And I don't know why that came out in Chinese.
That was supposed to be our logo, CobraHead.
But that's the end of my talk,
left for questions. So if sanybody has questions, I'ds
be happy to entertain. Yes?
I have a two-foot bed that
Is that too narrow so heap runs alongside a garage.
No, not at all. Not at all.
That will work for you. The only thing is three-foot is
better because you can get
But whatever works. And I would certainly not.
destroy it. Sir?
You keep talking about putting
back into the garden as compost, everything you don't eat
leaves off of cabbage or the like I'm thinking the outer
stuff like that. Do you outerthrow it back into theower,
soil green or do you have to put
I sometimes let it lay in the paths green, but then I put it
in the compost pile. I try
a compost system. I tdon't even care if it'sh
burdock and thistle and nasty stuff.
If it's come out, it's going back in.
Do you ever, like winter, some of the root crops over,
like, carrots, just leave them
you want to? >> in theParsnips especially.t when
Parsnips are wonderful if you can harvest them in April.
I've done it with carrots,
You got to cover them, though, and they were good.
otherwise they will freeze and with straw or something because
But, yeah, I do that a lot. you>> When you do the sweete.
potatoes, are you buying the
putting it in the jar? >> Both.n
The question is, when you do
potatoes? I usually sweetwill take a couple of sweet
my best sweet potatoes from the previous year and use those to
start, but if for some reason I don't have any good ones, I will
go to the store. I go to
Foods or a place that's selling organic because you just cannot
trust the nonorganic mainstream potatoes that they may not have
a growth suppressant in it which
nicely. >> If you wonhave an area in yourout
yard, we've got an area that's
it, how would you go about got a lot of creeping Charlie in
that for the raised bed? >> sI would try to do a totalke
weeding. I'd get in there with a garden
fork and a good weed puller and just loosen everything up, and
get as much weeds out as you can.
Creeping Charlie and any weed can be controlled if you
constantly cut it back. Even
root out, if you chop it off now if you don't get the whole
out, chop it off again and and it starts to put some sprout
will give up. It's got starts to put, eventually it
stay alive. So if you tcan keep chopping it
off, eventually it will die. But
could at the start. >> Would I would dig out as much as I
Pardon me? >> Would yoyou bring soil in to?
get started? >> I might bring soil in.
Another problem with starting fresh, especially if you're
cutting in sod, you'll have a problem with wire worms and
you'll have a problem with
They exist in sod. They Jlove it in the sod.s.
So I would think about trying to, yeah, bring in, maybe.
Or just have at it and
Does it matter how fight it for a year.
North, south, east, or you align your beds?
Mine are aligned on a north/south alignment, but I'm
not sure. I don't think it really matters.
I think it's whatever works for you.
I'd prefer, I think, a
Do you ever get any erosion nalong the sides of your bed?.
Yes I do. And that's a
should have brought up. The question is, do you get
erosion? These beds sometimes will have a
tendency to wash out a little bit or gully, especially if you
get in one of our crazy thunderstorms.
I don't worry about it. I just rake it back up.
Usually once they put some
I've never had it to be rooa major, major problem.em.
But, yeah, you will get some
ersides of the beds. Ma'am?he
Artichokes, what variety to you grow and when do you start
the seeds? >> I don't even remember.
You start them in the spring
now touting an artichoke that you can get a harvest the first
season. The two times I grew it, I had
to cover them with straw and
But now they're saying they've I harvested the second year.
But they take so much room got an 85-day artichoke.
Okay, I guess we're thaprobably getting close.it.
You can take another one. >> Okay, another question?
Do you have a website?
We are CobraHead.com. I actually have a garden blog.
I talk constantly about my garden.
I try to get a post up there
garden. I always have a recipe.
My wife is an excellent cook so we have recipes of what we're
pulling out of the garden and what we're cooking.
And I've got a booth here. We're
me. I'd be happy 311 so come by and talk to
email. I love gardening and I think
that's where it's at so I'd be
And one last question, the happy to answer any questions.
Can you tell me a little gentleman in the back there.
araised bed. >> Yeah, okay.e
I treat raspberries as a
Raspberries are movevery easy to grow.ing.
I have what's called an everbearing variety.
I got them from a neighbor so I have no idea what the specific
is. I put a lot of compost into
them. Raspberries like to run and
they'll send runners out
your way. If anything everywhgets outside theget in
bed, I'll kill it.
It's a weed once it's outside of its parameter.
In February or March, I'll cut
totally any old cane, but the new canes I'll cut down to about
that high. Some people
at ground level, but I cut cut them right off
And then just let them go. them off at two feet.
them to another bed. And About every four years I move
production. Excellent raspberry production.
Okay, I guess that's it, folks, so I thank you very, very much.
[APPLAUSE]