In early January we set off for Hawaii to work on organic farms and do some island-hopping for four months.
We stayed at four farms on three islands (Oahu, Hawaii, and Maui). We learned so much along the way, got a ton of hands-on experience, and met a lot of amazing people!
Before returning home we got engaged... while cruising past the massive cliffs and waterfalls of Molokai aboard the superferry.
Once we returned to the mainland in May we spent the summer at home in Raleigh before moving up to MD for Susan's school. Since then everything else as fallen into place nicely.
That being said, we are both really excited about 2009 and our first growing season!
We have started up a bed in a fenced-in veggie garden using the "Lasagna Gardening" method described in Patricia Lanza's book. This method is ideal for us right now because it is a no-till, no-weeding, method of natural organic gardening. Since we are basically starting from scratch and have little-to-no equipment we decided to start a 6x8 ft plot to see what kind of yield this layering approach delivers.
First I cleared the area of any major weeds (dandelions, thistle, etc).
Then I placed about 2" of wet newspaper overlapping to prevent weeds from sneaking through.
On top of that I spread a 3" layer of decomposed manure.
Next I placed a layer of straw to cover.
The next weekend I came back and spread a 2" layer of peat moss,
followed by another 3" layer of manure,
topped off with straw.
After that I repeated with peat moss, then manure, and finally a top heavy mulch layer of straw.
Over the next 3-4 months our lasanga garden bed will "cook" and decompose. Essentially we are making our compost by letting worms do the work of decomposing the materials, and in the Spring we should have a very rich soil to start our vegetables with!
