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A Farmdener, That’s Me

A New Word is Introduced

I’d like to introduce the words farmden and farmdener into the English language. I wonder if there are any other farmdeners out there.

What is a farmden? It’s more than a garden, less than a farm. That’s my definition, but it also could be described as a site with more plants and/or land than one person can care for sanely. A gardener and garden gone wild, out of control.Farmden, aerial view

You might sense that I speak from personal experience. I am. My garden started innocently enough: A 30 by 40 foot patch of vegetables, a few apple trees, some flowers, and lawn. That was decades years ago, and in the intervening period, the lawn has grown smaller, the vegetable garden has doubled in size, and the fruit plantings have gone over the top.

Originally, I had less than acreage – 72 hundredths of an acre to be exact. But over the course of 15 years, I did manage to put my fingers onto almost every square foot of that non-acre. Squeezed into that area were 40 varieties of gooseberries, a dozen varieties of apples, a half dozen varieties of grapes, red currants, white currants, black currants, raspberries, mulberries: you get the picture. All that, in addition to my vegetables, flowers, and some shrubbery. But I was still not a farmdener, and my property was not a farmden.

Evolution of My Farmden

The transition from garden to farmden occurred with the purchase of a fertile acre-and-a-half field bordering the south boundary of my property.

With that purchase, I expanded my plantings, rationalizing that because I write about gardening (for magazines, for Associated Press, and for this blog) and host workshops here, I should test and grow a lot of what I write and talk about. So instead of 2 hardy kiwifruit vines such as any normal gardener might grow, I planted 20 vines of a few species and varieties. Instead of 2 pawpaw trees, à la normal gardener, I planted 20 pawpaw trees of  few varieties.

Pawpaws, blackcurrants, and hardy kiwis

Pawpaws, blackcurrants, and hardy kiwis

And how about another dozen apple trees? And chestnuts, filberts, pine nuts (Pinus koreansis is hardy here in New York’s Hudson Valley). Again, you get the picture.

But no, I wasn’t finished. There was always one more plant needing a home, one more piece of ground hungry for a plant. Why not create another vegetable garden; after all, I had just gotten married, and that made another mouth to feed. Why buy vegetables when you have enough land to grow them?Vegetable garden And what about winter? A greenhouse full of salad and cooking greens solved that problem, in addition to providing figs in summer and early and late season cucumbers.

Greenhouse fig

I like crown imperial (Fritillaria imperialis) flowers and learned the quirks of propagating them – pack pieces of bulb scales in moist potting soil and subject them to a few months of warm temperatures, then a few weeks of cool temperatures, pot up, plant out. Soon I had not a crown imperial or two such as you might find in most gardens, but dozens of them, and more still coming on.Crown imperial

You might imagine that, despite my plantings, my lawn still grew bigger with that increased acreage. Not so. Most of the acre and a half, except what was devoted to new plantings, became a hayfield that I mowed and helped feed my compost pile. A bit of rationality prompted me to graduate from scything to a small farm tractor for brush hogging that field. (Tennis elbow, the result of excessive scything, also helped with that decision. But I still use the scythe, a high quality Austrian style scythe, to mow parts of the field.)

Present and Future

What I now had – and have – is a farmden. And I am a farmdener. A farmden is not something from which you can earn a living, although I have sold some excess pawpaws, American persimmons, and hardy kiwifruits, mostly for test marketing in my efforts to see whether these fruits are worth promoting for small farms. (They are; flavor sells.)

And my farmden is a great venue for workshops, as long as I point out that participants should pay attention to my plants, not the number of them, because my property is obviously the handiwork of a crazed gardener (or a sane farmdener?). “Don’t try this at home,” I tell participants right off the bat.Farmden view

I do occasionally still garden. Right next to my terrace is a bed with tree peonies, potentiillas, clove currants, and Signet marigolds, all well-contained by the bricks of the terrace on one side and a low, moss-covered hypertufa wall on the other side. The bed is close to the house and the bed is small. Yesterday I noticed weeds starting to overstep their limit in the bed. I crouched down, started at one side of the bed, and gave it a thorough weeding, literally getting my hands on every square inch of soil. It was fun and it was quick.

Most of my time, though, is spent farmdening. It’s very satisfying, even if it does get crazy sometimes, and it yields a cornucopia of very tasty and healthful fruits and vegetables, many of them planted with an eye to beauty as well as function.

I have vowed not to plant anything more in the hayfield, in large part because it’s so pretty, the soft violet hue from midsummer’s monarda flowers grading over into a golden glow from late summer’s goldenrods. I also promised my daughter, when she was young and enthralled with Laura Ingalls Wilder, that we would leave most of the field as “prairie.” (Now over 30 years old, my daughter no longer yearns for prairies, but I’m keeping my promise.)South field

I have taken some of the edge off the transition from gardening to farmdening with some help here on the farmden from an occasional helper. Still, I am planning to keep the “den” in farmden.

Mulchercising with a Cat

I’m getting a lot of mulchercise here at the farmden these days. It’s good for me and good for the ground and, in turn, my plants.
Four piles of materials await me: a pile each of new and old wood chips, and a pile each of new and old leaves. The new pile of leaves is going to sit out this year’s mulchercise sessions. After a winter of settling and some decomposition, that pile will be just right for being planted with squash and melon plants. The lanky vines can run wild over the pile through summer and then, next year at this time, I’ll spread the much-reduced pile.
Last year’s leaf pile, from which I harvested this year’s squashes and melons, is part of my present mulchercise. The now dark brown material is getting hauled over to and spread beneath currant bushes, over the asparagus and flower beds, and on ground that will be home, next spring, to a new bed of Fallgold raspberries.
On to the wood chips . . . the old pile? That’ll go beneath various trees.
It’s amazing how simply spreading organic materials on top of the ground can bring so many benefits. Physically, that fluffy layer cushions the impact of raindrops so that moisture can percolate slowly into the

Me on the “abs & bicep” machine

ground rather than pound the surface, sealing it, and running off to make gullies. Mulch also insulates the ground, modulating swings in temperature to keep roots and other soil denizens happier. Next summer, the mulch will slow evaporation of water from the soil.

Biologically, mulch is food fungi, bacteria, and other soil organisms, the lion’s share of which are beneficial. As the leaves and wood chips go through cycles of being digested and excreted, what’s eventually left is humus, a witch’s brew of beneficial, organic compounds, which, in turn, is tied to nutritional benefits to plants. During decomposition, nutrients gathered up into leaves and wood are released into the soil, for plant use. Organic acids released during decomposition further nourish plants by dissolving additional nutrients from the rock matrix in which the soil was formed. And finally, organic chelates in humus grab onto some nutrients to render them more readily accessible to roots.
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I didn’t forget to mention my new wood chip pile; that mulch is getting carted over to blueberry heaven, heaven for the blueberries, that is. (Also for me, during summer’s harvest.)
Each autumn, right after blueberry’s leaves drop, I spread 10 to 20 pounds of soybean meal over the thousand square feet of planted area, then top it with a fresh layer of wood chips (this year) or leaves or
George is company, but not much help

wood shavings. Some years I also spread sulfur pellets over the ground to maintain the soil acidity that blueberry plants require. Not that often, though, because another benefit of an organic mulch is that it buffers changes in soil acidity, offering plenty of wiggle room in what range keeps the plants happy. The mulch also buries any berries infected with “mummy berry” disease, a problem I never have because the mulch layer prevents any spores that might be present from wafting upward to re-infect berries next year.

Blueberry bushes have shallow root systems, most roots descending less than a foot deep, with no root hairs. Thirty years with 2 to 3 inches of organic mulch laid atop the ground has created a soft, moist, heavenly environment for blueberry roots.
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I can just picture some readers “raising their hands” to point out that adding fresh, low nitrogen, organic materials to the soil results in nitrogen starvation of the plants. This science-y, oft repeated (and printed) myth needs debunking.
Soil bacteria and fungi need to eat both nitrogen and carbon. Wood chips and leaves are high in carbon

Me on the  “quads and aerobic machine”

but low in nitrogen, so these microorganisms grab at any other nitrogen in the ground to eat along with their fresh chips or leaves. Bacteria and fungi are better at garnering soil nitrogen than are plants, so plants are starved for nitrogen. Only temporarily, though, until some of the digested carbon is given off as carbon dioxide and what’s left are the higher nitrogen dead remains and excreta of bacteria and fungi.

When fresh chips or leaves are used as mulch, decomposition proceeds very slowly at the interface of soil and mulch. So slowly that nitrogen is re-released into the ground at about the rate it’s being tied up. Digging chips or leaves into the soil will definitely cause a temporary tie-up of nitrogen; mulching with these materials will not.
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So here at the Springtown Farmden Health Spa, I am mulchercising away. I start at the “abs and bicep machine,” rolling what looks like a garden cart

Me on the “rotary torso machine”

over to the mulch pile and then using what looks like a pitchfork to load leaves or chips onto the cart. Then it’s on to the “quads and aerobic machine,” whence I pull what looks like a cart full of leaves or chips over to some plants in need of mulch. Next, it’s the “rotary torso machine,” which looks like I’m scooping leaves or chips from the cart, twisting around, and then dumping it beneath a plant. Finally, back to the “abs and bicep machine,” for another rep. I should be able to get a dozen or so reps in before the mulch freezes solid for the winter.