Jose Sr., Lance Armstrong's Stunt Double, Roberto, Some Little Kid, and Rich (photo by Mike Martinez)

Last Friday, part of the BG crew celebrated National Bike to Work Day by strapping an electric weedeater, propane blower, weed bags, and hand tools to our backs and riding to perform our weekly landscaping duties at Austin City Hall.  With some bikes borrowed from the best bike team in town, we enjoyed free breakfast tacos and pastries at the City Hall tent set up that morning exclusively for bicycle commuters, and wrapped up the day as Grupo Fantasma took the stage during the weekly Live From the Plaza event.  As the interviewing reporter from KLBJ so cleverly observed while fishing for the perfect sound-byte, our “green thumbs were a little greener” that day.

Like the ones that have come before it, this season will change everything forever.  The dust will eventually settle under the humidity of summer, and we’ll be a little older, a little wiser, and a little closer to the place we really want to be.  Some premature reflection half way through:

Mix of Buffalograss, Curly Mesquite, and Blue Grama

We’ve been testing a new mix of native grasses, as an alternative to the options that just don’t seem to cut it.  Bermuda is invasive, St. Augustine can’t take the sun, Buffalo is too weedy, and Zoysia doesn’t live up to it’s hype.  Turffalo is expensive, and native beds take way more effort than most people want to give.  Can the Wildflower Center’s new solution be the answer?  We’re testing it out.

Jose and Roberto Breaking Rock

Rocks, on the other hand, don’t need much maintenance.  So we use them to take out lawn areas plagued with problems, and convert the space into a shady hangout, equipped with a fire pit and bordered with raised veggie beds.

Lawn Sedge

Thanks to Pat McNeal, we’ve used alot of sedges this season.   He grows dozens of native sedges as a tough, low-maintenance, low-water alternative to turf grasses that can take a variety of conditions from wet to dry to sun to shady.  It’s the real future of lawns in Austin, no doubt, and they look cool too.

Andreas and Juan, on an Unsupervised Day

I’ve had several occasions to almost cry this season, when I’m reminded by how much ass the BG crew has busted this and every year. 

New Patio from Old Concrete

Our favorite project of the season, we basically threw the original design out the window and figured it out as we went.  Including what to do with all this concrete we busted up from an old patio, which we converted into a much more baby-friendly space.

April was a maintenance month in the garden.  The kitchen harvested all our beautiful sweet carrots at the end of the month; I didn’t realize how attached I was to the carrots until we showed up during our last visit of the month and they were all gone.   Broccoli and radishes have all been harvested for the season, but the chard is hanging in there.  Otherwise, weeds are the major story for the month, which repeats what we’ve seen in landscapes all over town this spring.  I had to bring in the BG army for an hour one morning to help get a grip on it:

Oh, and we also had some visitors on the fennel for a of couple weeks:

We got into a rhythm prepping several beds for May planting.  The first step was to not feel overwhelmed by an overgrown bed, like this one, full of self-seeded cilantro and peppermint:

Pulling up the unwanted plants is actually pretty easy in these beds, thanks to the previous double-digging effort by Scott and Randy during garden construction.  Below photo represents the end of Phase 1 of Bed Prep: “Weeding”:

Once the weeding phase is complete, then we turn the soil by using a hard rake or hoe, to create a trench or two along the full length of the bed:

Then we add about 2-4″ of high-quality, fully composted, Manure Compost into the trenches and on top of the mounds:

Then we work that compost into the soil as evenly as possible, filling in the trenches and raking the bed smooth, then replace the drip irrigation hoses:

Then, we plant our starter plants or spread seed, or in this case, spread alfalfa hay on top of the prepared soil to help regulate soil temps and moisture levels until we’re ready to plant:

Stay tuned for the May update: news will bring lots of planting, and a celebrity guest to the garden!

We have about one cubic yard of leftover cedar mulch, fresh from Natty G last week.  Free to the first one who wants it, comes to our lot in East Austin between 7am and 8am on a weekday, and takes it away.   We’ll help load it, but you’ll need a truck, or a car that can get really messy.  We also have some pallets, perfect for constructing a compost pile or other crafty project. 

Almost every day, the BG crew collects excess leaves that could not be mulched and returned to the landscapes they came from.   We also haul away invasive plants, winter cuttings from dormant perennials, fallen limbs, tilled up lawn grass to make way for new native beds, weeds, carcasses of dead trees and shrubs, and more weeds; most of that year round.  What happens to all that stuff?

Most of it is wrapped in reusable jute tarps, or bundled as bulk limbs, or stuffed in plastic leaf bags or reusable plastic pots, and hauled to our lot in East Austin.  Every week or two, we load a truck and trailer with the accumulated treasure, and haul it to a brush recycling facility about 5 miles from the lot.  The frequency of these trips is an excellent measuring stick for how busy we are; and brother, there ain’t no stick big enough right now.  We’ve make weekly trips this spring, with the big trailer and truck stuffed with about 20 cubic yards of brush each time.  Last year, we collected about 675 cubic yards, enough to fill a large house with no walls from floor to ceiling, packed tight.

The brush recyclers use huge cranes with grapple attachments to drop the brush into massive industrial tub grinders, which spit out the shredded brush into massive 30-foot mountains. The mountains are watered, and allowed to age for up to one year.  At that stage, we buy it back from the recyclers; only this time, we call it “mulch.”

This closed-loop process is so common, that most of the bagged mulches available at places like your local Home Depot are actually sourced from Austin brush recycling facilities.  Buying directly from the source, in bulk, helps make the loop even smaller.

We’re a little behind on monthly updates, but it’s a sign of how busy things have been both in the garden and beyond.

Tom dug up a Yucatecan recipe for “ensalada de rabanitos” to give the kitchen reason to harvest the bounty of radishes we seeded in Feb.   They also harvested the first round of broccoli, off starter plants installed a month ago.

Two months later, the carrot seeds are finally starting to resemble carrots, as evident during the infanticide we dealt out when thinning a couple weeks ago.  Spinach seeds are now spinach.  Chard continues to be strong, from planting way last year. 

We picked up some Hoja Santa to take over the Fonda landscape, and planted the first round of cherry toms and squash.  Next is cucumbers.  One of the few beds with less-than-good soil will get 2 flats of native gayfeather this month, for a great source of cut flowers this fall. 

And thanks to the legacy of Scott, the garden is now busting! with bluebonnets and other color, which my camera just can’t do justice for:

So come out and see it for yourself, and bring your favorite weeding tool.  Anytime.

The broken record spins on.  Weeds are a hot topic this year, so I’ve had hours every day to think about the subject, and what we can do about it.  The quick version:

Funky Weather Patterns - Two years of record heat and drought.  Then an unusually hard winter, including a super hard freeze.  Then 6 months of steady, deep, unusually frequent rains. 

Non-native Turf- unlike a diverse prairie, a mono-culture stand of St. Augustine is hit especially hard during extreme weather and actually dies off in patches.  Two hard summers, followed by a hard winter, have weakened most lawns so severely that large parts totally died.

Surface Disturbance – The ancient prairies had wildfire and buffalo herds.  We had Funky Weather Pattern and Non-native Turf.  Our scenario is actually really similar to the old days, which encouraged natural succession in plant communities; true circle of life stuff. 

Wildfire/Funky Weather Patters severely knock back the surface vegetation.  The early succession weed seeds underground respond by unleashing their energy to grow fast and furiously on top of the bare soil, because there is no competition.  But they don’t spend much energy on roots, and die back when summer hits, adding nutrients and bug food as they decompose, paving the way for the next succession of plants. 

So weeds are nature’s way of paving the way for longer term plants, like grasses.  It’s natural, and it’s happening in lawns all over Austin. 

What to do About it- Well, that depends.  If you’re old school, you can go through the entire cycle again, kill the weeds, amend the soil, and replant St. Augustine.   Or if you’re super old school, or super new school, you can do what the prairies did, and continue to evolve.

If the dead patch is in the sun, heed the call of the Wildflower Center and Native American Seed and plant a “pocket prairie.”  You can try a mix of native short-grasses, like buffalo grass, blue grama, curly mesquite, and Texas grama.  Throw in some taller grasses, like lovegrass or bluestem.  Maybe a few wildflower seeds for seasonal fun. 

If the dead path is in the shade, take the advice of folks smarter than me, and try a mix of native and/or adapted sedges.  Lawn sedge, woodland sedge, blue sedge, meadow sedge, or Cherokee sedge.  Maybe mix in some color with tropical sage or Turk’s cap. 

Either way, nothing is maintenance free, especially in the beginning.  But there are lots of great folks out there to help you with that part too!

Like an ancient coral reef, my approach to organic gardening matures, richens, and deepens every season.  I’m like a sponge in the reef, only with legs and eyes, always trying to get close to smart and thoughtful people who have a slightly different and always more experienced perspective than I, and try to absorb as much knowledge from them as I can.  Then reflect their expertise in my own work.  Or, as a sponge, eat it up and poop it out. 

Who cares, you ask?  I’d like to think that most of you pay me to be the best sponge I can be, so that I can use the best information from the best resources to make educated suggestions on the best way to sustainably manage your landscapes.  If you’re gonna pay someone to mow your lawn, you might as well make sure the mowing crew is doing the best they can to protect the ecological integrity of your soils.  You don’t want to pay someone to mindlessly pollute your community’s natural resources.  You want to pay a thoughtful sea creature, who respects the surrounding environment. 

It’s spring time.  Time to consider the structure, nutrients, and biology of the soils that support your plants and lawn.  As I learn more about the intricacies of soils, (see the latest issue of Edible Austin, page 50) I’m slowly changing our approach to fertilizing, focusing more on building soils and less on regular fertilizer applications.  Most new clients now receive a proposed maintenance schedule that includes compost topdressing, organic fertilizing, and compost tea at regular intervals throughout the year.  But most of you long-time BioGardener loyalists have not been exposed to those proposed schedules, which are shaped from the detritus of many conversations and readings of people who know alot about soil in Central Texas.  So here’s the gist:

Compost Topdressing – March/April and again in September/October  - Compost is the backbone of an organic program.  It addresses all the important components of healthy soils: structure (by breaking up clays and adding the proper kinds of nutrients); organic content (adding humus, which feeds microbes and plants); and good bugs (compost has lots of beneficial microbes, which drive the natural process and balances of healthy soils). 

Compost Tea – Monthly, March through November – A super concentrated dose of microbes and humus. 

Liquid Fertilizer – Monthly, March through November- A dose of fish emulsion, seaweed, and humic acid, which provide micro-nutrients and macro-nutrients for healthy soils and plants.

Granular Fertilizer – April- For those who just have to have something that resembles traditional fertilizer, we use an organic, slow-release product formulated for Austin soils to add macro- and micro-nutrients. 

Triple Shot – Monthly, March through November – Because they are applied using the same technique, we can combine Liquid Fertilizer and Compost Tea in a single application.  Throw in molasses as a quick sugar source for microbes, and call it Triple Shot.  It saves money.

Even more concisely, a handy graphic that sums up an organic feeding and soil building program for a typical Austin lawn.  Pricing makes some big assumptions, and varies from landscape to landscape.

This represents a comprehensive soil-building strategy for a typical Austin lawn, and assumes normal conditions.  Soil tests can provide specific information needed to customize a soil building and soil feeding plan for your landscape, which I highly recommend.  Tests are $15-35, or we can do it for you and help interpret results for about $65.

For those DIY-ers all of these materials are readily available, and application is a snap.  Please let me know if you need help finding the best quality composts, compost teas, and fertilizers, or need any tips on how to apply them.

The Missus and I are shivering towards progress, one morning at a time, in the Fonda San Miguel vegetable garden.  We’ve cleaned out 3 of the 14 beds, worked in a cubic yard of Turkey litter compost, and have planted 1,500 carrot seeds, 1,500 radish seeds, and 20 4″ broccoli plants.   We’ve made some minor repairs to the existing drip system, mulched the 3 beds with Alfalfa hay after planting, and have weeded and pruned the native perennial beds along the interior of the garden fence.

120 radish plants were harvested for the kitchen, and last fall’s broccoli plants are still sending out floretes, which are finally starting to turn bitter, signaling the end of the line for those plants.  Last year’s cilantro is taking over the world.  Last year’s leeks are ready to harvest this week.  We’ll be finishing the last round of cool-season planting in early March – swiss chard and spinach.  Gabriel Valley Farms is starting tomatoes, tomatillos, squash, cucumbers and epazote for us, to be ready to plant starting late March.  We’re also hoping to sneak in some other Mexican herbs this month.

We’ve been extra thankful for input from Farmer Jo at Angel Valley Farm in Jollyville, and Farmer “wish-I-was-a-real-Texan” Mike during our first month.  Looking forward to bugging them and others for the months to come.

Come by and check it out!  We had our first random visitor a couple weeks ago, an older gentleman from the neighborhood who just adopted his 3 grandchildren, and who wants to start gardening again for their sake.  I hope to have some starter plants for him next time he visits.

Ask any organic gardener, farmer, rancher, habitat restorationist, ecologist, agronomist, or organic landscaper – microbes are important.  (See Spring 2010 issue of EDIBLE AUSTIN for more.)  Microbes take a whole corner of the foundational soil triangle:  Microbes – Organic Content (Humus) – Soil Structure.  Beyond that, lack of research lends to a variety of opinions and approaches on the “right way” to support microbial communities in Central Texas soils.  So to take the least fanatical stance, I follow a simple path.

First, build organic matter in soil.   Most folks agree that soils need to have at least 3% organic content to sustain a balanced microbial population, but no higher than 10-15%.  Most disturbed soils in Austin have about 1% organic content.  We rely on soil tests to determine actual organic content for a specific landscape, and slowly apply compost (by topdressing) to get above 3%.  Not all composts are created equal, and different products present trade-offs among price, safety, microbial diversity and viability, and amount of humus, which is the end product of a completely finished product.  Everyone has their own opinion on the best compost, so I try to lay out the options, pros, and cons, and let the end user decide which is best for them.

Second, we consider the soil structure.  Ideal soil is porous, has a nice balance of drainage and water-holding capacity, and has a balanced set of nutrients in a form that makes it easy for plants to absorb them.  Most disturbed soils in Austin are compacted, have higher than ideal clay or rock content, and have nutrient imbalances.  Adding finished compost to soils introduces humus, which binds to clay particles to create crumbles and helps release nutrients that were otherwise tied up in the sticky clays.  In some cases, aeration combined with a compost application is a good first step in improving soil structure.  Proper mowing, irrigation, organic fertilizer application, and thoughtful use of the landscape all help avoid compaction and other soil structure issues.  A soil test can help create a customized soil amendment program, though topdressing with compost 1-2 times per year is usually not a bad general approach.

Then, once organic material is built up to at least 3%, and soil structure and nutrient balances are addressed, we can start building microbes.  The best way to do this is through compost teas.  Compost teas have exceptionally high concentrations of microbes, are relatively inexpensive, and easy to apply.  Most of our tea is purchased by an Austin-based company called Microbial Earth, though Natural Gardener and GeoGrowers also provide teas.

Because compost teas are basically little critter soups, timing is critical.  Although it doesn’t hurt to apply teas in winter and summer, the microbes will be mostly dormant during Austin weather extremes, so spring and fall are ideal application times.  Now is an ideal time to kick off a new season of compost tea applications.

Retail price for a gallon of tea is about $5-8, which can be applied using a simple 1- or 2-gallon pump sprayer.  1 gallon of tea covers about 5,000 square feet, slightly larger than the typical Austin yard.  You might consider a “drench” in early spring and again in late fall, which calls for 3-5 gallons of tea at a time, then follow up with a regular 1-gallon application every month through fall.  Our rates to apply the tea for you is about $35-40, in addition to the cost of the tea.