The Mad Gardener of Bowlus

In three of my gardens I use a Native American technique known as the three sisters. It was a form of companion gardening and crop rotation where corn, squash, and beans are planted together. The beans add nitrogen to the soil while the corn and pumpkins use nitrogen. The idea is to use pole beans which will use the corn plant as a pole, the beans can also help anchor the corn down! The pumpkins grow and their leaves form a natural mulch that both shades out weeds and the ground from the hot sun thereby helping with soil retention.

I was hoping to actually plant peas today but mother nature sent us some rain. Not going to complain as the ground was getting a bit dry. However, I was able to get the panels up for the peas to climb! That is definitely the most labor intensive part of the project!

Today's project was to get Garden #1 cleaned up (it was a bale garden last year) and tilled. So I gathered up what was left of last years bales and put them on the pile (added some nitrogen) so they could compost for a couple of weeks and then went a head and got them tilled. I will post later what a "Three Sisters Garden" means but this will be the garden that I plant my pop corn, "big" pumpkins, and beans in!

In 2017 the neighbor cut down a grove of trees to make room for a new garage, the company he hired to do the job ran all the trees through a chipping machine. Since I can never seem to get my hands on enough organic material I walked over and asked if they would mind dumping some on my land. They asked me how much I wanted and I told them as much as I could get my grubby little hands on! It was somewhat humorous (at least I thought it was) that they would ask after every five loads or so if I was still okay with them bringing more and I assured them that I was quite happy!

Bales are laid out, soaker hoses in place, nitrogen applied, and heavy mulching between the bales done! I will be posting photos of the entire project at a later time. Next steps is to water daily, adding more fertilizer, and putting up wire panels for the beans, peas, and other vine plants to grow on!

Who is up for a following directions game! A fun game to play while you are stuck at home and you can't start your garden yet!

I promise it is fun!

Please read these instructions in their entirety before starting!

To all the educators out there rushing to get content online. I have some experience with this and can tell you that the first couple weeks are the hardest. You are not failing! You are learning and you are guiding both parents and children through this process. Keep up the good work!

As the sap continues to boil down it will turn more and more brown and become sweet! I enjoy taste testing it! There are two ways to determine when you are done, the first is when the temperature is 220 F and the second is with the use of a hydrometer (which is far more accurate). Keep in mind that when syrup is hot it is going to seem thinner than what it is once it cools down!

I plan to post the actual finishing process tomorrow but just had to share!

As I mentioned in my Pails of Sap post sap has a sugar concentration of about 2% and before it can be syrup the concentration should be 66%. That is achieved by removing the water and you remove the water by boiling the sap! It takes approximately 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of water. It definitely is a time intensive process that takes a lot of patience!

Early in the season I often boil in the house just a couple words of caution

In roughly 24 hours we were able to gather 12 gallons of sap! Not the high flow for a single day but certainly nothing to complain about!

Sap begins to flow as soon as temperatures fluctuate above and below the freezing point. Typically this means day time temps are above freezing and night time temps are below freezing as days tend to be warmer than nights. However, if you have a really cold day where it is below freezing followed by a warm night, where it is above freezing, sap will flow!

While it may not be "gardening" it has become a yearly tradition to harvest our own maple sap!

This year three trees are tapped and each tree has three taps!

I do not have a fancy system where tubes run to a sugar sap but I was able to get my hands onto some four gallons, food grade, pails complete with covers that already had holes drilled in them. Very handy for being able to collect sap and not have all kinds of debris land in them!

Is important to check daily since I have had them fill up in a 24 hour time period!

* This page is actively being authored - I'll be adding more photos once the 2020 growing season is underway! *

Bale Gardening, as the name implies, is growing your fruits and vegetables in bales (hay or straw) rather than in the soil. It is advantageous for the following reasons:

*More Coming soon*

No we are not talking about trying to grow lasagna in your garden! Lasagna Gardening is an organic gardening technique that is typically no till where the gardener puts down layers of organic material that decays over time and adds nutrients to the soil. It also has the advantage of acting as a weed barrier and helping with moisture retention. Ideally you start creating the garden in the fall but it is possible to do it early spring. Use the following steps.

I use a technique where I plant potatoes using a form of Lasagna Gardening where I place the potatoes down on the soil and then put a nice layer of hay on top of them. As the season progresses I "hill" with additional hay and/or grass clippings. This virtually eliminates the weeds and the amount of digging I have to do and as the hay/grass decays it adds nutrients to the soil.