Tickling the Bed vs. Defensive Gardening

                 According to a recent article, “In the spring, you just need to tickle the bed if you are using the no dig method.”  No need for roto-tillers, no need for back breaking labor, just tickle the bed with the metal tined rake  and lay down your seeds. Maybe in bucolic Britain, I thought. Here in my urban corner of the Pacific Northwest, I practice a much more defensive system of veg gardening that begins in October.  Each bed experiences:

Mulching with leaves in the fall—weed control.

Chicken

tractoring—break down the leaves into organic matter. Pill bug and slug egg destruction.

Seed selecting—what will actually grow here?

Seed starting—prevents wireworms from eating all of the pea seeds, slugs from taking out the early greens, pill bugs from munching through the zucchini vines, etc. Also allows me to space my plants and not waste seed.

Monitoring the starts—bring in when really cold. Check for water every day.  Cheer them on.

Tossing the bed—All of our gardening is by hand, no machines, unless you count Mark’s push mower. We pitchfork over the bed at least twice. Once in the winter to work the leaves and chicken poop in and again right before planting to break up the big clumps.

Planting—this takes about half an hour to plant an entire 10 by 4 foot bed. Even if I have to paint a sign.

Laying hoses—after planting, the soaker hoses go down for the summer. It’s easier now, rather than in June.

Hooping— Five metal hoops, one large sheet of plastic protect against hail, rabbit munching, squirrels digging up hazelnuts, cat poop, blue jays, etc.

Transplanting to four inch pots-- all of the extra starts are bumped up to four inch pots, watered, labeled,  and moved back into the greenhouse.

Replanting next week—some of the bumped up starts are used to replant.  The rest go into the random plants bed at the school garden.

Shooing the cat out of the hooped bed; despite my best efforts, she loves to nap under plastic.

Fencing—finally, when the hooping comes down, I staple low fencing around the entire bed for the rabbit.

Mulching—with straw this time for weed control and moisture retention.

Weeding and harvest.