The Secret Behind a Successful Organic Garden
With my own garden growing increasingly haggard and brown, I set off early Saturday morning in search of a little inspiration, and I found it (as well as enough veggies to feed an army) on Caswell Avenue just a mile southeast of my house. I had heard all about Suzie and John Warren’s garden; if you live in Austin and have any interest at all in gardening it would be hard not to.
Less than six months old, the garden has become something of a mecca for gardening enthusiasts. John Dromgoole, the organic gardening guru and owner of the Natural Gardener, recently filmed it for his “Backyard Basics” segment on KLRU’s Central Texas Gardener. Garden designers from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center have stopped by to take a look. Even UT students have taken an interest; one of them took pictures of it for a photo assignment, which was judged to be the best in a class of over 400 students. It is also the first vegetable garden to be given a Green Garden Award by the City of Austin. In all, over 200 people have taken a tour of this garden, and on Saturday I joined their ranks.
What makes this garden so special? Not only is pleasant to look at, it also produces a ridiculous amount of food. Whereas so many gardens in Central Texas are now withering in the heat, the Warrens’ garden is—to use Suzie’s word—“boomin’.” For the past two and a half months, it has supplied enough vegetables to feed Suzie, her husband John, her son, his wife, two other couples in the neighborhood, and an assortment of friends. What’s their secret? How have they succeeded where so many others have failed? That’s what I was hoping to find out.
I was amused to discover that the yard where the garden sits was once riddled with lugustrums and hackberry trees, just as mine is now. With help from some of their neighbors, the Warrens chopped down all of these trees, and then sent a soil sample off to the Soil, Water and Forage Testing Laboratory at Texas A&M. They discovered that, like most lots in Central Texas, their soil was high in phosphorous but otherwise safe for gardening.
Next they had two truckloads of soil from Garden Ville dumped on their yard, which they used to make a raised bed nearly a foot high. (In retrospect, they would have preferred to have purchased the soil from the Natural Gardener as the soil from Garden Ville contained some dreaded ragweed.) To keep the garden well watered, they installed a drip irrigation system hooked up to four 75-gallon rain barrels that collect rain water off their roof. Because the rain barrels are only about two feet off the ground (see picture), they don’t always produce enough water pressure. As a remedy, local permaculture expert Dick Pierce recommended the Warrens buy a “sprinkler hose” from Breed & Co., which at such low pressure would act just like a soaker hose.
This all seemed like fairly standard operating procedure so I pressed Suzie a little harder. Her garden looked like an oasis in a desert. When I visited, it was at the peak of production. There were big, fat, round, healthy fruits and vegetables everywhere I looked, eggplants as purple and shiny as Barney’s forehead, watermelons and cantaloupes begging to be smashed and feasted upon, chard as high as my knee. Carrots? Check. Beans? Check. Only the tomatoes looked a little off because some pesky stink bugs had found them.
I pressed Suzie for the secret to her success. She suggested cottonseed meal, which they had spread liberally throughout the garden. But I knew that wasn’t it because I had done the same. Finally, after retrieving a little boom box from inside the house, she produced an answer that satisfied me: music. Since the garden’s inception in the spring, she has been playing music for her plants every day. She swears they like Wilson Pickett the best.
Tags: organic gardening, rain barrels, raised beds
July 14th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Be sure to find rain barrels which offer mesh mosquito guards, and also look for barrels which have overflow valves-allowing the excess water to flow out of the rain barrels and away from your foundation. Hooking a drip hose to this valve is a great way to give your garden or flower bed a constant source of moisture.
July 14th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Hi Storms!
Lol, I did not realize I was speaking to a published author last Saturday. If I had known I probably would have interviewed you! I’m a bonafide bookworm and now, a bloghound, thanks to you.
I’ve been reading through your previous posts and all about your project and I gotta say, Wow! All the subjects are very relevant to us all and I will definitely be following your progress and learn from your victories and your mistakes. (hopefully there won’t be any of those.)
But if there are…… just think about it as a lesson to be learned, I do that daily in my garden; every other phrase out of my mouth starts with, “Next year I’m going to………. plant more artichokes around the perimeter of the garden, cage the tomatoes instead of bamboo stakes, plant more borage to keep the bees even happier, put up a low perch for our mockingbird in the middle of the garden so it can swoop down and catch the bugs (it leaves our tomatoes alone ’cause I put a sacrificial tomato out in the middle of a path every two days), plant the corn in trenches and fill in as they grow …….etc, to improve the amount of the production and the beauty of the garden. Lol, it’s hard to stop talking about, anyhow, I’m super impressed with your website and all the best to you and your cutie son,
Please feel free to stop by anytime. Right now I’m starting some of the seedlings for the Fall garden. Cabbage, brocolli, brussel sprouts, etc. I have some extra seedsofchange.com heirloom seeds if you would like them. Let me know,
Best regards,
Suzie
July 14th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Great rain barrel image - We made our own from kits we purchased from http://www.aquabarrel A small impeller pump is used to move the water uphill to the garden instead of trying to put them up on blocks to get the rain barrels higher then the garden area.
July 15th, 2008 at 1:02 am
It is good to find a garden to inspire & renew one’s energy! Our HRH Prince Charles is said to talk to his plants. Music & talking is good for us all!
July 15th, 2008 at 11:11 am
I sew that you grow carrots. According to my experience, using earthworms helps to boost their size.
July 15th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Thanks for the heads-up on that gorgeous rain barrel, ERB. That’s pretty enough to put up by the entrance to our house and water the front beds, if it ever rains again …… It’s been pretty dry here lately and we’ve been in the high 90s and triple digits. I’m tempted to go out and do a rain dance!
Hi Sue!
I think you just solved our problem with the water pressure. Dick Pierce suggested switching out our drip T Tape system for the soaking hose sorta system, but we just put this one in and I’d like to get a few years out of it. I went to the aqua site but did not see the impeller pump listed. Do they sell them individually? I’ll probably give them a call tomorrow. I hope it runs on electricity as I’m planning on putting solar mylar on the garage roof next to the garden, it should be available here soon, fingers crossed that the mylar works as advertised. Thanks again,
Top Veg, wow, you have a great site. I’ve been reading up on how to plant leeks and I loved your veg face! Lol! I marked your site as a favorite.
Hi Omer!
Yes, earthworms are great for the soil, we have a lot. And lol, those were the leftover carrots that we accidentally planted ‘cause the seeds were so small, lol, I need better glasses I guess. We pulled all the big carrots about two weeks ago, it was getting too hot for them. I wish I could see all ya’lls gardens and pick up some tips, you’re a nice group here.
Sincerely,
Suzie