Photo by Michael Feldmann
Soil is much more than simple dirt. On close inspection, garden soil is a complex mixture of mineral particles, organic materials, moisture, living organisms and chemical nutrients. Different soil types contain different amounts of minerals and nutrients, providing different levels of plant life improvement. The quality of crops depends on the top soil, the nutritional value in which they grow.
In order for the crop harvested from the fields to be rich and healthy, a farmer would do well to know the basic properties of the soil, its types and preparation rules before planting plants. There are over 20,000 soil varieties worldwide. But the most common and important types of soils are six main groups of soils: clay, sandy, silty, peaty, chalky and loamy. Each of them has its own good properties, and it is important to know them in order to make the best choice and get the most for your garden.
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Hoophouse lettuce Green Forest and Red Salad Bowl. Photo by Wren Vile
I have written posts for Mother Earth about winter lettuce and Growing Lettuce Year Round, and I have a year (May to April) of postings about suitable lettuce varieties for each month on my website Sustainable Market Farming. The Lettuce Year Round article is mostly about scheduling your sowings to provide an unbroken supply of lettuce, no shortages or gluts, using succession planting techniques. Here I’m going to focus on varieties and strategies that work best early in the year.
I like to sow four lettuce varieties each time (for the attractive harvests, and to reduce the risks if one variety bolts or suffers disease): at least one red and one romaine. If you choose varieties with different numbers of days to maturity, you will stretch the harvest period (and get more choice each time you harvest).
Utilize a seed inventory to keep track of the seeds you've saved and to save money. I track replenishment, seed expiration dates, harvest dates and more.
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Photo by Unsplash/Cherry Laithang
The first step in the permaculture design process is observation on site. In the northern hemisphere, creating thermal mass to the garden’s north provides a warming effect.
The northern edge of the garden also has the opportunity to house a vertical strutter that can bolster harvests for small spaces. We erected a vertical wall where we grow herbs on the vertical in pockets, and artichokes and Jerusalem artichokes atop the wooden structure. Our garden receives approximately 150 pounds of herbs and produce on this added urban garden vertical system.
Photo by Joshua Burman Thayer
Increase Edges and Margins