Oh, hon... if you're thinking of MOVING the whisky barrels, you'll need to put wheels on them or put them on some kind of wheely-deal. I can tell you from experience a whisky barrel full of soil and suck is STOOPID heavy and hard to move

Oh I know. I was counting the cost of wheels, and big skookum wheels. Besides DH vetoed that right out of the shoot.

i use a mover's dolly.

there is lots of information about planting whiskey barrels on the internet. But, in short for potatoes, you need good drainage. And good dirt. Plant the potatoes in the bottom of the barrel and cover with a small amount of dirt. When they sprout, add more until you have trained the plants to the top of the barrel. They will cascade to a certain extent. eventually the potato tubers will fill the whole barrel. You can also do sweet potatoes this way -- very beautiful leaves. Also you can lighten the weight of the barrels considerably by using a good proportion of vermiculite added to the potting soil. Beauty that you can eat.

Our friend in Alaska used Ida reds. This year I am growing sprouted purple potatoes from the grocery store that I never got around to eating.

that is a great idea. I have some of those felt bags that you can grow stuff in but I think I need something bigger and deeper. Have you ever heard of growing them in a 33 gallon barrel. But then how would the poor potatoes get sunshine. Heard of growing them in tires then just adding to the stack as they grow.

Cut down the barrel to whiskey barrel height. Bet you could make something like this, too.
http://parkseed.com/potato-gro...

Good idea on the barrel except I hate to ruin a good garbage can. The Park Seed gizmo is like what I have only mine are black and made out of some sort of heavy felt. I think the idea is that the black attracts the heat to the roots which is a really good idea up here.

Maybe you can find some barrels that can be recycled?

Hi Mary, I'm curious if you know of anyone in your area who's attempted this kind of lawn to garden makeover? Maybe advisable to get some local input? How long does it take cardboard or even layered newspaper to decompose in your garden?

Yeah, that is my concern. I am attending a Cooperative Extension workshop this weekend with a speaker from UW and a local person. I need to write down these questions. thanks. I would probably not have thought of it and just sort of soaked up what they were talking about and not taken the opportunity to ask. We do have a permaculture group here that I need to join. Just found out about them a month or so again at the Annual Botanical Garden workshops. They offer a course but it's $800. Might be worth it if you figure on saved time, but a lot of it might not be applicable to my situation. I am assuming that stuff rots slowly here because of the cold. Can't imagine it does much for many months of the year due to our long winter and slow spring. course we have nice long falls that are pretty nice. Less rain than summer at least.
Mary

Mary, I've been pondering quite a bit on the matter of your soil freezing and needing the sun's rays to warm it up to thaw it.

Do you have any stones around? Stones, rock, brick, etc, are heat sinks for the sunshine. It seems to me that using rock as much as possible will provide you with a way to capture and store the sun's energy. It wouldn't make a gigantic difference, but every little bit helps. I bet the south facing side of a pretty good and heavy stone would be at least half a zone higher.

Absolutely. Several of the beds have large stones in them and they always melt off first. And the pond has huge stones in and around. I think the little hummock to the west of the pond always thaws out first because it is getting the heat generated by the stones getting sun from sunup to almost sundown. It would be interesting to see if I put several large stones in the bottom of my little 24"dx36"wx48"h rolling greenhouse (left out the wire shelf on the bottom so the stones sit on the deck) what diff it would make in the temp at night. Would be a neat experiment.

I attended a workshop put on my the master gardener group here. One of the speakers was a Ph.D from University of Washington. I was a little unnerved when she was adamant about not putting cardboard or newspaper down on a bed -- in this case a new one. She said that the layer of cardboard and water even when covered by dirt or/and compost would prevent water and gas exchange if too wet or two dry. She is really hot on wood chips as the primo mulch as long as it is on top. It will prevent weed growth and you can easily plant growing plants in it. Just not seeds. Dave, would you take a look at "The Informed Gardener" by Linda Chalker-Scott and help me to understand her take on some issues that seem diametrically opposite to what I have been reading. I am getting really confused. I should say that her big thing is that is something is not supported by scientific testing then it should not be recommended by say Master gardeners or the Cooperative Extension.

I have in the past heard PhD professors give bad and wrong information.

I have heard master gardeners give bad information (none in my county, of course!! )

I have heard many extension agents give wrong information.

People have what they have, and we generally all repeat what we have learned from others or from our own experiences. When those experiences differ then different conclusions are drawn and we can become dogmatic about an idea.

There is a whole universe of people who believe that cardboard is excellent as the first layer of a new bed. I believe this PhD lecturer is simply wrong to be adamant against the use of cardboard in any circumstance.

QUOTE: I have in the past heard PhD professors give bad and wrong information.

I worked for many years in a field situation, where the workers (usually pre-PhDs, graduates and undergraduates) who have 4 or 5 years of experience in on site observations, would moan and groan when a new PhD was assigned to us. It takes a PhD many years of intensive theoretical training and writing to get a degree, but usually he has no practical experience. I would be leary of the advice a PhD gives unless he "dirty fingernails", ie practical experience.

I use cardboard to choke out the viney invasives in my yard. It works. But so far I have to do it every year and sometimes more often, or the invasives will be back. I have also tried wood chips (which I have to buy). They do not work. Also you certainly can plant through wet cardboard. Just punch a hole in it.

She did indicate that cardboard was okay in decorative beds that were tended regularly. And I would think that punching a hole in it would get around the problem of layering that she says causes the problems. So you are saying to put the cardboard and newspapers on the bottom layer? then soil, compost material, then planting soil?

And apparently she is primarily a tree person. She definitely gets her nails dirty where trees are concerned judging by slides she showed. Well, I will read her books with a very open and thoughtful mind.

Using cardboard to prepare soil for planting is a form of sheet composting. Theoretically you have soil layered with a type of vegetation you don't want. The cardboard will turn the vegetation into humus and prepare your soil for planting. In this area,the hot and humid South, by the end of summer the cardboard has disintegrated and all you have is soil and the former vegetation turned into humus. By then I have planted what I want in the spaces between the cardboard, or through holes punched in the cardboard. And I may even add more cardboard to mulch around my new plants.

The Gulf Coast area where I am is sometimes call "subtropical". I have a lot of vegetation and my soil is quite fertile -- so it grows a lot of vegetation that I don't want. The cardboard turns the unwanted vegetation it into soil that I can use to grow what I do want. Some people don't like the look of cardboard, so they cover it with mulch of some kind.


If your soil is not good and you want to add manure or compost, I would put it under the cardboard. I don't see the point of adding soil over the cardboard. Its sole purpose is to deprive the underlying vegetation of sunlight, so that it will disintegrate. The cardboard will also disintegrate. Adding more on top of the cardboard would seem to me to slow down the process.

However, if there is wind you may need to keep the cardboard from blowing away. And, as I said before, somepeople don't like the way cardboard looks, so they put something on top of it that looks better to them.

I get it. Thanks. I will have to figure out what I am actually trying to accomplish. I tend to just blast out there and start 'doing' before I have a real plan. It works if you want to get the ball rolling but it tends to be very uneconomical in time and materials.