Ep. 124 - Creating a New Garden Bed with Milpa

Thriving The Future Podcast

Grow Food, Not Lawns

How to Create a new garden bed with Milpa

How you create a new garden bed depends on what time of the year it is. Most people sheet mulch by covering an area with cardboard, then layers of compost and woodchips. This works well, but only if you do it in the Fall AND you get lots of rain in the Winter to break down the cardboard. This year we had lots of snow in January and the bed that I created last Fall broke down pretty well, although while digging a hole in the new bed to plant a hazelnut bush, I dug up a piece of cardboard that wasn't completely broken down.

To Use Cardboard or Not Use Cardboard?

Permaculture leaders, like Ben Falk and Paul Wheaton, are increasingly warning against using cardboard as the base when creating new garden beds over lawn grass. And scientists warn against using cardboard as well.

Cardboard reportedly has dioxin and PFAs and "forever chemicals". The article also says that cardboard inhibits soil life. Only plastic sheet mulching is worse (supposedly).

I use Milpa to create new garden beds

In the Spring, I don't have time to wait for the cardboard to break down. I would lose the entire planting season.

My soil is compacted heavy clay, with little worm activity in places, so I would have to add a large amount of woodchips and compost to get something to plant in. And the grass always manages to poke through and take over anyway.

So I take my trusty Meadow Creature Broadfork and turn over the sod. Then I add a layer of compost. I sow with a Milpa seed mix, and then cover with a light layer of woodchips.

Milpa Seed – Buy or Mix Your Own Seed

What is Milpa? It is a mix of seeds, usually with the Three Sisters - corn, squash, and beans - as the core plants. Beans to add nitrogen, corn to provide structure, and squash to grow up the corn or out. Milpa also has other seeds, with a focus to grow as much food as possible on a small garden plot. It sometimes can have buckwheat, okra, cucumbers, greens, radishes, or anything that you want.

The idea is to spread out the harvest through the seasons as well.

I mix my own mix of Milpa seeds:

• Grazing corn or Strawberry corn - something that is shorter. Mix it lightly.
• Red ripper cowpeas, which work well in heavy clay soil.
• Buckwheat
• Cucumbers
• Squash that I have leftover or I get from a Spring seed swap.
• Pollinators.

You will get a dominant crop based on when you plant. If you plant early in the Spring, the buckwheat and beans will be dominant and the squash will be shaded out. If later in the season (late May, early June) then the squash will become dominant.

By using this technique you can create a new garden bed with minimal effort, avoid using cardboard, and get an abundant crop in the first year (even with poor clay soil). At the end of the season chop and drop the chaff from the buckwheat and beans to mulch for the Winter.

Episode website: https://ThrivingtheFuture.com/milpa-garden-bed.

Sponsors:

• Grow Nut Trees: Elderberry cuttings are still available but Hurry before they come out of dormancy. Now have pecan seedlings and red mulberry seedlings. At GrowNutTrees.com.
• Check out the Companion Planting Guide on AllGardenAdvice.com