The public is invited to join The Belfast Garden Club’s Open Garden Days from 10am to 4pm on August 27th at the Biebel Garden, 242 Fisher Road, Monroe. Visitors will discover a large organic experimental and eclectic vegetable and flower garden with soil that never needs to be plowed or rototilled due to its rich start as a “lasagna-method” garden. With this method, seedlings and seeds are started in a healthy prepared humus created by layering manure, cardboard, and straw or hay directly on the grass. Demonstrations of how to create your own lasagna-method garden will take place at 10am and again at 2pm on Friday. An informational hand-out describing the process as well as organic garden pest control methods will also be available.
The garden was started in 2001 after Lynn and Charlie Biebel were inspired by a lasagna-method gardening demonstration at MOFGA’s Common Ground Fair. That fall they began by preparing layer upon layer of manure, cardboard, and brown materials laid down in a good sized plot beside the house. The planting site was in an area that had been a garden 20 years prior, as evidenced by a rhubarb patch and hearty dill which still remained, but had become an overgrown field which had not been tilled for a dozen or more years. Switchgrass and woody shrubs had overrun the area, but the hope was that over the winter their lasagna layers would block the sun from reaching roots of the weeds in the field, and the manure and brown matter would work itself (with the help of microbes and earthworms) into a rich humus, leaving the garden ready for planting in the spring without the work (and petroleum) of using a rototiller. Low and behold, in the spring of 2002, the Biebels were excited to discover that the switchgrass roots were dissolved, worms were plentiful, and a thick, rich soil was ready to produce an abundance of food. With a garden fork and a spade, Lynn and Charlie hand-turned the sections where they wanted to set seeds and seedlings, and the garden was planted!
Today, cheerful heavily mulched rows of squash, zucchini, tomatoes, flowers and greens flourish in the rich soil the Biebel’s have created. Vegetables are interspersed with flowers for visual interest and to attract pollinators. Some perennial favorites such as bee balm (enclosed in a hoop to keep from spreading), hollyhocks, and feverfew have found their way into the “annual” garden as well. Birdhouses attract swallows, bluebirds and phoebes who do a great job of eating mosquitoes and garden pests. “Birds add life, fun and a sense of well-being to our garden,” say Lynn and Charlie in their garden handout.
Each year has brought new successes, small expansions of the garden, new varieties of vegetables, and unique challenges to troubleshoot. Though they rotate crops to confuse pests, and avoid any disease that has wintered over, employ the use of row covers to protect fragile seedlings, and encourage insect loving predators such as birds, this year the Biebel’s experienced an especially high number of insects and pests. They speculate that last year’s wet summer, in combination with a relatively mild winter may have helped produce the boom in garden destroyers: slugs, earwigs, and cucumber beetle.
Despite this year’s challenges of extra pests and a dry, near-drought summer, the Biebels report a hefty return from their garden: “We have eaten, shared or ‘put up’ three succession plantings of spinach, beets, and lettuce as well as enjoyed rhubarb, herbs, peas, quarts of raspberries (the Everbearing, have everborn!), high bush blueberries, and chard.” Visitors to the garden will see the garden at the height of harvest for broccoli, cucumbers, squash, zucchini, tomatoes, beans, kale, Brussel sprouts, and peppers. In addition, visitors will enjoy seeing an experimental raised hoop-house of asian greens, and a picturesque creeping thyme garden as well as the company of the modest and delightful Biebels themselves!
The Biebels will give two demonstrations on Friday on how to set up a lasagna-style garden at 10am and again at 2pm in a section of the lawn where they plan to move their raspberry plants next spring.
Directions to the Biebel Garden at 242 Fisher Road, Monroe (roughly a 30 minute drive from Belfast): Take Rt.1 north from Belfast to Rt.141, travel to the end at the intersection of Rt.141 and Rt.139 (stop sign). Turn right on Rt.139, cross the bridge and turn right on Stream Road. Travel approximately 2 miles to Fisher Road on left. House is 2 miles from intersection, across road from mailbox marked, “242”. Park along the driveway, please. As you get close, look for the yellow Garden Club arrows to help direct you.
Tickets can be purchased at each garden on the day of the tour for a donation of $4. Proceeds from the 2010 Open Garden Days will benefit the Belfast Garden Club’s civic beautification projects.
The 5th annual Belfast Garden Club Open Garden Days winds up Friday, September 10 at the Troy Howard Middle School Garden, 173 Lincolnville Ave., Belfast.
Over 100 varieties of vegetables and beautiful flowers in 1 acre+ of gardens designed & grown by middle school students for wholesale & retail; greenhouses, outdoor pizza oven, dome trellises for squash and cucumbers, farm stand and student-led tours.
For more information call: Diane Allmayer-Beck at 338-3105 or Martha Laitin at 948-2815.
