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Post by steev on Jan 11, 2016 22:28:36 GMT -5
To have a really closed system, you can't have out-flows like products to sell or a septic system taking nutrients out of availability; you need lots of plant to capture sunlight to compost; you need trees to (re)capture nutrients that are or have gotten below the reach of your smaller plants; you need a soil that is not lacking, nor over-supplied with, any essential nutrients. Think artificially-constructed space colony. I have no likelihood of any such closed system in the near future, if ever; I haul in a load of organic material every week, my soil being very OM-deficient; so long as I'm commuting to farm, I'll continue this practice, the improvement being marked. I regret not having been able to sub-soil my beds before my neighbor went loony, making it desirable to sell my share of the tractor and implements to him, thereby losing its use, but ridding me of him. Given my lack of interest in industrial farming or even small-scale commercial farming, Sukie works for me. All I need is to reliably produce more food than I and mine want to eat, giving the excess to my ranching neighbors, who have an excess of manure; one hand washes the other (not sure that's quite appropriate, manure being in the mix, but you know).
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Post by reed on Jan 12, 2016 12:09:05 GMT -5
The easiest thing for me to use for mulch (which composts with use) is great big weeds. Thistles and horse weeds are easiest to gather in large amounts. Iron weed and goldenrod are good too, even Johnson grass. Just harvest it all right before it blooms and lay it between rows and in paths. Big green burdock leaves are best mulch ever. All these things are abundant where I live. I also bury a lot of it but I don't do much double digging, I just run the tiller and shovel out the dirt. Corn stalks are great also and I'm hoping my sun roots will take off good and provide another easy source and a food crop too.
Tree leaves, crass clippings, straw and the like are OK but I think I get much more mass for less work with the weeds.
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Post by richardw on Jan 12, 2016 14:25:45 GMT -5
For a person who spends much of my time bare footed Thistles would be no good for me layed down on paths, though i do use them in baths full of water, in time they dissolve away and ends up poured around the garden.
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Post by reed on Jan 12, 2016 19:26:58 GMT -5
I go barefooted a lot too and it can be a problem with thistles, on the good side rabbits don't like stepping on them either. That really helped back before I had fences. Never thought of turning them into liquid fertilizer.
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Post by steev on Jan 12, 2016 19:32:09 GMT -5
Since I have plenty of weeds that grow in my planting lanes, I prefer to mulch/compost them in my tree-lanes; I tend not to get much weeding done among my veggies, so I get mature weeds, whose seeds I don't want to mix into my veggie beds, except for bindweed and puncture vine, which I attack on sight.
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Post by richardw on Jan 13, 2016 12:06:24 GMT -5
Just looked up puncture vine..ouch!!not a weed to have around where barefooted gardeners tread.
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Post by raymondo on Jan 13, 2016 16:49:34 GMT -5
No bare foot gardening here. Too many damn snakes!
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Post by richardw on Jan 13, 2016 19:25:46 GMT -5
No bare foot gardening here. Too many damn snakes! You would be shocked if you saw my orchard with grass up shoulder high raymondo |
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Post by prairiegarden on Jan 18, 2016 10:26:50 GMT -5
I couldn't find the same article but this deals with the story about record yields in India. It seems as though it isn't strictly the same as biodynamic but it is definitely not big ag type of farming, and as such another article I found said it was meeting with derision and disbelief by all the university and company researchers..so what else is new. Nevertheless it seems to be growing in acceptance.. YAY for the internet when such information can be moved into the wider world! ourworld.unu.edu/en/how-millions-of-farmers-are-advancing-agriculture-for-themselves |
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Post by prairiegarden on Jan 18, 2016 10:33:13 GMT -5
One thing to note is that these are small fields and as such are significant for the majority of farmers in less developed countries who tend to have small plots of land, unlike the US or Canada with these several thousand acres owned by one family... or company. Scale is important and this system may well be absolutely impractical for huge farms..but that's only a bad thing for a very few; the alternative is a bad thing for the vast majority. (not even taking into consideration the environmental, health and social costs of industrial ag.
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Post by flowerweaver on Jan 30, 2016 12:08:58 GMT -5
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Post by samyaza on Jan 30, 2016 16:06:59 GMT -5
My opinion on double digging may be new age gardening. I would never take the risk to mix humus with source rock. I'd rather mulch a lot to attract life and let it do the work for me. If I have land of my own one day, I'd like it to be similar to forest soil or compost : swarming of life ripping and feeding it constantly.
On the other hand, I think intensification is desirable. It's not an option for suburban gardeners, for exemple.
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Post by shoshannah on Aug 18, 2016 23:00:46 GMT -5
 This was my garden in about 1979-1980. Second year, so raised beds are lower than the first year. I didn't do a full double dig, but I did go deeper than 12 inches. This is a combination of bio-intensive and Peter Chan raised beds. Alderman peas have been harvested. Jubilee corn in the back. I really like the wider beds and got more vegetables than straight rows. |
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Post by steev on Aug 19, 2016 1:14:04 GMT -5
I found my old Troybilt tiller went deeper than my current BCS, but Sukie gets deeper each go-around, so it'll all work out. I've never quite seen the point of double-digging, although subsoil ripping seems useful and less laborious.
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