Cultivating a small field with more than a hoe!

[MyKidLuvsGreenEgz]

We only have 2 little ole acres, and about 1 acre is the house, driveway, goat/chicken areas, backyard, veggie garden, etc. Another 1/2 acre will be fruit and nut trees. So basically we have less than 1/2 an acre of "field" ... oats, corn, millet, milo, sunflowers, etc. We have the money to get a driving lawnmower and a "cultivator" attachment behind it but honestly ... I'm trying to get away from using gas for everything!

Does anyone have a recommendation on a "plow" or something that maybe we could bike-ride around the field, or train our nigerian dwarf wether to pull? Or even a hand-puller.

I'm thinking after one year of intense cultivating, then growing, then letting the goats and chickens devour/fertilize, it should be okay the next spring with a light hoeing. It's really not very big.

Thoughts?

 

[sunsaver]

Once you get the sod broken up with a tiller and some good compost and organic humus worked in, you could probably get away with just using a high wheel cultivator. Heres a link:

http://www.lehmans.com/store/Garden...ting___High_Wheel_Cultivator___13310214?Args=

 

[Joel_BC]

Does anyone have a recommendation on a "plow" or something that maybe we could bike-ride around the field, or train our nigerian dwarf wether to pull? Or even a hand-puller.

I'm thinking after one year of intense cultivating, then growing, then letting the goats and chickens devour/fertilize, it should be okay the next spring with a light hoeing. It's really not very big.

Thoughts?

Depends quie a bit on soil factors. Light, sandy (or sandy/silty) soils might be less of a problem than heavy (clay, or clay/silt) soils. Im talking about the mineral soil, beneath the uppermost organic layer. A lot of the world's more productive soils have been fairly heavy, which is why some sort of plow, pulled by an ox or a draft horse, has been used so much for many centuries.

If you have a pretty sandy soil, and have dealt with the sod, you could hand cultivate. There are a few tools that might be an advance over a simple hoe. So, yeah, check out the Lehman's catalogue and similar sources.

 

[~gd]

Remember that in many locations you may be able to borrow or rent a tiller. We had a neighbor that used to plow our garden spot for us as his good deed of the week. we were out there spading and he come by and offered he had his plow mounted on his tractor as he was clearing ditches and the job was done in maybe 15 minutes. He told us to let it dry a bit and then we could chop it up with a hoe in far less time than we could turn it with spades. later he came by again and told us to skake out what we might want plowed and he would hit it when he had the plow mounted. He told us to our face that he thought we were nuts but anybody that would work that hard he just had to help since it cost him nothing.

 

[Theo]

We have your problem--about 2 acres of lawn, brush and weedy pasture, one push lawn mower, one weed whacker with attachments (12" cultivator). For the last three years we've rented a walk behind brush hog to clear blackberry bushes and heavy brush. We rent a heavy duty walk behind tiller to prepare the garden, and we use the small cultivator to keep weeds down. The weed whacker with attachments has been very handy. We have a service contract on it and the lawn mower, and we get our money's worth out of it. We get them tuned in spring, and they get a lot of hard use.

I realized we wouldn't be able to have a big garden and keep ahead of the weeds in the old pasture, so I started lasagna gardening. The soil is clay and really hard packed (it was overgrazed by horses). Putting cardboard on top of the soil and layering it with straw, leaves, stall manure and dirt makes good beds. You can start the beds in the fall and plant in the spring. The cardboard suppresses the weeds and encourages worms to break up the soil. Eventually the cardboard disintegrates, and you're left with a deep bed full of humus. No power tools involved, just your own labor. So far I have finished 1 bed for blueberries, and I am working on a second.

I have a friend who did her very large garden this way--she spent a year collecting cardboard and gathering free materials to go on top. She has poultry that provide the manure. She composted all of her kitchen garbage in the garden. She got leaves from neighbors and talked people into giving her free rotten straw bales. Now she has a very fertile garden with great tilth. She adds more mulch every year.

My city utility board offers free "chips", which are shredded and chips tree limbs and trimmings from the power line crew. You just call them, they deliver 4 yards of material to your place. I am going to get all the chips I can and put them on top of the cardboard. I'll buy more horse manure--I found a source for $4 a small truckload. I'll also mix in some alfalfa pellets to heat up the pile. I'll sheet compost this, cover it up with a piece of plastic and let it cook down until next spring.

Although I think with a lot of work we could transform the entire pasture, I still want to buy an old 1950's era tractor a friend of mine is selling. It can do so many things around the place: mowing, brush hogging, cultivating. Our local implement store will rent post hole augers and whatnot. The price of the tractor is half that of a decent heavy rider mower.

 

[Mattemma]

I have been digging up my acre lot by hand for years now. Cleared a lot of brush by hand for our fencing. It is tedious work to dig up the lawn for a garden bed only to have it reclaimed by grass and weeds. Now I will use landscape timber to create a block,and I build UP in each by adding poo,garden scraps,leaves,and soil.Whatever breaks down. On the top goes some good composted soil to plant in. Tired of redigging each of the garden beds yearly! I have seen lots with a huge open areas for planting.Not a weed in sight.My neighbor has one that they garden in. I see him with a small titer each spring. Me, I will stick to hand digging and garden boxes. Best wishes!

https://picasaweb.google.com/mattemma06

 

[Denim Deb]

Theo, if you lived closer, I'd let you have all the horse manure you want for free!

 

[Beekissed]

Does anyone have a recommendation on a "plow" or something that maybe we could bike-ride around the field, or train our nigerian dwarf wether to pull? Or even a hand-puller.

Depending just how deeply you want to plant/cultivate, some folks just run some electric fencing around a spot like that and turn in a few pigs or so and let them dig up the land for them....and fertilize as they do so. I don't know how many you'd need for your space or how long it would take but it sure would be interesting to see what you could grow afterwards.

Here's some folks who have tried it:

http://journeytoforever.org/farm_pig.html

 

[hqueen13]

Theo, if you lived closer, I'd let you have all the horse manure you want for free!

LOL, I was just going to say that, Deb! I know $4.00 isn't much, but if you hunt around you should be able to find you somebody to give it to you for free (unless of course they're delivering it for the $4.00 fee). It might not be composted yet, but you won't have to worry about that anyway if you're working it in and letting it sit.

 

[MyKidLuvsGreenEgz]

Wow. Great replies.

I have raised beds that kinda have lasagna. I used newspaper that I'd been collecting for almost 2 years, then muck from goat pens. Will get chicken poo soon. Those are actually pretty easy to get fertile.

More concerned about the 1/2 acre where we want to plant grain. We have very sandy soil; almost no dirt at all! The weeds that grow on it include a lot of cactus. I can't really hoe, between my hands not being able to grip the tool, and my back and knee problems, it won't work. Hubby can but anything that takes too long and too much heavy work for too often will NOT get done a second time. I know I know ... I've made peace with that.

I think, once we get that 1/2 acre good and plowed, we probably won't have to do a big thing wtih it again. Let the goats and chickens in there after harvest. The next spring, just Hubby can do a quickie hand-hoe or that wheel cultivator or something similar.

Wonder ... can piglets grow and thrive during the winter? Maybe if we can get piglets after the fall harvest and let them have the fenced-in half acre for the winter, that they'd turn it up for us, and by Spring planting, we'd butcher the pig(s) and start the planting. So, so pigs do winter temps ok? (We can get negative 35 for a few days a couple of times during a winter season).