tortoise
Wild Hare
Forgot to say that my fiance used round-up last fall. Probably large part of why we're doing fine on only 3".
No Till Gardening
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Marianne
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I do no till gardening, also! It's taking a bit longer here at this place to get the soil in really good shape, but it's getting there with the help of the hens. They do light tilling, fertilizing and breaking up of any organic matter left in the garden come fall. I leave all the garden debris in a few piles and let the hens have at it. The bonus is all those straw bits in the soil really help hold the moisture.
Straw is my mulch of choice. I don't put down 8" of straw right away, as that also keeps the ground a little colder in the spring when I have planted potatoes. Last year I didn't have enough straw and had a couple areas really thick with wild grasses. Early this spring, I put down dense flakes of straw and all the grass had decomposed when I raked it back to plant.
Any weeds around the perimeter of the garden get chopped and dropped on top of the garden (the ol' chop and drop). If it's green, it goes on there, unless it's seeding or is a runner type grass (bermuda, buffalo, etc). At our last place, I didn't have straw, so I just kept adding thin layers of grass and weed clippings.
Love it! Way less work, cheap and easy when you work with nature.
Straw is my mulch of choice. I don't put down 8" of straw right away, as that also keeps the ground a little colder in the spring when I have planted potatoes. Last year I didn't have enough straw and had a couple areas really thick with wild grasses. Early this spring, I put down dense flakes of straw and all the grass had decomposed when I raked it back to plant.
Any weeds around the perimeter of the garden get chopped and dropped on top of the garden (the ol' chop and drop). If it's green, it goes on there, unless it's seeding or is a runner type grass (bermuda, buffalo, etc). At our last place, I didn't have straw, so I just kept adding thin layers of grass and weed clippings.
Love it! Way less work, cheap and easy when you work with nature.
Dawn419
Almost Self-Reliant
Doc and I are using the no-till garden method here.
We are using raised beds since our soil is so rocky. The two, 5' x 20' bed edges are made from trees we cut down to make our garden area. Our neighbors gave us a huge pile of sandy, river bottom top soil that they have no use for. We started out covering the top soil with rabbit manure, covering the manure with thick layers of wet newspaper and topping it all off with shreeded leaf mulch.
This is our second year with the 2 beds and the soil is much better this year but we still have a ways to go before it's really good soil.
We use soaker hoses in the beds and with this hot weather we've been dealing with (104.9 in the shade today), I'm running the soakers at least once a week for an hour or so and everything is looking good so far.
I really need to get my second bed ready for my fall planting but am waiting until we get our chipper/shredder back as I've used up the last of my leaf mulch on the other bed.
Dawn
We are using raised beds since our soil is so rocky. The two, 5' x 20' bed edges are made from trees we cut down to make our garden area. Our neighbors gave us a huge pile of sandy, river bottom top soil that they have no use for. We started out covering the top soil with rabbit manure, covering the manure with thick layers of wet newspaper and topping it all off with shreeded leaf mulch.
This is our second year with the 2 beds and the soil is much better this year but we still have a ways to go before it's really good soil.
We use soaker hoses in the beds and with this hot weather we've been dealing with (104.9 in the shade today), I'm running the soakers at least once a week for an hour or so and everything is looking good so far.
I really need to get my second bed ready for my fall planting but am waiting until we get our chipper/shredder back as I've used up the last of my leaf mulch on the other bed.
Dawn
Neko-chan
Lovin' The Homestead
I should try this in some of the small beds around the house. The soil needs it.
DianeS
Lovin' The Homestead
I've done the no-till gardening the last couple years and love it. SO much easier. I'm in Colorado, too, and just could not get all the weeds out of my tilled beds, so I started this kind of gardening more as an act of desperation - if I can't pull them out, maybe I could smother them! And that seems to be exactly how it worked. A few layers of cardboard to keep the existing weeds from poking through, then a bunch of compost that was ready to be used, then a bunch of mulch/straw on top. Wonderful! None of my noxious weeds poked through, and the bit of grass that I did get was easily pulled up.
I remember reading about Ruth Stout in the old "Organic Gardening and Farming" magazine (a completely different entity than the present incarnation :/) back in the '70's and 80's. I seem to remember that she did a lot with straw bales, and salt hay (I think; I don't live on the East Coast, and have only a glimmer of an idea of what that might be 
) which must have been cheap for her. My veggie beds are terraces, as I garden on a hill. This year I have a lot of alpaca fiber (which was given me); the short cuts, full of debris, are not worth my while to clean, so I am putting them on my beds, and covering them with pine shavings/chicken poop form the coops. I've only covered 2 of my beds so far, as I injured my foot rather severely, and working on that hill is very painful. We had a long wet Spring, but now that things are dryer, and warmer, we really need to turn the automatic water system back on, but under the *duvet* of alpaca fiber and shavings the beds are still nicely damp. We have a drip irrigation system, with the hoses under the mulch, so that will keep things moist once we do turn on the water.
So, I need to ask those of you with those huge gardens (after I get over being extremely jealous - to the point of turning slightly green), are you gardening in rows or in beds? If rows then I can see that covering with mulch would be very difficult. If beds however then you could be mulching just those parts that you plant, and not the pathways in between. You could also just mulch as much of the garden as you have mulch for, and do the rest in the coming years. If you have cardboard (and we always seem to have numerous boxes) lay that down first, and then mulch over it. The cardboard is thick enough that you could get away with a thinner layer of mulch. And, as mentioned, the weeds pulled from other areas make good mulch.
) which must have been cheap for her. My veggie beds are terraces, as I garden on a hill. This year I have a lot of alpaca fiber (which was given me); the short cuts, full of debris, are not worth my while to clean, so I am putting them on my beds, and covering them with pine shavings/chicken poop form the coops. I've only covered 2 of my beds so far, as I injured my foot rather severely, and working on that hill is very painful. We had a long wet Spring, but now that things are dryer, and warmer, we really need to turn the automatic water system back on, but under the *duvet* of alpaca fiber and shavings the beds are still nicely damp. We have a drip irrigation system, with the hoses under the mulch, so that will keep things moist once we do turn on the water.So, I need to ask those of you with those huge gardens (after I get over being extremely jealous - to the point of turning slightly green
), are you gardening in rows or in beds? If rows then I can see that covering with mulch would be very difficult. If beds however then you could be mulching just those parts that you plant, and not the pathways in between. You could also just mulch as much of the garden as you have mulch for, and do the rest in the coming years. If you have cardboard (and we always seem to have numerous boxes) lay that down first, and then mulch over it. The cardboard is thick enough that you could get away with a thinner layer of mulch. And, as mentioned, the weeds pulled from other areas make good mulch.
Marianne
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I mulch my entire garden, including walking areas. I forgot about the cardboard. Sections of newspaper will work, too. I tried that one time here and the wind still managed to get under the newspaper no matter what I did. Anyway, I put down the mulch to stop early grasses, etc, then raked it back to plant seeds. After the new plants were a few inches tall, I started pulling the mulch back around them.
I have just two things that aren't killed by the straw mulch - bindweed (which I just yank up as my garden is growing good by the time it shows up) and some plant that grows by underground shoots. It gets dark berries in the fall and the hens love those things, so I just yank up some of them and let the rest go. Those two things come back, of course, but they're easily controlled.
If you take the time to look around, there's probably 'stuff' that you can use for mulching material. My iris are ready to be cut back, so I'm going to use the cut straps to start another mulched area. We have better luck just laying tall grasses over and mulching on top of that, rather than cutting it short first.
One year I used the pampas grass leaf stalks to fill up a couple of concrete troughs that we moved to be used as flower 'pots'. Dumped some dirt on the top and planted. Now all my kitchen scraps are going in those things and since I didn't bother to plant in them this year, when I clean the coop, the straw/poop litter will fill them up again. They should be ready to plant again next year.
I saw a pic (was it here??) that someone was using shredded newspaper for mulch. I also have two areas (one around a tree, the other around three lonely raspberry bushes) that I mulched with bark from our downed trees. We just laid out the biggish pieces, kind of overlapping when we could. Eventually it will break down in smaller pieces - kind of looked like carpet when we got done. I wouldn't use a lot of bark in the garden as it binds up the nitrogen.
I have just two things that aren't killed by the straw mulch - bindweed (which I just yank up as my garden is growing good by the time it shows up) and some plant that grows by underground shoots. It gets dark berries in the fall and the hens love those things, so I just yank up some of them and let the rest go. Those two things come back, of course, but they're easily controlled.
If you take the time to look around, there's probably 'stuff' that you can use for mulching material. My iris are ready to be cut back, so I'm going to use the cut straps to start another mulched area. We have better luck just laying tall grasses over and mulching on top of that, rather than cutting it short first.
One year I used the pampas grass leaf stalks to fill up a couple of concrete troughs that we moved to be used as flower 'pots'. Dumped some dirt on the top and planted. Now all my kitchen scraps are going in those things and since I didn't bother to plant in them this year, when I clean the coop, the straw/poop litter will fill them up again. They should be ready to plant again next year.
I saw a pic (was it here??) that someone was using shredded newspaper for mulch. I also have two areas (one around a tree, the other around three lonely raspberry bushes) that I mulched with bark from our downed trees. We just laid out the biggish pieces, kind of overlapping when we could. Eventually it will break down in smaller pieces - kind of looked like carpet when we got done. I wouldn't use a lot of bark in the garden as it binds up the nitrogen.
Ceilismom
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Question: Do you need to let it age/compost, or can you put it right on top of the soil around garden plants?Wifezilla said:
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Wifezilla
Low-Carb Queen - RIP: 1963-2021
Since i do deep litter, I only clean out the duck pen 4 or so times a year. During the fall clean out and the early Spring clean out those go right on the beds since they will have time to age a bit. The stuff I clean out in the summer goes NEAR the plants but does not touch the plants or I put it in a compost bin. This might not work for chicken poop, but duck poop is mixed with a lot of water so doesn't seem to be as "hot".
big brown horse
Hoof In Mouth
No tiller here too. Ruth Stout methods and lasaga mainly, although I did build my first hugelbeet this year.
I rake up every last leaf and throw them in the garden every fall, along with some aged horse poop and old chicken bedding... I also add some burnt horse poop ashes. With just one of my huge chestnut trees, I can fill up my 20 x 20 ft. garden up to 8 inches with leaves. Every spring when I plant my seeds, I scrape away the layer of compost (it is much more compated by then) then push the compost back around the young starts when they pop up. I have other trees for the other garden beds. I also used a few straw bales this year to add to it and my other gardens. Total cost about 12 bucks. My soil is always rich, loose and full of happy giant worms...and I rarely have to water during the dry months. Oh, and I rarely have to weed my gardens this way. I hate weeding!!
I rake up every last leaf and throw them in the garden every fall, along with some aged horse poop and old chicken bedding... I also add some burnt horse poop ashes. With just one of my huge chestnut trees, I can fill up my 20 x 20 ft. garden up to 8 inches with leaves. Every spring when I plant my seeds, I scrape away the layer of compost (it is much more compated by then) then push the compost back around the young starts when they pop up. I have other trees for the other garden beds. I also used a few straw bales this year to add to it and my other gardens. Total cost about 12 bucks. My soil is always rich, loose and full of happy giant worms...and I rarely have to water during the dry months. Oh, and I rarely have to weed my gardens this way. I hate weeding!!
