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| Nice garden with no weeds - not for long! |
1. Bare soil doesn't stay bare for long - I should have mulched, I should have mulched, I should have mulched! How many times have I thought this since planting my garden here. The weeds love a bit of bare soil. I would have been better off leaving some as grass and mowing it rather than giving the nettles a safe haven to grow in! Now it's a constant battle to try to keep them down
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| A weedy corner soon grows! |
3. Just because you have the space to sow successionally doesn't mean you should - All the books tell you to sow every two weeks for certain crops like carrots. If you're anything like me you'll forget! It's better to sow lots in one go than to leave a patch, let the weeds grow and miss your chance for planting and although it's great to eat baby carrots, good sized ones are easier to prepare. Do whats best for you not what a book says.
4. Plant lots and lots of comfrey - Big gardens need big lots of nutrients, if you're growing organically then it can be tricky/labour intensive to find, begging farmers for muck is hardly fun. Planting a few large patches of comfrey means you can make your own liquid feed (along with nettle feed) and also you can mulch plants and fill trenches with it to grow hungry plants like beans. I brought no tomato food at all this year and grew 18 plants using just my home made comfrey and nettle feed with just as many tomatoes (if not more) than if I'd been buying a liquid feed. Keeping costs down when you've upped the scale is key but you still want everything to grow just as well.
6. Pick you're battles - You can't win them all, so concentrate on certain things. This year I've been trying to keep the buttercups at bay, the annual weeds don't seem so bad compared to this hell sent plant. I've also been trying to make sure that no docks go to seed. These little battles should make the next year easier and then I can pick on another plant to pick on and try to hold back!
These are just a few that sprung to mind without much thinking involved. What other tips would you give for when you up the scale of your garden?
Do know whether you know but comfrey can also be used to feed goats, but don't overload them on it and chickens who like it wilted. Though if short of greens they'll eat it anyway.
ReplyDeleteWe are organic farmers, we as in my whole family, and keep roughly an acre of comfrey at all times. We harvest it three times a year most years and is oneof our main liquid fertilisers. If you have any damp soil that is toowet for most crops and always seems to favour nettles then that is your ideal place. Keep thenettles down for a couple of years to allow the comfrey to establish and it will take over.
Ours is grown along a stream bank that never dries out using land that otherwise would be suitable for only sheep!
Good blog btw, glad we found you off PPs blog.
Thanks for the comment - sounds like you should have a blog! I've put comfrey in a place that was pretty useless before but I've still got loads potted up - I didn't know it like the wet so much, finding a wet place on my homestead isn't too difficult (nor with nettles)! An acre of the stuff is amazing! Do you crop it by machine or by hand? I only had a couple of clumps this year so I've gone all out to increase it by division.
DeletePP's blog is always good for a discussion, one of my favourites lately!
Hi, we use a scythe. Comfrey loves damp mineral rich environment. You really cannot have enough of it. If, rather than compressing comfrey, you make a tea by rotting it in water adding roughly the same weight in sheep dung you will get a fantastic fertiliser. Though very smelly lol.
DeleteWe did consider a blog but quite honestly the consensus among us is that we like our privacy and from a prepper point of view the fewer who know our location the better.
Ro is smart. There are many times I have kinda regretted blogging just because of the opsec issues.
DeleteBut what's wrong with having space suitable only for sheep? :)
I think that you guys treat opsec very differently to over here. We're such a small country that I think it will be fairly obvious who has what anyway, and since I advertise my business on the web my name is fairly easy to find. I think I'd rather help people with my blog than worry about that too much. I think if things did go wrong it would be very different over there to over here as well.
DeleteIt puts you in a bit of a pickle really Kev but we deliver our own produce and timber so few people actually visit our farm. Being stuck in the middle of nowhere in Wales has a big advantage. But you are right if things go pear shaped the UK will be far different than the USA. But still we try our best to avoid attention.
DeletePP sheep are fairly non productive, wool here has a very very low value. Lambs vary in price enormously year to year at market. Veg on the other hand is quite a stable market.
we also have pigs, a small herd of Jerseys for milk and cheese production which my younger brothers wife specialises in. Obviously chickens ducks geese goats(cheese again) and quite a few horses as we use them for timber extraction in our woods as well as ploughing competitions.
When you compare the profit margin for Cheese to that of lamb it's no contest.
I kind of forgot that you are in Wales sorry! I would never say I was a prepper anyway (although my wife may say otherwise...) but we are out of town and out the way so it has some advantages!
DeleteI've thought before about getting some goats for milk now I'm at home full time, but it is a big tie and I'd need some shelter for them. Maybe one for the future - next one is rabbits!
Compared to our American friends I wouldn't call us preppers either but we are quite aware of how quickly life can change. You only have to think back a year to the petrol strike that never was to see how fast people panic.
DeleteRabbits are good and you can use the droppings without composting.
Goats are quite simple to keep and require very minimal housing. It's the milking routine that ties you up. On the plus side they give milk for far longer after birth than cows do and aren't half as prone to disease. They will also eat pretty much anything from acorns to crab apples, a tree well worth planting if you haven't already.
Personally, after rabbits, I'd get pigs though. They'll plough and manure at the same time for you. We use them to keep the bracken and ferns down in the woods, natures natural bulldozers!
Goats get more money at market here than sheep but I have found they are much harder to keep em where ya want em whereas if my sheep get out they always stay close and together. Basically though I chose sheep because I already had a core flock for free :)
DeleteWe have been making some money off the wool lately though even after you take out the shearer's fee. I can turn a profit on the sheep but only because we bale all our own hay. If I had to buy it it would be a total red line hobby.
I've got the pig pen nearly fenced and the last few years I've been saying I'll get them so next year we will have to do it! Sheep are on my list as well because I was brought up with them and know how to keep them (so long as I can remember), also it's one of the more expensive meats and I do love it! I'd probably just compost the wool!
DeleteI like hard surfaces like paved paths and raised beds and my polytunnel. I am going off cow manure because it's a cold manure and it's full of weed seeds. I think the weeds tell you what the ground is like. Buttercups tell you that the ground is damp and acidic. Nettles tell you that your ground is rich in nitrogen.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the weeds have driven me mad this year from all my muck. Maybe could build a steriliser for it.
DeleteMy ground is both damp and acidic, blueberries do well here!
A steriliser would be a great help Kev. Black plastic is great for mulching, planting and digging in green manures help and I think experimenting with horse manure because it is an hot manure and all the weed seeds should get burnt with the heat.
DeleteI plan on keeping rabbits soon and the manure they produce is meant to be top quality so that might be a bit of a solution for me as well. until then I'll keep battling with the weeds!
DeleteI have little time for gardening. So, despite having no animals, I hesitate to plant comfrey, as I hear it can be invasive.
ReplyDeleteHi, if you use comfrey you can box the roots using slate or similar to a depth of roughly 12 inches. Then all you have to do is pick off the flower heads as they appear.
DeleteMine hasn't spread much in three years and the type I have is sterile so the seeds won't make it spread.
DeleteMovable fencing. We have rabbit fencing in frames of five feet and four feet widths.We can fully enclose beds or just the areas we need to..and move them around as needed. Essential to keep out rabbits/groundhogs/skunks.Bears can take anything they want!
ReplyDeleteJane x
Do they not dig under it?
DeleteI wouldn't try to stop the bears either!
Once you have increased the size of a garden it is tempting to grow lots of EVERYTHING even though you couldn't possible eat or preserve it all nor sell it. Much time is spent finding things to do with the blessed crop! (goats are good) As you say staggering crops is a good idea in principle, when in reality you never quite get round to it, as the planting season gives way to other jobs.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Although this year I wish I planted moe fo things like carrots as we're already running low. It's a fine balance to know what to grow and every year is different and same sized rows will produce widely different amounts.
Delete1. Even mulching around here doesn't stop Johnson Grass or Bindweeds. In fact it makes it that much harder to get rid of them once they have started.
ReplyDelete2. See above and celebrate the fact you don't have either :)
3. I agree that is good advice. I find the successive sowing method to be detrimental as you do. The one exception is potatoes but I really do that in waves not off set sowing.
4. I have never needed to plant green manure plants but I dumped a huge amount of sheep manure and wood ash on my garden spots each year so I am assuming it achieves the same effect.
5. I divide things up myself but alot of it is for rotation as well.
6. I would send you some bindweed or Johnson grass and you would love your buttercups :)
I started using some old metal roof sheeting this year. Normally I would say using sheet metal roofing in a garden for weed control was a waste of resources but I found some that had rusted through in a few spots. It greatly reduced my weeding and eventually I mulched over it with the sheep poop infused barn waste I use as mulch. It was a HUGE time saver though especially at first.
I had bind weeds at our last place. I did not like it. Although I'd say buttercup is up there with it - it's a nightmare and spreads so fast. I used carpet for mulch this year but I know that there is a lot negatives with it as well, but it did keep down the weeds in places. I wish I'd kept grass around my fruit bushes but you live and learn I guess!
DeleteWe have mares tail here. OMG the people up the road grow it as grass. I have been tempted to go and try and sort it out for them. they are the house that Onslow would live in.
ReplyDeleteHave you thought about using old carpets to cover the site in winter? my beds are very small in comparison and I have ground fabric I peg down here. But at our old allotment before we moved to this town the 'Olde' boys all used carpets and they helped each other lay them. Cor blimey I am just thinking about their lovely cabbages. yum.
I am glad we sectioned out garden here with paths between. we didnt have pavers, we collected 4 loads of gravel that was unwanted from freecycle. I now only have to worry about the weeds in the beds. I used to work with a woman who practiced permaculture. Her veg did taste nice, all the farmers wives I worked with laughed at her. but on a smaller scale, like a suburban garden, I am thinking it could work. When we move I am hoping to have nearly the same set up as here.
A question for you, all the other sites I read are generally in the US or Australia. Rain water. do you collect it? I know you can get rain barrels from the local water board. But in France I saw very big water butts that weren't ugly or stuck out like a sore thumb, not like the ones we have here. The neighbour in Brittany said that mostly French people will never ever use town water on a veg garden. my french is terrible so I only got snippets. The Mr said he was saying town water chemicals you can taste in the veg. What are your thoughts on this...
I think there's a bloig post in your question! But the short answer is I do have rain barrels although not nearly enough to keep my greenhouse watered in the summer (the only thing I really water). What I never do is use water fresh out the tap if I can help it. I fill up rain barrels with a hose if I've run out of rain water. That way the water isn't really cold when you come to use it, which isn't good for plants, and also they say if you leave it for 24 hours then much of the chlorine will have evaporated out of it by then. My veg tastes good so it can't be too much of a problem!
DeleteI'd love to put a bore hole in here one day so we have our own supply. We have a high water table so I'm fairly sure a 4ft hole would make a well quite easily!
As for the weeds, we have a neighbour across the road who seems to have a 17 acre field of docks and thistles so I know your pain when it comes to neighbours not keeping on top of weeds! Although it's certainly not Onslow, in fact he's quite posh and a nice guy. I do use some carpet but it seems to be falling apart now and I'm wandering what I'm going to do with it! It was handy over the summer and kept some areas much cleaner from weeds than others. I also get lots of cardboard from builders merchants and lay that down on plots to plant up next year, this works really well but you do need quite a bit! The chicken solution works well as well - just keeping them in is the problem!
I feel your pain. :) Some lessons are learned the hard way right? I really enjoyed your post.
ReplyDeleteLive and learn! I could have made things a little easier for myself but on the whole it's been great experience.
DeleteWhat a great list. Honestly learning the hard way is the best way. Though I can't stress enough how important it is to keep the weeds down. Mulch like crazy.
ReplyDelete