Vegetable Garden Bed Fail.
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 เม.ย. 2024
- Wanting to expand our vegetable gardens for root crops, we decided to charge ahead with a rotary hoe and clear the pasture grass. After clearing the grass it was very clear that the soil we thought we had was nothing but dirt. Making a clear decision this will be a project on developing proper soil alive with microbes and health. The new venture of expanding our growing space for root vegetable - we need another 12 months. a total fail for today.
- แนวปฏิบัติและการใช้ชีวิต
It happens to all of us at some time or another mate where we have to take a backward step before we can move forward. All that you can do when you have dead lifeless dirt like that is add, and keep adding, organic matter and manure both green and animal into the soil to build it up. You are on the right track with the green manures just keep building up the soil. Christine's comment about the swale could be worth a look as well. If you already have run-off from the chickens why not utilise it.
Here's a thought, you mentioned that you have an orchard. You also say that you are going to amend your bed with compost & teas to get a vege garden under way - why not combine the two and go to inter-row cropping vegetables in your orchard. There should be some sort of microbial/fungal activity in the orchard which would be enhanced with your planned amendments. The soil would be further improved with compost etc added to vegetables grown in the rows between the orchard trees. I would not use a rotary hoe but shamelessly copy Geoff Laughton and lay down cardboard or your grass that you have already rotary hoed out of the pasture as a base and build up your garden beds on top of this.
But I would not take a Rotary Hoe into your orchard, if I was going to do this, I would use a chainsaw instead - it would be much quicker. An investment in some electric net fencing in the orchard would confine the chooks in sections before starting any gardening activities and they can debug it and fertilise it at the same time. Some planned pruning may be neccessary before starting, thinking ahead to sunlight for crops grown between trees next year. The thing with where you are right now is to plan to win a war - not to fight battles!
Run a swale to drain the chicken run off to the 2nd area.