Interesting post. The link doesn’t give enough info for larger gardens-maybe not practical for large gardens. Hubby has made his annual pronouncement “ no garden this year-too old-can buy what we use cheaper.” Maybe he really means it this year. I can sneak cukes, tomatoes, squash and watermelen into my flower beds, but green beans and especially sweet corn are my two favorite veggies and it’s real hard to plant these two in flower beds. It seems that I would need a lot of material for the top of the ground for no till to work. Have plenty of manure with a lot of shavings mixed in from daughter’s two miniature horses, but afraid it is not rotted sufficiently to use exclusively. Plenty of seaweed locally but read somewhere that it should be washed-probably because of the salt-never have washed it, but have never used it as a large percentage of the mix.
It’s a real quandry. Never been without a vegetable garden in our 60+ years of marriage. The no till method appeals to me as I have always maintained that these big tillers do more harm to the soil than good and the soil dries out faster when you fluff it up with a big tiller. Hubby’s tiller is awaiting a new bearing (what else is new).
Maybe I will just go ahead and start some tomatoes and he will change his mind as he does every year and we will wind up with a garden big enough to feed the whole neighborhood.
>>>>no garden this year-too old-can buy what we use cheaper<<<<
I keep thinking that, but when I go through the grocery store and see turnips for $1.49 a pound, Tomatoes $1.59, Potatoes $2.79 for a 5# bag, Nope can’t buy it cheaper... Besides, if I am going to kick the bucket, I would prefer to do it doing something I really enjoy - Growin it, cannin it or eatin it.
>>>>but green beans and especially sweet corn are my two favorite veggies and it’s real hard to plant these two in flower beds.<<<<
I am going to try some sort of square foot gardening - more like beds. I do that with turnips, kale, even lettuce and spinach it is more like a broadcast seeding in a 4 X 20’ area. Seems to work pretty well. I think I will try planting some green beans that way. I see where they say that you can plant sweet corn in the square foot garden, I think I will try it in a bed but instead of the 4 per sq. ft. they say you can plant, I will keep it to 3.
The ground cover really worked well for me - I have one 10 X 100’ and another 15 X 100’ I planted tomatoes and peppers there last year and it worked great... NO WEEDING!
I have enough of it to make two more 15 X 100’ strips and will probably try it with cukes, summer squash, winter squash, cantaloupe, watermelon and maybe a few other things. The 10’ one has been down for 4 years and still looks real good. Will probably last a couple more years at least. Without all those things to weed or cultivate, I should be able to concentrate on a few beds like the lasagna method which I think they mixed whatever you had - raw manure leaves, grass, compost and will probably mix in some peat moss as I have about 5 or 6 bales of it. I have quite a bit of chicken manure, and have access to horse manure (which works great in a cold frame... a deep bed of horse manure will go a long way in keeping it warm, then straw and compost over that. I made one this year from bales of straw. I put down two rows of bales on edge for the front and back and one bale between those on each end. I then filled it about a third of the way up with manure and compost - then I used some 4’ poly roll sheeting and wrapped that around the outside of the bales and anchored it to the bales with ground staples. I made a frame top from 2X4’s with poly sheeting wrapped so it covered both sides - giving me a double layer of poly. We had temps down to 8 degrees this winter and I haven’t lost anything in it yet. The straw seems to make it to where it is not as heat sensitive too. Have only had to open top to ventilate a few times when it got over 50 degrees)