living off the grid..ish

[Paul in the woods]

42 minutes ago, david lawrence said:

Do you use fresh grass clippings

I think like you I'm still a bit concerned about harming the plants. So, yes, a thin layer of fresh clippings kept away from the stalks to prevent any heat building up harming them. Then build up over time. I also have plenty of course clippings, almost like chopped hay, and I'm happy to use that in a greater thickness. I might try a thick layer of fresh green clippings on a row this year as I've finally managed to get a good number of spuds in this year. Had our first earlies over a week ago.

[RickandMorty]

I got some peat free germination soil which I put in the grow backs. I'll put some in the plastic ones now as I had run out. I used manure and compost.

 

For the grow bags I used peat free germination compost and manure. Then topped up with "normal" compost. All of my own compost has gone into raised veg patches

[peds]

7 hours ago, trigger_andy said:

Well I had a look. Very interesting I must say and I’ll give it a go this season. What caught my attention was the use of grass clippings to hold the straw down. We have a fair bit of lawn so a significant amount of clippings to dispose of. Ideal solution.

I like how the expert in the article plants his “no dig” potatoes after he’s dug out his Parsnips so the soils already loosened/broken up. 

 

 

 

Excellent, best of luck with it.

A major part of the No Dig approach, and a decent philosophy to adhere to with gardening and horticulture in general, is to let the plants roots do the work for you. Potatoes are an excellent first crop to plant in new or reclaimed ground. After that, the idea is just to not compress the soil again. Walk on established pathways and carefully placed planks of wood, and never tread where you grow. If the air channels in the soil aren't squashed, the myriad of organisms in the soil biota can all do their job efficiently, and nutrient transfer to your plants is more effective. 

 

FYI, the best parsnips are grown without digging over the soil... just drive a wrecking bar or digging stick into the ground, backfill with compost, and either sow direct or transplant plugs into each hole.

Championship parsnips guaranteed. 

 

If you are near the coast, the single greatest mulch or soil amendment for general use is rotten seaweed, not just for the boost of NPK, but for the bouquet of micronutrients, released gradually, as the seaweed breaks down. It is impossible to apply too much.

 

Remember: look after your soil, because it isn't yours. You're just borrowing it from whoever needs to grow in it in the future.

[peds]

Re: grass clippings 

Too much fresh grass around delicate stems will absolutely burn them, it's pure nitrogen and a thick enough layer will boil a mug of tea. Leave a good gap. 

Hot mulching grass like this can be a useful tool in the fight against bindweed.

[openspaceman]

38 minutes ago, peds said:

It is impossible to apply too much.

We made some char from seaweed for a project at East Malling. It was thoroughly washed and dried first but the analysis still gave a high sodium ion content so the experts said it should be limited to things that need the sodium, like sugar beet. I suppose over time in a free draining soil it would be washed down  but...

[peds]

My own observations have mostly been made in Ireland, where we are famous for how often we get washed down. You might want to rinse some of the salt off the seaweed before using too much in one spot if it hasn't already been fairly scrubbed by the elements. 

Edit, whoops, sorry I didn't register how well scrubbed your seaweed char was. I agree, you absolutely need to keep an eye on salt levels, particularly if a regular drought is set to become a feature of our growing systems in the future. Let's wait and see if the ocean is even still making seaweed in the future! Ha ha...

 

 

Anyway, I've just added tonight's ingredients to the compost heap, which consist of a bag of lawn clippings from an uncle-in-law; the same volume of hay covered with chicken manure from the nest boxes; the bucket of kitchen scraps and all shredded paper and card from the house; a bucket of grounds from a coffee shop I'm friendly with; and a bucket of rotten seaweed, previously steeped in water for three months to make seaweed extract, upon which the tomatoes and courgettes are being fed now.

The extract was poured into a 200l barrel and diluted to the colour of weak tea, and everything flowering or fruiting gets a drink of it every second watering, to keep the soil fertility topped up.

The now-empty bucket will be filled with the first cut of comfrey (I'm late), drowned, and left to brew for a month or so, before being added to the barrel.

Edited June 8, 2022 by peds

[Stere]

My only concern with grass mowings near/on spuds was that it might encourage blight as they go damp mouldy etc but probably doesn't make any difference?. Blight is forcast with the hutton criterea /climatic condition  for commercial premeptive spraying. I sometimes stick mowings  between the rows after the spuds have being earthed up.

[Paul in the woods]

We get blight every year but it hits the tops of the leaves first, spores picked up by the rain drops. The main worry with clippings is slugs, one thing chickens do help with on a veg plot. 

[Guest Gimlet]

13 hours ago, peds said:

Anyway, I've just added tonight's ingredients to the compost heap, which consist of a bag of lawn clippings from an uncle-in-law; the same volume of hay covered with chicken manure from the nest boxes; the bucket of kitchen scraps and all shredded paper and card from the house; a bucket of grounds from a coffee shop I'm friendly with; and a bucket of rotten seaweed, previously steeped in water for three months to make seaweed extract, upon which the tomatoes and courgettes are being fed now.

The extract was poured into a 200l barrel and diluted to the colour of weak tea, and everything flowering or fruiting gets a drink of it every second watering, to keep the soil fertility topped up.

The now-empty bucket will be filled with the first cut of comfrey (I'm late), drowned, and left to brew for a month or so, before being added to the barrel.

Coffee ground is interesting stuff, potentially extremely useful if applied with care. Found this which I thought was a pretty good summary:

Are Coffee Grounds Good for your Garden? - Oxford Garden Design

OXFORDGARDENDESIGN.CO.UK

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Oxford Garden Design offers Garden Landscaping, Garden Maintenance and Garden Landscaping, call us on: 01993...

 

And comfrey, my parents used to have several 45 gallon drums of liquid comfrey fertiliser brewing round the garden, and they would encourage comfrey to grow in certain parts of the garden too so they had a supply. The plant is a tremendous magnet for bees when on flower. And when it's finished flowering if the leaves are cut when they droop, before they start to moldy, they make excellent green compost. So do nettles.

 

Talking of bees, it's been my observation that wild bees seem to favour blue or blue and white flowers. My top bee plants are lavender, anise hyssop, comfrey, borage and blue lupins.  

Anise hyssop is an underused plant. It not only looks fantastic, flowers continuously for months on end and is absolutely alive with bees, it tastes great too. The young flowers have a bright sugary aniseed taste like sweets and the young leaves make great tea which is supposed to be good for digestion and the respiratory system. And the more flowers and leaves you pick, the more it seems to produce. One of my favourite garden plants. Don't know why you don't see more of it in gardens.

 

And that reminds me. How many of you no-tillers are deliberately mixing beneficial ornamental flowering species in amongst your veg planting, like they used to do in old fashioned cottage gardens? Companion planting doesn't have to mean just crop species. Mixing in the right ornamentals have substantial advantages, especially for detering pests and improving pollination.  

Edited June 9, 2022 by Gimlet

[sime42]

Some good info on using coffee there. I don't have access to a lot of it, just what we consume at home, so I tend to put it around ericaceous plants like the Blueberries.

I'd love to get into growing and using comfrey but not really got the space for it. Never heard anything but positives about it. I might go out and harvest some nettles next year if I can be bothered. I do use seaweed fertiliser, that's pretty good stuff. I've got a 5ltr drum of it, when hugely diluted as recommended it works out pretty cheap.

Yeah, bees love blue flowers. I think they're more noticeable to them for some reason; something to do with the way their eyes work. I'm not familiar with anise hyssop, (I'll be looking out for some now, cheers), but they sure love common hyssop. And Echiums, they go mad for them, buzzing from dawn until dusk. They're members of the borage family as well. I do try and encourage as many solitary bees as possible, the hives have been fairly hectic these last few weeks.

I've raised a load of French Marigolds this year, to use as companion plants amoungst the vegetables. For pest management; doesn't seem much need for encouraging pollination as the veg patch is alongside the ornamental garden anyway.