I just priced lumber for raised beds here. Best deal by far was 1×12×8ft rough cut pine slabs from a local independent sawmill operator. 5$ a slab. Air dried and untreated but perfect for sturdy raised beds. 15$ to make a 4x8 bed plus 12 screws and my labor. Hope that helps anyone looking.
We did wood as well some years back and had to replace it all of course... a sibling's fam tried out pouring light concrete walls and they did great. Also we watched Back to Eden and are looking around for reliable chip suppliers and are thinking about long row plantings so the boxes might not be our final form.
They worked out for me once, and then failed twice, but i put in a refreshed request once in awhile. hoping the trump flag out front isn't the problem, KEK
Thank you Mary, you are very sweet!. We are truly blessed to have you among us on this board. You sound like a wonderful cook and I hope someday we can all get together for a big pot luck dinner.
When you get your chicken coop cleaned out, feel free to hit me up with any questions. I've had chickens for 12+ years and they have really been a benefit to my boys growing up.
My daughter is an amazing gardener. When she lived near me she helped me set up a container garden. It produced enough for my husband and I for about four months out of the year. I'll be doing that again this Spring.
That would really throw a wrench into the works. Imagine bypassing the FDA, the entire poisenous US food chain, the need for Pharma to fix those problems and the end of mega cities that wouldn't be able to survive.
Just wait till everyone finds out how medicinal "weeds" are. Seriously, look up dandelions - edible flowers, sap from the stem helps heal skin wounds, tea from the leaves does all kinds of detox, and the roots make healthy 'coffee.' Next, check out purslane. And bring back gooseberries and chestnuts. Sic the goats on kudzu and clear some land...
Bugs are also healthy. But you won't catch me trying to tell my children to eat bugs and weeds before I have to.
Although if I do start a garden, I'll let it grow weeds. Lol.
Good one, teacher - I had forgotten. We're trying all sorts of spots to see what catches, and special boxes for the ones that need help, but our dirt needs a LOT of rehabilitation too.
Wait... wut
Don't tell me there are recipes for kudzu. For people.
Don't get me wrong, my kids are taught that McD=frankenfood poison, and they happily eat all kinds of veggies, but - kudzu?!?
I am amazed, never would have thought it was good for anything. Root helps heart health, things blood from clotting... Deep state will find a magic way to eradicate it now! kek
You raise an interesting point what will they eat when they aren’t able to do fast food and convenience meals? Will there be someone who can forage for them? Where will they get the information? I have spent years learning what can be eaten in the wild and what can be medicine.
From reading this, it appears to address non-organic strawberries and asparagus and not all crops. From the article -. "... For our study we chose the seasonal crops asparagus and strawberries, as their cultivation usually require the use of plastic mulch film and thus, fruits are expected to be prone for microplastic contamination. ..." Did I miss something? Are you saying this is more widespread?
I've heard some pretty awful things, yeah. Microplastics in every mammals milk. In the water table. Makes it's way into soil and crops. That's a slow bomb. Destroyer of chromosomes.
It's become a very sad state of affairs... We used to have the freedom to do as we wished on our own property as long as no law was being broken... Sadly those days are gone until we take our country back... Cheers fren...
I've got plans for 1/3 acre garden that will be raised bed. Construction starts next month. Also planting fruit trees and berry bushes. Putting in drip irrigation. Have a canning kitchen too. So stoked to make this move towards self sufficiency. And chickens. Just in time too.
Big ag is bad. Your local market farming who is doing a CSA and selling at the farmers market it probably legit.
2 acres. No tractor. No sprays. 24 CSA members a week. 2 farmers markets. Husband and wife, no employees. We rely on insect netting instead of pesticides. We use agri-bon floating row cover for season extension. We also have 2 hundred foot tunnels. Doing about $80k a year. This is on leased land while we are renting an apartment.
Find your local CSA farms and hit those farmers markets. We're creating the parallel economy in your backyard.
Edit: I should note, I greatly encourage people to garden and take pressure off of the greater food system. Not to mention, nothing beats growing your own and knowing how it is grown and handled.
I'm not a farmer but have had several decent vegetable gardens in my life time... I would have to learn about it if I were ever to have a farm... Cheers fren...
If/when there is no food available at a reasonable price, HOAs might change their rules. Of course, if it gets that bad, then we would probably have other issues, too. Such as neighborhood security.
Sheep and goats tend to graze until they destroy the lawn though... That was the problem cattlemen had with sheep herders in the west... Cheers fren...
Gotta rotate em. Don't let em have the whole piece of land. Fence it off (cut it up into smaller paddocks) with temporary electric fencing (step-in posts and braided wire).
There's real science behind it. It works. Mob grazing. Rotational grazing. Intensive grazing. These are the keywords.
Greg Judy, Joel Salatin, Gabe Brown. These are the some of the greatest practitioners.
Everyone with enough space and money to do so should look into building and underground greenhouse. The first time I saw it was a video of an old man in Nebraska. He had oranges, and other trees growing in his underground greenhouse. You can grow even through the winter in them.
Liver and organs have more , vegetables don’t even absorb and it’s very little amount that may not even convert . You can literally overdose on vitamins by eating liver . Veggies don’t grow year round and they have limited nutrients so you tell me what people originally thrives on.vegetables and grains were sold to us with the intention of making us sick
Another thing. If you grow food in your front yard, people are more likely to steal it. If you want to plant somewhere besides your back yard, try planting stuff up and down the roadsides and other public places. Much of the general public refuses to eat food they find. There are YouTube videos about that.
I'm in a townhouse that has a balcony with the same floor area as the garage(cause it's above the garage), and I've been building a garden up there. Could use some more shade, but it's one of the only options I've got since it's a townhouse
My friend received a survey from the FDA asking if he was growing any food crops and if so what and how much he is growing. Wondering why the gov wants to know what a city slicker is growing.
I'll ask you the same question I asked another anon here...
As a professional farmer (you, not me), I'm curious about your views on the Back to Eden method for gardening. I've watched the video a few times, looks almost idyllic, but I can't help but wonder if the BtE method is suitable for all climates.
BtE is fine for small scale gardening, it has it's uses and used to be called the No-Till method until the BtE filmmaker came along. It's not useful for doing any real growing though if you plan on feeding people. It's great for some types of flowers and some fruits, tomatoes would do well. But potatoes would suffer badly with that method due to a lack of acidity.
BtE has one really great use and that is reclaiming forest. I have a 2 acre spot in the corner of my property and I paid two guys with some heavy machinery to rip out all the pine trees there and grind the stumps down. I left the wood chips there for two years and then sold them off and had people clear the area down to dirt. Now it's a very prolific sweet potato field.
Thank you so much for your response. It seems from this and the response from another professional farmer here that maintaining proper soil composition/chemistry (if that's the correct term) is not only key to successful growing, but not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. Regionally there are vast differences in soil so I've questioned whether or not the BtE was suitable.
My limited experience of home gardening comes from my childhood where we had a mostly successful, substantial garden in our backyard. I'd go pick the salad veggies and other veggies for our evening meals. Pick, wash, eat = amazing taste. One grandmother grew up farming in "the old country" and had an amazing green thumb. Right now I'm not in a position to have a real garden, but am dabbling with indoor container items (just herbs, potatoes and spinach have been successful), hope to someday have a real garden. It's definitely a learning process.
100% - I have a degree in soil management. It not only changes per region, but per section of your yard.
I have fields and fields of stuff, but my personal garden is my happy spot. I have 10 raised beds that are 6 feet by 10 feet each and I am constantly taking soil samples and messing with the pH of the soil and NPK composition so I can properly grow things.
Over the summer my grandkids all got together and bought me a smartphone so I can use some different gardening tools which I've found amazing. My oldest grandson who will probably take over the farm when I shuffle off this mortal coil introduced me to a really great podcast called Joe Gardener, the guy is pretty funny and he knows his stuff - I think he lives down by Atlanta. He has guests on each week to talk about a different veggie and goes into the whole history of it and how to properly grow it. It's a lot of fun!
Growing indoors is a whole art, I have a bunch of herbs indoors and a few tomatoes I'm playing with and I have a whole light setup and stuff. It's a lot of fun too.
We use silage tarp to stomp out our garden plots. Using sand bags to weigh it down, it does a good job after a few months of leaving you with bare soil. For problem areas we will transplant into woven ground cover, which we have burned holes in at the appropriate spacing, this can be reused. After several seasons of keeping weed pressure down, you will go through the seed bank providing you aren't allowing any weeds to go to seed.
End of the season for us is, clean out all the beds. Spread compost. Lay our silage tarp. Garden is warmer, drier, and weed free so we beat all the tractor farmers into the fields for planting. For gardeners you could use cardboard, or any tarp really. Imagine flipping over a rock or log that is a bare spot of rich soil and a ton of insects.
Or professionally made compost, or homemade compost. Whatever you can get. Many municipalities collect leaves and make compost free for the community.
Farming and gardening have a learning curve. It takes work, which most liberals don't like to do a lot of. So for them a pile of soil on cardboard is a garden.
Really, growing in a bag of soil isn't a bad idea for renters who have limited space or just a balcony.
As a professional farmer (you, not me), I'm curious about your views on the Back to Eden method for gardening. I've watched the video a few times, looks almost idyllic, but I can't help but wonder if the BtE method is suitable for all climates.
For wood chips in your actual garden, it would be good to have a healthy active biology, that is to say, healthy soil will break down and incorporate those wood chips better than poor soil. This is the microbes and fungi at work. Poor soil can be negatively effected by wood chips in the garden in that they can pull nitrogen during decomposition.
I prefer a thick layer of compost and grass clippings
That's pretty much what the Back to Eden method espouses. They get ground-up clippings from landscapers - trees/leaves and bushes as well as grass.
What you're saying then is to start with healthy soil by using compost and grass before you start adding in the ground up tree (wood) chips. Or are you saying that wood chips should pretty much be avoided?
The BtE video is set in the Pacific Northwest, I believe, the gardener/farmer featured originally from California. For those who haven't yet seen it, here's the video. It's long (1:44), but worth the watch if you have time
Ideally if I am start a garden from scratch with ample time I would use a weed wacker and take the grass down as low as I could. Use a silage tarp to cover the area, it takes less time to kill of grass in heat of summer. When the grass is all killed off and incorporated and you're left with bare soil, you can then add your compost. If you like you can layer in other organic matter, but I find it best until you have built the biology to stick with finished compost. If you are doing no dig, you can plant into these composted beds and mulch with grass clippings or leaf mulch for best incorporation of organic materials.
If you have no time and need a garden. The lasagna method is a good way. Cardboard, compost, some kind of mulch all right on top of the existing soil.
I like a guy Richard Perkins who is a great market farmer, he uses wood chips strictly in his walking paths.
The main factor is creating your beds, and keeping those beds established. Many say avoid walking on these beds but Charles walks in his. He has a lot of trial gardens with different tillage methods and soil compositions.
We personally do what I call minimal tillage. We create permanent raised beds using a BCS walk behind tiller (after the tarp and composting). Using the tiller I will loosen the soil, then using the rotary plow I will form raised beds. To these beds I add more compost before planting or sowing seeds. For new garden plots where the area is too large for organic mulch we use woven ground cover, a reusable plastic that lets water through enough while keeping your beds weed free.
I also really like Jim Kovaleski, he is all about using a scythe and feeding your garden grass.
Whatever method your gardening is, it will always improve with time so don't get frustrated. If you have weeds, the most important thing is to remove them before they go to seed. Otherwise I consider weeds soil re-mediators. They pull nutrients from different depths and I like to chop and drop my weeds when I can.
I wouldn't expect any more food production out of California... but the price of marijuana would drop by 2000%.
Kekekek very true observation... Cheers fren...
A person could make millions by inventing the DankMower . . .
Agreed kekekek... Cheers fren...
Excellent economic forecasting. You are on the A team
I just priced lumber for raised beds here. Best deal by far was 1×12×8ft rough cut pine slabs from a local independent sawmill operator. 5$ a slab. Air dried and untreated but perfect for sturdy raised beds. 15$ to make a 4x8 bed plus 12 screws and my labor. Hope that helps anyone looking.
We did wood as well some years back and had to replace it all of course... a sibling's fam tried out pouring light concrete walls and they did great. Also we watched Back to Eden and are looking around for reliable chip suppliers and are thinking about long row plantings so the boxes might not be our final form.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rPPUmStKQ4
Thanks~ This is fantastic.
I watched, showed some to family, and we've gone through it like four times since then, kek
Thanks. I love this.
Thanks. I passed that on to my buddy, too. He builds a lot. Maybe I will talk him into trying it out at my house.
Yes, that is what we want to try also. Probably not as pro level, but whatever works!
They worked out for me once, and then failed twice, but i put in a refreshed request once in awhile. hoping the trump flag out front isn't the problem, KEK
Amen to that...
Niiiice...
Yes ma'am you do... Let the chickens feed free range... "They're" tampering with the feed to keep the hens from laying...
Have an awesome day...
What time is dinner...and can I bring dessert? 🥧
Thank you Mary, you are very sweet!. We are truly blessed to have you among us on this board. You sound like a wonderful cook and I hope someday we can all get together for a big pot luck dinner.
When you get your chicken coop cleaned out, feel free to hit me up with any questions. I've had chickens for 12+ years and they have really been a benefit to my boys growing up.
God Bless!
My daughter is an amazing gardener. When she lived near me she helped me set up a container garden. It produced enough for my husband and I for about four months out of the year. I'll be doing that again this Spring.
Beef has all the nutrition a human needs
As in, ‘all my food is vegetarian’.
kek
That would really throw a wrench into the works. Imagine bypassing the FDA, the entire poisenous US food chain, the need for Pharma to fix those problems and the end of mega cities that wouldn't be able to survive.
That's something I could live with... Cheers fren...
What if big farms grew healthy food and sold it locally?
without those mega cities, how and where are the libs gonna cheat and electioneer?? ;)
Ruh roh.......
Just wait till everyone finds out how medicinal "weeds" are. Seriously, look up dandelions - edible flowers, sap from the stem helps heal skin wounds, tea from the leaves does all kinds of detox, and the roots make healthy 'coffee.' Next, check out purslane. And bring back gooseberries and chestnuts. Sic the goats on kudzu and clear some land...
Bugs are also healthy. But you won't catch me trying to tell my children to eat bugs and weeds before I have to. Although if I do start a garden, I'll let it grow weeds. Lol.
The hens will gladly eat the bugs.
Good one, teacher - I had forgotten. We're trying all sorts of spots to see what catches, and special boxes for the ones that need help, but our dirt needs a LOT of rehabilitation too.
Kudzu is delish. So are cattails. Could feed legions but folks are stuck on McD yuck
Wait... wut Don't tell me there are recipes for kudzu. For people. Don't get me wrong, my kids are taught that McD=frankenfood poison, and they happily eat all kinds of veggies, but - kudzu?!?
I prefer my veggies raw but here is some "food 4 thought."https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/kudzu-root#uses
I am amazed, never would have thought it was good for anything. Root helps heart health, things blood from clotting... Deep state will find a magic way to eradicate it now! kek
You raise an interesting point what will they eat when they aren’t able to do fast food and convenience meals? Will there be someone who can forage for them? Where will they get the information? I have spent years learning what can be eaten in the wild and what can be medicine.
I believe they will become animals and travel, hunt and destroy in packs.
Thank God for the second amendment.
Unfortunately they will have plastic in them for the next 1000 years.
https://zenodo.org/record/7217336#.Y9wSZ8ZMGsg
From reading this, it appears to address non-organic strawberries and asparagus and not all crops. From the article -. "... For our study we chose the seasonal crops asparagus and strawberries, as their cultivation usually require the use of plastic mulch film and thus, fruits are expected to be prone for microplastic contamination. ..." Did I miss something? Are you saying this is more widespread?
I've heard some pretty awful things, yeah. Microplastics in every mammals milk. In the water table. Makes it's way into soil and crops. That's a slow bomb. Destroyer of chromosomes.
VICTORY GARDENS...Mother/Grandmother had them...WOWZA!!!
Where I learned how to go things and WOWZA on the taste buds...Nothing like a green onion (my fav) to go into a salad or omelette...BOOOOOYA!!!!!
Or dipped in ranch dressing... Fresh veggies from your own garden are the best... Cheers fren...
Big thumbs up. Most "Fresh" vegetables in the UK are actually frozen, or rather "deep chilled at -3. Grow your own.
Unfortunately I'm in an apartment and the grass belongs to the property owner... Cheers fren...
Look in to hydroponics.
That's also a great option... Cheers fren...
Rent a plot or find some old person with a garden who'd be willing to let you use a part.
That's a great idea... Thank you...
There are many seniors who can't maintain their gardens and would be only too happy to share. Ask around, maybe the local church could help.
Thank you for the suggestions... Much appreciated... 😊😊😊
or...walk down the street and look at the yards.
Get with the city you live in and convince them of a need for a community garden on some of that land the city owns.
That's also a great idea... Cheers fren...
Let them rant and rave... They'll be the ones starving since they've never done a lick of work in their lives... Cheers fren...
It's become a very sad state of affairs... We used to have the freedom to do as we wished on our own property as long as no law was being broken... Sadly those days are gone until we take our country back... Cheers fren...
In a city more than likely... In the suburbs, maybe... Cheers fren...
He's a total cuck. Made a career of badmouthing Trump. Also his restaurants suck.
Can you say….Victory Garden??
Absolutely... Cheers fren...
Don't forget to register your farm/garden with the government! =D
Nope lost mine in a freak boating accident.
Damn... what a shame.
Completely slipped my mind kekekek... Cheers fren...
I've got plans for 1/3 acre garden that will be raised bed. Construction starts next month. Also planting fruit trees and berry bushes. Putting in drip irrigation. Have a canning kitchen too. So stoked to make this move towards self sufficiency. And chickens. Just in time too.
That sounds awesome... Let the chickens free range to eat... They're messing with chicken feed to keep them from laying eggs... Cheers fren...
I've read that you can give them goat feed. Or make your own. I'm gonna build a chicken tractor and push it around the yard too.
Neat idea... Cheers fren...
Gardens, yes. Farms, no. There is a lot of runoff from farms which must be handled properly.
Big ag is bad. Your local market farming who is doing a CSA and selling at the farmers market it probably legit.
2 acres. No tractor. No sprays. 24 CSA members a week. 2 farmers markets. Husband and wife, no employees. We rely on insect netting instead of pesticides. We use agri-bon floating row cover for season extension. We also have 2 hundred foot tunnels. Doing about $80k a year. This is on leased land while we are renting an apartment.
Find your local CSA farms and hit those farmers markets. We're creating the parallel economy in your backyard.
Edit: I should note, I greatly encourage people to garden and take pressure off of the greater food system. Not to mention, nothing beats growing your own and knowing how it is grown and handled.
CSA?
Community Supported Agriculture
Makes sense
I'm not a farmer but have had several decent vegetable gardens in my life time... I would have to learn about it if I were ever to have a farm... Cheers fren...
Not on s regenerative farm.
Then we would have to import another 3 million illegal immigrants to tend to it.
Stay off my lawn Jose.
Self-sufficiency is not a vice.
It's a virtue.
That's what my daughter and I are for... Don't need or want anyone's help... Cheers fren...
I'm not exaggerating when I say that most HOAs would not allow that, and that their reactions would be nuclear.
If/when there is no food available at a reasonable price, HOAs might change their rules. Of course, if it gets that bad, then we would probably have other issues, too. Such as neighborhood security.
Oh I know kekek... hoas are ridiculous... Have an awesome day...
If you want to grow grass. That's fine.... just mow it with the correct equipment; ruminating animals.
Grass eater. Cows, goats, sheep.
Sheep and goats tend to graze until they destroy the lawn though... That was the problem cattlemen had with sheep herders in the west... Cheers fren...
Gotta rotate em. Don't let em have the whole piece of land. Fence it off (cut it up into smaller paddocks) with temporary electric fencing (step-in posts and braided wire).
There's real science behind it. It works. Mob grazing. Rotational grazing. Intensive grazing. These are the keywords.
Greg Judy, Joel Salatin, Gabe Brown. These are the some of the greatest practitioners.
This guy knows.
Your name checks out
We're fARMed revolutionists!
Thank you for the info...
No problem. Thank you for evoking important conversation.
And for the daily badge uploads. Some of them are cherry.
My pleasure fren...
This reminds me of a song...
https://youtu.be/O5aWawFdaXs
...from OK with love.
I knew it was this one.
Cowboys dance with the farmers daughters; ranchers dance with the farmers cows.
Actually, the lawn part of our property contributes to making great compost for the vegetable growing part of our property.
Good to know... Thank you fren... Cheers...
Everyone with enough space and money to do so should look into building and underground greenhouse. The first time I saw it was a video of an old man in Nebraska. He had oranges, and other trees growing in his underground greenhouse. You can grow even through the winter in them.
Interesting... Thank you fren... Cheers...
Check out Bioshelter Market Garden by Darrel Fray for similar geothermal ideas
You’d have a bunch of useless low calorie food that serves no purpose. Put cows on it eat the cows
Many vegetables contain necessary vitamins and minerals... Grow both if you can... Cheers fren...
Liver and organs have more , vegetables don’t even absorb and it’s very little amount that may not even convert . You can literally overdose on vitamins by eating liver . Veggies don’t grow year round and they have limited nutrients so you tell me what people originally thrives on.vegetables and grains were sold to us with the intention of making us sick
I believe a healthy mixture of both is needed... I'm a carnivore but I do like my veggies with my steaks... 😊😊😊
As a vegetable farmer, I agree with this. I make money with vegetables. I sustain myself with meat.
Another thing. If you grow food in your front yard, people are more likely to steal it. If you want to plant somewhere besides your back yard, try planting stuff up and down the roadsides and other public places. Much of the general public refuses to eat food they find. There are YouTube videos about that.
Interesting idea... Thank you...
This is actually the way it is supposed to be, and would be if the Satanists weren’t in charge.
If they weren't in charge??? I agree... Cheers fren...
lol yes! Weren’t! Updated it. :)
👍👍👍
I'm in a townhouse that has a balcony with the same floor area as the garage(cause it's above the garage), and I've been building a garden up there. Could use some more shade, but it's one of the only options I've got since it's a townhouse
Roll-up screens could provide the needed shade... Cheers fren...
Shade cloth from greenhouse megastore
That sounds cool!
Yup... Cheers fren...
Or in other words overpopulation is a lie if we use the land properly
Over population has always been a lie, just like everything else they say... Cheers fren...
I can see neighbors stealing your crops.
I can see neighbors becoming fertilizer... Cheers fren...
Good idea, and may I suggest making those rectangular planting beds waist high? So much easier to work and weed, and fewer bugs.
and no rabbits
That's also a great idea... Cheers fren...
Because grass is easier to maintain. That said, I am growing lots of summer fruits / veges atm in my back yard
That sounds awesome and I agree with you too... Cheers fren...
My friend received a survey from the FDA asking if he was growing any food crops and if so what and how much he is growing. Wondering why the gov wants to know what a city slicker is growing.
Because they want to intrude on our freedom... Cheers fren...
As someone who lives on and runs several farms, I would LOVE if people started growing their own food.
I'll ask you the same question I asked another anon here...
As a professional farmer (you, not me), I'm curious about your views on the Back to Eden method for gardening. I've watched the video a few times, looks almost idyllic, but I can't help but wonder if the BtE method is suitable for all climates.
BtE is fine for small scale gardening, it has it's uses and used to be called the No-Till method until the BtE filmmaker came along. It's not useful for doing any real growing though if you plan on feeding people. It's great for some types of flowers and some fruits, tomatoes would do well. But potatoes would suffer badly with that method due to a lack of acidity.
BtE has one really great use and that is reclaiming forest. I have a 2 acre spot in the corner of my property and I paid two guys with some heavy machinery to rip out all the pine trees there and grind the stumps down. I left the wood chips there for two years and then sold them off and had people clear the area down to dirt. Now it's a very prolific sweet potato field.
Thank you so much for your response. It seems from this and the response from another professional farmer here that maintaining proper soil composition/chemistry (if that's the correct term) is not only key to successful growing, but not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. Regionally there are vast differences in soil so I've questioned whether or not the BtE was suitable.
My limited experience of home gardening comes from my childhood where we had a mostly successful, substantial garden in our backyard. I'd go pick the salad veggies and other veggies for our evening meals. Pick, wash, eat = amazing taste. One grandmother grew up farming in "the old country" and had an amazing green thumb. Right now I'm not in a position to have a real garden, but am dabbling with indoor container items (just herbs, potatoes and spinach have been successful), hope to someday have a real garden. It's definitely a learning process.
100% - I have a degree in soil management. It not only changes per region, but per section of your yard.
I have fields and fields of stuff, but my personal garden is my happy spot. I have 10 raised beds that are 6 feet by 10 feet each and I am constantly taking soil samples and messing with the pH of the soil and NPK composition so I can properly grow things.
Over the summer my grandkids all got together and bought me a smartphone so I can use some different gardening tools which I've found amazing. My oldest grandson who will probably take over the farm when I shuffle off this mortal coil introduced me to a really great podcast called Joe Gardener, the guy is pretty funny and he knows his stuff - I think he lives down by Atlanta. He has guests on each week to talk about a different veggie and goes into the whole history of it and how to properly grow it. It's a lot of fun!
Growing indoors is a whole art, I have a bunch of herbs indoors and a few tomatoes I'm playing with and I have a whole light setup and stuff. It's a lot of fun too.
I've bookmarked this site, will have to look into some of his videos. Thank you again for sharing your expertise. Much appreciated.
https://www.growingagreenerworld.com/joe-lampl/
You should put that podcast on the currently stickied post about great podcasts
What a cool degree!
Grass helps keep the weeds down, tho
So does weeding kekekek... Cheers fren...
Yeah but on acres of land, the fingers tend to bleed
Granted but most homes are on 1/4 acre plots...
Manageable at quarter acre. We're blessed..our lawn alone is probably 2 acres. When the riding mower fails it's a big problem.
Last house I lived in in Florida was 3 acres and a push mower... That was a bear to mow... kekekek...
Yeah especially in florida...water the lawn with your own sweat lol
When I was finally done mowing it, it was time to start again... What a pain in the butt that was ... kekekekek
You need a ruminating animal.
A dairy cow or goat. Even a beef would be better than your dumb riding mower.
We use silage tarp to stomp out our garden plots. Using sand bags to weigh it down, it does a good job after a few months of leaving you with bare soil. For problem areas we will transplant into woven ground cover, which we have burned holes in at the appropriate spacing, this can be reused. After several seasons of keeping weed pressure down, you will go through the seed bank providing you aren't allowing any weeds to go to seed.
End of the season for us is, clean out all the beds. Spread compost. Lay our silage tarp. Garden is warmer, drier, and weed free so we beat all the tractor farmers into the fields for planting. For gardeners you could use cardboard, or any tarp really. Imagine flipping over a rock or log that is a bare spot of rich soil and a ton of insects.
Use cardboard like the retards did at CHAZ with store-bought soil? 😂😂
Or professionally made compost, or homemade compost. Whatever you can get. Many municipalities collect leaves and make compost free for the community.
Farming and gardening have a learning curve. It takes work, which most liberals don't like to do a lot of. So for them a pile of soil on cardboard is a garden.
Really, growing in a bag of soil isn't a bad idea for renters who have limited space or just a balcony.
As a professional farmer (you, not me), I'm curious about your views on the Back to Eden method for gardening. I've watched the video a few times, looks almost idyllic, but I can't help but wonder if the BtE method is suitable for all climates.
For wood chips in your actual garden, it would be good to have a healthy active biology, that is to say, healthy soil will break down and incorporate those wood chips better than poor soil. This is the microbes and fungi at work. Poor soil can be negatively effected by wood chips in the garden in that they can pull nitrogen during decomposition.
I prefer a thick layer of compost and grass clippings
That's pretty much what the Back to Eden method espouses. They get ground-up clippings from landscapers - trees/leaves and bushes as well as grass.
What you're saying then is to start with healthy soil by using compost and grass before you start adding in the ground up tree (wood) chips. Or are you saying that wood chips should pretty much be avoided?
The BtE video is set in the Pacific Northwest, I believe, the gardener/farmer featured originally from California. For those who haven't yet seen it, here's the video. It's long (1:44), but worth the watch if you have time
https://youtu.be/6rPPUmStKQ4
I would advise aged wood chips. I like this guy Charles Dowding for no dig info.
https://www.youtube.com/@CharlesDowding1nodig
Ideally if I am start a garden from scratch with ample time I would use a weed wacker and take the grass down as low as I could. Use a silage tarp to cover the area, it takes less time to kill of grass in heat of summer. When the grass is all killed off and incorporated and you're left with bare soil, you can then add your compost. If you like you can layer in other organic matter, but I find it best until you have built the biology to stick with finished compost. If you are doing no dig, you can plant into these composted beds and mulch with grass clippings or leaf mulch for best incorporation of organic materials.
If you have no time and need a garden. The lasagna method is a good way. Cardboard, compost, some kind of mulch all right on top of the existing soil.
I like a guy Richard Perkins who is a great market farmer, he uses wood chips strictly in his walking paths.
The main factor is creating your beds, and keeping those beds established. Many say avoid walking on these beds but Charles walks in his. He has a lot of trial gardens with different tillage methods and soil compositions.
We personally do what I call minimal tillage. We create permanent raised beds using a BCS walk behind tiller (after the tarp and composting). Using the tiller I will loosen the soil, then using the rotary plow I will form raised beds. To these beds I add more compost before planting or sowing seeds. For new garden plots where the area is too large for organic mulch we use woven ground cover, a reusable plastic that lets water through enough while keeping your beds weed free.
I also really like Jim Kovaleski, he is all about using a scythe and feeding your garden grass.
Whatever method your gardening is, it will always improve with time so don't get frustrated. If you have weeds, the most important thing is to remove them before they go to seed. Otherwise I consider weeds soil re-mediators. They pull nutrients from different depths and I like to chop and drop my weeds when I can.
I watched that too, certainly looks interesting. If I ever manage to not be lazy and also get my own small plot of land, I'd grow stuff for myself.
Not an easy life that's for sure... Cheers fren...
They would send goons with guns to destroy it and confiscate our money in fines.
That's what 2A is for... Cheers fren...
Farm as in cows and chickens!
Agreed plus eggs have been found to fight the jab and that's why the egg.shortage... Cheers fren...
Where you see that it fights the jab? Big if true.
there was a post, here, stating that earlier today. I didn't click to see if there was saucy sauce to go with it
I found it. looks like the chickens had to be injected with them to produce eggs that helped. so just normal eggs won't work
An article on twatter... Cheers fren...
Can anyone recommend a good how to / resource book for home gardening?
There are so many. Pretty much anything from here: https://www.chelseagreen.com/
Lots of youtube channels too. Search for market gardening or no-till gardening.
Can't go wrong with Eliot Coleman, Charles Dowding, Jean-Martien Fortier, Masanobu Fukuoka, Jeff Poppin, Sepp Holzer, Eric Toensmeier Dave Jacke.
Joel Salatin for livestock.
Fuckin legend, thanks for all the resources!
Tis what frenz are for. Happy growing.
I honestly couldn't tell you sorry... Cheers fren...
"Release the HOA Karens!"
Now that's funny... Cheers fren...
Into the sun
You'd have to shoot lazy cunts who won't grow their own but feel entitled to come take yours
Thieves would be shot for trespassing... Otherwise, the barter system would work... Cheers fren...
Yes
👍👍👍 Cheers fren...
👊
👊👊👊