I don't need to be characterized by a flange head. Don't you ever get anything right?
When I post a cite, it says there are at least other people who support a position.
When you give your opinions, you are all alone.
It was always a lot of work for me too until I read Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book 30 years ago, what an eye opener. I just planted this years crop, took about 5 minutes , just push aside the leaves and planted the seed and covered it up. No tilling, fertilizing, I didn't even bother to water, rain is expected soon. (for yield I get about 25 pounds of beans from a 4x8 size area, don't know if that is good or not). I don't stake tomatoes either.
The secret is just to keep your soil covered with organic material 365 days a year like mother nature does, she'll take care of the rest (weeding, fertilizing, watering etc)
If I was starting a new garden plot, I would spray one time with Roundup (actually, probably a generic equivalent) in late spring when the weeds and grass are growing good. Then that first year I would transplant in warm season crops like tomatoes and peppers and eggplant, disturbing the soil as little as possible. Mulch heavily with shredded paper and leaves and other carbon-rich matter, supplying nitrogen as necessary just to the plants (mostly in the form of diluted urine.) Keep adding mulch as it disappears. Any weeds that come up will be starved for nitrogen (by the decomposing mulch) until you get a chance to pull them out. Just toss them on top to die and go back in the soil eventually.
Let the earthworms till the soil instead of you, and the dormant weed seeds will stay dormant. You'll probably never have to use the Roundup again. By the second year, you can probably grow beans and squash and other direct-sown crops.
Bob
Why, when in most cases, newspaper and mulch will accomplish the same thing?
I presume you do crop rotation, and that is why you needn't fertilize?
On Sat, 23 May 2009 16:36:22 GMT, against all advice, something compelled "brooklyn1" , to say:
Maybe he did, maybe he didn't.
Who gives a shit? I mean, besides you.
Not at all. My entire front yard is about 60 feet long. (I've got 120 hills of corn, and about 100 cucumber plants along the front fence.) My back yard has eighteen 3X6 foot raised beds, plus a six-foot round 3-tiered herb garden, and a bean house that is about 10 feet on each of four sides. And I have about 20 fruit and nut trees, plus odd vegetables stuck randomly throughout the yard, such as on trellises and along the decks. (I like edible landscaping!) Watering the majority of the garden takes as long as necessary to turn a couple of spigots, plus hand-watering three or four of the beds every day. Of course, the initial laying-down of the drip lines took a long time, but now that everything is in place, it just takes a few minutes to make sure everything gets watered.
--S.
Well, no you wouldn't. If you start off by smothering the grasses with plywood or some other solid surface, then you shouldn't till at all after that. Tilling will just bring the submerged weed seeds to the surface and you'll have the same problem over again. It's much better to smother everything under where you want to plant (letting the old plants rot and add nutrients to the soil), and then build on top of that to make new, relatively weed-free soil. This is why I would advocate cardboard instead of plywood (since cardboard can be left in place to decompose), but the plywood *IS* a good idea if you can get it and don't mind moving it when it comes time to plant.
A good, deep rototilling will also dredge up dormant weed seeds and bring them back to life. With my clayey, weedy soil, I have found it infinitely better to leave the tiller in the garage, and just pile organic stuff on top of cardboard to make rich, fertile garden plots that are virtually weed-free.
--S.
Amen. The first year I tried to do a garden here, it was tons of work with the tiller, and then the clayey soil compacted and left me with stunted vegetables that became progressively more hidden in a sea of persistent weeds.
Then my husband piled that fall's leaves on one area, and when I went to plant some tomatoes there, I found the soil deep, black, crumbly, and full of earthworms! Got an incredible tomato crop in a plot that was barely ten feet square.
Since then I have put more work into it by making raised wooden beds, laying down paper in the fall and piling the leaves and grass on top of that. But yeah, in the spring, the work to prepare the garden is so light. I just pop transplants right into the beds, no tilling or mixing or measuring. For small-seeded beds, I make little furrows in the old leaves and throw some compost in there to plant the seeds in. I can't believe I used to mess around with a tiller and waste all that time and gasoline.
--S.
See, to me, putting poison on weeds is just a waste of good organic matter! I prefer to either smother them, or if that's not possible, pull them and put them back into the bed to rot. Either way it means more nutrients for my garden. I used to loathe the thick stand of Timothy grass we have invading our garden beds, but once I saw it as virtually the only source of nitrogen in the later months of our dry, hot summer climate, I just get excited when I see it growing well, because I get to chop it down and put it on my vegetables!
People really need to understand that weeds are nature's way of protecting the earth. When you expose a patch of earth bare (as with tilling), weeds will sprout to cover it. You can't expect to have pure bare land. Killing weeds solves a temporary problem but doesn't solve it forever, unless you plan to keep putting poison on there year after year. When the ground is bare, weeds will grow, no matter what you do. So the key is to NOT let the ground remain uncovered. Mulches and cover crops can help protect the earth so that weeds don't have to.
--S.
The weeds don't go to waste, they get covered with mulch and rot. :-) You keep everything covered so the dormant weed seeds don't sprout. (pulling the weeds would unnecessarily disturb the soil)
Bob
The original post was about Bermuda grass. This stuff is prolific and grows around and through just about anything you throw at it. It laughs at compost as an impediment. I've seen a clay pot full of pure, dry sand with Bermuda sprouting out it. No, it was not rooting in the sand. The Bermuda crept through the one drainaige hole at the bottom and worked its way to the top. The pot was sitting on the edge of a concrete slab, the Bermuda crept up 6" from the ground, then into the pot's bottom. In another similar case, a pot sitting on a 4" thick flat rock. 16" tall pot. The pot did have soil in it. Same thing.
I'm ignoring the newsgroup weblink police fanatic. If you look hard enough on the internet, you will find that pigs can fly. Doesn't mean that I believe it.
You made your point when talking about smaller acreage and affordibility of Roundup vs. feeding the family. I don't digress. You did just waste your "breath" though on a point that is really moot from the prior replying poster.
I have it where it went under three feet of concrete. Aggressive stuff.
Who pissed in your Wheaties?
What have you been sniffing, Roundup? I own two acres, which I spray here and there for weed control. I am starting a garden, and wanted to spray a little in there to get ahead of the weeds.
Did you get it that time, Sparky?
Steve
If you remember, in my first post in this thread I recommended moving :-) (to get rid of Bermuda.) I used to live in Houston, and for a while in Temple, TX, I know about the stuff. That's why I'd wait until late spring and spray everything with Roundup one time -- to kill the perennial grasses.
Bob
I've had gardens for several years when I lived in Louisiana. My wife is a type A personality. So, when it come time to do the garden, she's out there, tilling, and making rows that are on a slant, following the slant of the property. The water runs right through her ditches, and very little stops for the plants. Couldn't or wouldn't take in the idea that even rice paddies are made to stairstep down the mountainsides. I have taken the second half of the garden, and am about through tilling it now and removing weeds. But I am making my rows at ninety degrees to hers, and using black flex pipe with drip irrigation.
So, we'll see whose does the best. Outside the garden, we have about a dozen trees that have bubblers and moats. Tomorrow, I will put wire around the entrances for rabbits, and plant melons in the moats where they will be automatically watered.
Might even put a picture up on flickr for brooklyn1.
or not.
Steve
Sheesh, who made you sole arbiter of what peeps post... your responding to my post added nothing, whereas yours and you are the total waste... and obviously you haven't a clue what "digress" means or is your use germaine, you just inserted the tired overused word self-servingly in hopes of elevating yourself to a position of importance and superiority, not. I'm positive you don't have a garden either, never did, never will.... what an insignicant pinhead your momma bred.
And it sounds like you're a pimple faced idiot with little real world experience. Either join in the conversation or STFU.
On second thought, you haven't written anything yet I consider worth reading, so, it's to the compost pile with you.
bubye
Steve
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