Mulching the Garden--Questions

[kacynlaura]

We are trying the Back to Eden no-till method in our garden. Our first plant will be in the spring. It will be exciting to see what God wants to do with it. I will try to remember to let you know how it goes!

 

[Rosa moschata]

Keep in mind that person's location and heavy rainfall, which will result in the mulch breaking down much faster than, say, Southern California. I've read accounts of others who have tried it elsewhere, and they were disappointed when planting in mulch that hadn't matured enough. It makes a great base for a garden, but will work best when amended with plenty of organic fertilizer and other good stuff early-on. For mulch to break down, nitrogen is required. If it doesn't come from plenty of rain, it will be taken from existing soil. It will eventually become available again for plants, but not until it's fully composted. If you set the mulch out now, mix the top of it with something nutrient-rich and small in particle size -- over Winter it will filter down through and get things going. You can use blood meal, bone meal, feather meal, cottonseed meal, alfalfa meal, used coffee grounds, various manures, organic fertilizers, etc.

 

[2boys1homestead]

Keep in mind that person's location and heavy rainfall, which will result in the mulch breaking down much faster than, say, Southern California. I've read accounts of others who have tried it elsewhere, and they were disappointed when planting in mulch that hadn't matured enough. It makes a great base for a garden, but will work best when amended with plenty of organic fertilizer and other good stuff early-on. For mulch to break down, nitrogen is required. If it doesn't come from plenty of rain, it will be taken from existing soil. It will eventually become available again for plants, but not until it's fully composted. If you set the mulch out now, mix the top of it with something nutrient-rich and small in particle size -- over Winter it will filter down through and get things going. You can use blood meal, bone meal, feather meal, cottonseed meal, alfalfa meal, used coffee grounds, various manures, organic fertilizers, etc.

Good point about the nitrogen. My partner drinks enough coffee that I should be able to counteract that!

 

[Kris64]

Disclaimer: I haven't done this yet but will give it a try. I've shared this idea with several veggie gardeners familiar with chickens, and they believe it will work.

I have a large enough garden area (only need to feed two people) that my plan is to split it in half with a fence. The first year I'll till and amend the soil on one half (I'm doing square foot gardening--check out the book if you haven't already). If the timing works, plant a cover crop and let the chickens till it for you once it sprouts.

The second half will be for the chickens. The idea is to rotate each year: garden in the back, chickens in the front, then visa versa. Also using a Deep Litter or Deep Mulch system. For the mulch I had wanted to use straw or hay, but it sounds like it won't absorb enough moisture for such a system unless it's mixed with other items such as newspaper or leaves. Pine shavings and sand seem to be used with great success (again, my disclaimer, it's just what I've read, but I've read a LOT).

 

[lazy gardener]

Your plan sounds like a winner. Regarding the DL: If you have access to fall leaves, that's an excellent starting point. You can add hay or straw to that, and let them churn it up well. Will you use mulch in the garden? I keep my garden under about 6" of hay, and it does very well. The girls are turned into the garden after I harvest all the veggies, and are removed from the garden in early spring. Any areas where I will be planting root crops or greens will be kept chicken free from late fall just to be on the safe side regarding pathogens.

 

[Kris64]

Right now I have straw over the garden--after I amended based on a soil test and put in some garlic. My paths are cardboard. It's a new house for me and I haven't gardened in almost 20 years and the chickens (thinking of getting babies in February) will be totally new. Ah, the adventure. Now to figure out how to keep everyone relatively safe with a coop that's open on one side--or just hardware cloth. With DL I understand it's more important to have a dirt floor. I'm toying with a fenced floor (hardware "cloth") then scatter it with lime (for smell) and ~6" of mulch (love the leaves idea ). Finally let the chickens add their fertilizer and scratch away. My concern is they'll hurt their feet scratching on a fenced floor--even through 6". Might be smarter to dig a trench around the coop and run/garden area and put wire fencing down a foot or so.

What do you do for predator protection?

 

[lazy gardener]

Instead of covering the floor of the coop with hardware cloth, I'd recommend that you bury a skirt of 1/2" hardware cloth either straight down 18" or you can attach it to the coop, and bury it a couple of inches deep so it flares out at least 18". You can allow the sod to grow through the hdw cloth, and it'll deter predators. This will allow your chickens to dig to their heart's content in that DL.

I have a skirt around my current coop. The coop is surrounded by electronet fencing for their run, but during the 6 winter months, the electronet comes down, leaving them more vulnerable. No losses yet.

 

[Kris64]

Hey Lazy Gardener,
Thanks again. Makes sense. One question about letting the girls into the garden space during the winter: don't they destroy it completely? My original plan was to let them into a space for a year and then I'd use that as my garden the next year, but after seeing folks runs the soil looks "dead" in those areas.

 

[lazy gardener]

My garden is about 30 x 40. Last year, there were 5 girls. They had access to 1/2 of that space which included an 8 x 8 green house, but only used a path through the snow to the green house... for part of the winter. I gave up on keeping it shoveled for them b/c of the massive amount of snow we had. This year, there are 15 girls plus their handsome roo. They've had access to the garden from late Sept until 2 days ago when I pulled the electric fence from the garden, and moved them to the lawn in back of their current coop to give them some nice grazing. Within the next week or two, they will be moving again... to their new coop, and they'll have to make do with a barren run, set up with DL b/c of new earth work having been done, and no green established yet.

 

[boxofpens]

We use sheet mulching for both our gardens and our raised beds. In our main 'ground' garden, we put down:

1. A layer of cardboard over the grass & wet it down completely with the hose.

2. Covered the wet cardboard with about 6" of a fresh hay-cow manure-urine mixture we had from cleaning out the barn.

3. Covered that with a thin layer of a pretty crappy sand/topsoil mix we bought a truckload of. (Basically sandy fill dirt we bought for around the barn entrance to keep the mud down when it rains.)

4. Covered that with a few inches of a compost/growing mix we purchased a truckload of. Everyone locally raved about how good this particular mix was, but once we started digging into it, it just seemed like another version of the crappy topsoil/sand mix. But we figured we'd give it a shot anyway and see.

5. Covered this all of this with 1-2 inches of cedar mulch.

We spent the fall and winter building this up as time allowed. During the building we just threw in everything from wheelbarrows full of leaves, more cow poop, chicken poop, saw dust, kitchen scraps, old potting mixes we had. Anything we had, we threw in, regardless of what "layer" we were working on. The chickens also had access throughout the process, so they helped mix everything in. I did bury the kitchen compost, to try to keep mice and rats out.

The 1st spring we planted:

**Tomatoes (many leaves, but not much fruit- was expected--->from the high nitrogen content). Our Cherry tomatoes did great though.
**Serrano peppers (did great)
**Green beans (did poorly)
**Wildflowers for our bees (did great and re-seeded)
**Basil (somehow this got in the garden, and completely took over one side of it. Our bees loved it, so we just left it. I figured the roots will help aerate the soil and the dropping leaves will add mulch).
**zucchini & yellow squash (did poorly- was shaded too much by the basil probably).
**potatoes (have no idea what happened to them
**Cucumbers (did great). They climbed up a nearby oak tree, and that was the 1st time I've ever seen a rat in a tree.
**Cantelope and Watermelon (did great, but field rats ate holes in them before they could mature).
**Corn (did great) I didn't plant much due to space.

Notes:
> I wasn't expecting much the 1st year as it would basically be a cold compost pile, but I had seeds, so I planted them. I figured if anything came up, it would at least be a cover crop, if nothing else. If we got any type of harvest, all the better.
> Aside from climbers, there was no rhyme or reason to where I planted what. I tried to allow adequate space for plants, but other than that, I just stuck things 'wherever', and tossed wildflowers everywhere for our bees.
> I built a rabbit proof pallet/chicken wire fence around it.

Problems:
> Squirrels dug up the corn seedlings. Now I put metal (cans) or plastic (yogurt containers, sour cream containers, etc.) "collars" around all seedlings until they're semi-mature.
> Rats &/or squirrels ate most of the tomatoes and melons. (not sure how to fix this problem).
> Rainwater ran off of the mulch, didn't soak in, so it was pretty dry for the shallow rooted plants. After the 1st summer I "rearranged" the soil. I now have a berm around the whole thing (kind of like a bowl) and a series of trenches (walking paths). I plant in the high parts or hills and sides of the hills, bury compost in the high parts, and mulch with leaves, old alfalfa and hay, twigs, wood chips, basically anything. Rainwater now collects in the trenches and soaks in. Instead of running off the single "mound" or "plateau" that I originally had.

One year later, everything we've planted in it so far is doing very well. We still have 1 tomato plant producing and 3 pepper plants producing, even in Dec. Right now we have: broccoli, lettuce, sugar snap peas, shelled peas, celery, onions, and cold tolerant wild flowers growing. And of course our tomato and peppers.

I know that's a lot of info, but I just wanted to show that it doesn't have to be a perfect mix of anything particular. If you use your local organic matter, the worms and microbes will come. It just may take a little longer than usual. I find it's much easier to work with native organic matter to grow native plants & crops, and make smaller raised beds for some things that may be non-native, or that may need specific soil conditioning. You can always tuck things into those smaller "special" beds. For example: we have special beds for our grapes. We pour old watered down wine on them. Onions and strawberries LOVE these beds, as do some carrots and eggplant. So we just tuck them under the grapes. Only one or two eggplant though because they get big. We also plant a pole bean or two by each grape. If aphids come, ladybugs come soon after to eat them up. Our grape arbors are painted white, and ladybugs seem to be attracted to the light color.

I used to be super OCD and planted by the book, and tried all sorts of remedies, techniques, etc. And nearly gave up on gardening, because nothing ever worked "the way it was supposed to". So after many many years I had all these seeds and all this time & energy wasted and nothing to show for it. So I said "screw it" and just threw things together, watered them if i remembered to, and lo and behold all sorts of things started popping up and thriving. I had no clue what some things even were until they matured. Now I randomly try everything and keep what works best for me in my area.