Why mulching works

I know I squawk a lot about the role mulch plays in our gardens, but I'll share a short video of how and why it works.

Photo update

I'm adding a few photos showing the gardens from this past week. Notice the potatoes, which are flourishing in the thick layer of hay mulch. The blackberries are getting riper by the day.

Summer lull--time to build

As you've noticed, we rely heavily on mulch, whether it be plastic or hay.  Some things can't be mulched, such as sweetcorn (although I'm tempted to try that too), so you have to till in between the rows and then hand weed in between.  For much of our crops, though, we mulch.  We put plastic around the strawberries and melons.  We put hay over the potatoes, squash/pumpkins, and the grapes and berries.  It takes time to do this and do it right.  The plastic has to be laid out, and then you dig a trench all the way around the patch, bury the edge, then cover with dirt.  You then have to cut out around your plants, add rocks to hold the plastic down, and then poke holes with a fork.  If you cut corners on any of this, your plastic will not stay down in the wind and you've got a real mess.

Hay mulch is even more labor intensive.  First I cut the hay.  For now we don't have a tractor drawn mower, so I use my 3' sickle mower on the front of my BCS tractor.  It takes me about 3 hours per acre to mow.  We then let it dry for a couple days, and then go over the patch with the tractor and dump rake to make windrows, and finally go around with the tractor and our trailer, fork it on the trailer, then haul it to the beds and fork it off and spread it around.  It takes time, equipment, and multiple hands to make this process work.

But, by putting in the time on the front end (i.e May and June), you greatly reduce your labor in July and August, because weeds are no longer a real problem, and you don't need to water.  Plus, the crops will be more productive.  As an added benefit, we've found that having the mulch, particularly the black plastic, on a patch for a year or more all but kills the weeds underneath, even quack grass, so as we continue to rotate this method, we feel we're going to gradually notice less and less weeds in the garden.

Now it is the middle of June and 80% of the garden is in and mulched and can largely take care of itself until harvest.  But, this summer it doesn't mean we get a break.  Next week we start on our cabin, and while I'm hiring the bulk of the work done, there's still going to be a lot of running around getting it to come together, and I'm going to do a bunch of the finish work myself, so I don't see much break ahead for me until winter.  Then I'm going to curl up in front of my wood stove, fired with wood I cut on our own land, and take a nap.

iPad blogger

Juxtaposed with my well professed love of the simplicity of gardening/homesteading is my focused affinity for technology that frees me from the walls of my office. One of my favorite devices is the iPad, which enables me to work more remotely and, hopefully, spend more time working from our homestead. This post is made on a blogger app for my iPad.

Cabin construction

We're getting very close to starting construction on our new homestead dwelling.  It will be a 16x40 log cabin with full loft.  There will be no basement, but rather it will sit on wood "pillars".  I'm finalizing the details with the subcontractors and the contractor is ready to start after next week.  The plan is for the contractor to construct the deck and shell and put up the roof and install the windows/doors.  I'll then finish the inside out for the most part and be responsible for insulating the roof and floor.  Overall I think we have a really nice design.  I'm attaching a few photos from the site and will continue to post as construction gets underway. 

View from the future living room of the cabin--to the NE

View from the future living room looking East

View to the West

Heat is for weeding

We've hit our second real warm spell of the year, which means it's a perfect time for weeding.  This morning I got out to the gardens just before 5:00 a.m. just as it was getting light and still relatively cool.  I then used my long handled "Cobra head" tool to weed the strawberries and the asparagus.  I loosen the soil with the tool and then reach down and pick the weeds out.  I lay them out on the ground and they quickly whither and die in the hot sun.  It's important to get all the dirt knocked off the roots or they'll find a way to live.

I also took the remaining hay on the field and gathered it with a fork to mulch the blackberries.  We have two kinds of blackberries--thorned and thornless.  From what I can tell, the thorned berries are more like rasberries, and tend to grow canes in the air around a clump.  We saw the local amish holding their berries up with tomato cages, so we decided to give this a try in lieu of a more sophisticated trellis.  My biggest concern is how I'll get the old canes cut out each year.  It's going to be a bit tricky getting them cut off at the ground and pulled out of the clump, but we'll try it.  With that caveat, they look very nice and are flowering and some have some well-developed berries.  I transplanted some suckers from these plants this spring and they seem to have survived pretty well.  I was finally able to mulch them today.

In addition to the traditional thorned berries, I got 7 thornless plants from a local farmer.  I think all but one survived.  In looking at his plants and researching online, it looks like these will grow much longer canes--more like grape vines, so I'm going to have to put up a more permanent trellis for them.  I'm guessing I'll have to do that next spring, but I guess I have to see how much growth we get out of them this year.

This week I got three grape vines in the mail.  Last year we planted 6 and only 3 made it.  My best guess is that I didn't cover them adequately this winter, although they didn't look real great last summer.  I will be able to keep them better watered this year.

Finally, I weeded the asparagus again.  I think this is the 3rd time already this year.  Overall, we're keeping well ahead of the weeds and the quack grass doesn't seem to be a huge problem.  I use the tiller to cover most of the area between the rows and then use the cobra tool to weed in between the plants themselves.  I think they're doing really well and can't wait for year 3 so we can start harvesting.

Weeded asparagus

Asparagus bed

Thorned blackberries on right and thornless on left with hay mulch

Transplanted blackberry

Thorned blackberry with mulch and cages

Berries forming

Sweetcorn

Potato popping through mulch

Weeded strawberry "runner bed"

Strawberry bed on plastic

Strawberries

Yes, we have lot of rocks

2nd year grape vine climbing "corn crib" trellis

Rotary plow, how I do love thee

Anyone that knows me, knows I'm crazy.  And anyone that doesn't know me, can immediately tell I'm crazy by taking one look at my gardens.  This morning I tore up more hay to convert in to gardens.  Don't ask me how we'll keep up with it all, but now is no time to be bothered by the little details.

While we have a tractor--an old 9N Ford--it lacks the power/traction to pull much of a plow, and we don't have a disc, so I've continued doing the heavy soil work with my trusty BCS and rotary plow and tiller.  Admittedly, the rotary plow doesn't chew real deep, but it does a nice job with the soil it does work up, and is about the only way, other than a moldboard plow, to tear up sod.  Try doing it with a traditional tiller and you'll know why.

Today I mulched the new raspberries with hay, tilled the patch where we will put tomatoes, beans, etc., plowed a trench along the melon patch to bury the one side of the plastic, weeded the asparagus, and worked up the ground where the additional grape vines are going to go.  I'm trying to get as much of the soil working done so I can then take them off and turn the BCS around to run my sickle and brush mower for the rest of the summer.  Here's some pictures and video to show the progress.

Mulched potatoes

Before tilling

After tilling

Raspberries without mulch

Raspberries with hay mulch--also protects from sun while newly transplanted

One strip down, one to go with rotary plow

Both strips ready for potatoes

Melon patch with plastic and BCS

Melon patch with plastic

Tilled between asparagus--now need to hand hoe in between stalks

Taters and hay

Our family has always relied heavily on potatoes, and so we've always had a pretty large potato patch each year.  There are two main issues we generally deal with in growing potatoes.  First, there's the potato bugs.  Second, there's the weeding. 

We've largely solved the first problem in two ways.  First, we use "King Harry" potatoes, which are a variety of potatoes that, for whatever reason, potato bugs don't care for.  In fact, they leave them alone almost entirely.  From what I've read, it appears these potatoes have unusually long hairy fibers on the leaves, which deters the bugs.  Regardless of the reason, they come as advertised and the bugs basically leave them alone.

Regarding the weeds, in the past we've tried different things, with straw mulch being the best option normally.  But, I don't have straw, but do have hay, so last year we clipped the couple acres of hay and used some of it to mulch the potato patch with.  It worked even better than we expected.  We plant the potatoes, and then spread the hay over the potatoes.  The potatoes seem to pop up through, but most of the weeds don't.  You will have a few weeds get through, but they're easy to pull.  Plus, this method keeps the ground moist, and also helps protect the tubers from the sun if they happen to bulge through the surface.  Since it worked so well last year, we decided to do it again this year.

I also used the hay to mulch our blackberries and grapes.  I'm thinking of using the hay to mulch our asparagus too. 

In addition to the potatoes, we planted a large bed of sweet corn--in two batches about a week apart to stagger the harvest.  We also got some more blackberry vines (these are thornless) and raspberries, so I worked up some new beds for them. 

Last fall I broke some new ground on what I thought was some pretty good soil, but turned out to be pretty rocky.  So, we decided to put most of our melons and squash in this area.  What we did is dug out a 3 foot by 1 foot deep hole and mixed in some composted horse manure we have, and then planted in to those areas.  We are then going to cover the whole bed with black plastic to keep the weeds down and add to the heat.  For the squash/pumpkin patch, we'll probably just use hay, but we're considering using plastic for that as well.

Dump rake we use to gather dry hay

Gathering hay with trailer and tractor

New thornless blackberries with mulch in center of pic

Start of new raspberry patch