A vegetable meadow?

[Adrien (ex-nico239)]

I did not resemé.

Ok, but did your seedling have a problem? I say that because I never had a pb of lifting with these big seeds and there it looked sparse.

If you talk about the 1 photo I did not sow enough tight: it was just for a test so I did not want to waste

[to be chafoin]

Some pictures in my winter garden :

The 3 tunnels protect the beans

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In the detail of multilayer tunnels:

Tunnel of the most advanced beans: tarpaulin and wintering veil, next to a rank protected by a simple P30

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The wintering sails are available in P17 and P30 thickness, which corresponds to the number of gram per m2. I saw that there was also P60 and I think it may be interesting to buy this kind of material on the roll on specialized sites on the internet, it seems more economical because it is necessary to multiply the layers to obtain a effective protection. https://www.serresvaldeloire.com/voiles-hivernage-forcage/27-voile-hivernage-30-g-m2.html

The tarpaulin is stretched over the plastic hoops, the veil is placed on the crop bordering the beans

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Here's where the beans are:

There are two rows like that. Height about 4 0cm

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Following the tip of the claw there is a slug that also benefits from the heat!
The arches cost between 1.5 and 2,5 euros the unit which is quite expensive but we can now save a little with the claws and especially the clips that allow not to have to double each time with a second arch on The tarpaulin.

Double wintering sails stretched over the hoops

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Tarpaulin clip and claws for tender

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Detail of the clip

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There are also some very inexpensive ones that come on the hoops style:

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View under the second tunnel, with the thermo. I let the weeds grow.

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The third tunnel is equivalent to the second except that there is only one layer. Bottom: the later sowing, done at a better time because the cultures are lower (10-15cm) thus less fragile with the winter frosts:

I sowed pretty hard online and sometimes covered with a mulch of dead leaves

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Finally I also made some pockets on the prairie side. There I just bordered with several thicknesses of sails:

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Late sowing too, height 10cm

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[Moindreffor]

for your 32 diameter clips you can buy 32 diameter PVC tube and cut clips inside a tube of this diameter is not expensive

[to be chafoin]

Yes, yes, but there is confusion , I took this photo of clips on the internet to show the type of clips but in reality the diameter is not 32 (it must not exceed much 1cm these arches)!

Regarding the temperatures under these tunnels it is difficult to draw definitive conclusions, according to my statements which are a little contradictory. Today, for example, I find 2.5 ° more beneath the layers of sails laid closer to the small beans in grassland than under almost the same layers stretched in tunnel above the arches.

Perhaps the explanation here:https://www.aujardin.org/viewtopic.php?t=134020&start=30

According to the technical explanations of this forum on the heat transfer of materials, the most important would be to protect the soil of the garden and this as close to the crops to prevent the circulation of hot / cold air.
For example:

What is the use of the air trapped under the veil? Apart from breathing plants, nothing. Or rather, if, it serves to lose heat, by convection. The larger the trapped air mass, the more convection (hot air rises up and cold air goes down). The hot air gives way to the veil and cools by leaking through the veil and air exchange, while cold air cools the ground warming up. Hot air, especially, escapes through the veil, seeking to ascend ever higher, and draws cold air through the bottom of the veil.
To prevent this convection, it is necessary that the air space is as low as possible. Hence the interest of placing the veil on the ground. A thin air space is no longer convected, and hot air escapes less easily, because there is no lower part allowing the cold air to replace it.

And further :

- the deep soil is always at 15 ° C, and in winter warms the soil surface permanently by diffusion. If on the hour scale, the outside air warms the soil during the day, it cools it all the night. What warms up the ground in winter is not the outside air nor the weak sun, it is the entrails of the earth at 15 ° C, by the heat it diffuses. Hence the importance of isolating the floor as much as possible to preserve this heat, just as you put on a sweater.

[Arnaudch]

Hello everybody

I am new to the forumsorry if I do not ask my question in the right place. Tell me and then I will move
There is a question in the first post of this topic to which I did not see the answer: With the years, what becomes of the meadows or the hay is cut. It will therefore not decompose there, the organic matter is removed. -> Is there a degradation of the richness of the soil?
Also, during the period of plant growth, I imagine that these meadows are "mobilized" mainly for the garden: no grazing possible, or very little at the beginning of the season, then once the mowing (s) have passed, the animals can come back to graze there, but the grass is only going to manage to grow much more. -> So for 1 area of ​​vegetable garden, I actually use (more or less of course) 6 or 8 surfaces of land (6 meadow + 1 vegetable garden). Am I wrong in my reasoning, if not what do you say about that?

Thank you, and look forward to reading you

[Did67]

1) The prairie will know the fate of any natural meadow. Cutting hay to feed cows, horses, earthworms does not change anything.

2) A natural meadow has a "certain natural fertility": in the soil, minerals dissolve; the activity of soil organisms fixes nitrogen, injects biomass, etc.

This said, this fertility is limited.

So if we want to increase it, we will have to fertilize it - as we do in breeding ...

3) Yes, to be "honest", it would be necessary to integrate the surfaces used to produce the hay in the "surfaces occupied by the vegetable garden". I think, but it does indeed depend on natural fertility, that it is necessary to multiply the surface occupied by the vegetables by 4 or 5 ...

The "productivity per unit area" of the sloth's vegetable garden is therefore quite low, even if the yield of the plot is very high (equivalent to or greater than that of a conventional vegetable garden).

And this is logical: we have the work done to soil organizations instead of doing it by hand or tiller ... So the garden works with the energy of biomass instead of running on fuels.

[Arnaudch]

thank you for the answer

1) Yes, the fate is the same no matter who eats hay. But "classically" cow manure for example is then spread over the land, like a return of biomass, right?
To maintain the fertility of all the surface needed for the lazy garden (kitchen garden + meadows), the idea of ​​moving the cultivated plot all X times (5 or 10 years, I do not know anything eventually), would be a coherent idea ? I am interested in this because I myself have 4 acres of meadow, in which I start to grow a vegetable garden this year, and so I have the opportunity to mow, and move the cultivated plot.

I find that this question also opens the subject of culture under cover alive. A crop where the supply of organic matter to feed the soil life is done within the same plot, where the management of weeds is made by the auxiliary plants (cultivated weeds, desired), I think that also limits the erosion, extremes of water or temperature, etc ... And vegetables could be mixed and disseminated among this canopy. I imagine that this would be a less productive method of cultivation (since less dense) than phenoculture. But if one cultivates under a living cover all the necessary surface in the vegetable garden of the sloth (including the hay meadows) then perhaps one catches this lack of productivity by the addition of cultivated surface?
So I imagine that it makes the fertilization of this total surface more homogeneous.
De-intensification of crops should also reduce damage due to diseases and other "parasites": more difficult to propagate to plants of identical species (since there is no this effect of grouping together varieties), and the proximity of a multitude of other species, perhaps repellent. A pest attack would be less targeted on a species, so we would not lose the majority of a salad board for example.
Seeds capable of germinating directly in the ground (therefore direct sowing) would be better able to "choose" whether or not to germinate, depending on whether the environment is favorable to them.
In short, in my head this gives an even more resilient system (maybe even more lazy?)! And out of curiosity, since you talk about it at the end of your book, I would have liked to know your opinion above, your experiences perhaps, your vision of the thing, and that of any econologist elsewhere I'm starting to experiment in this direction this year.

Thank you, pleasure

[Did67]

In traditional "mixed-crop-livestock" systems, the manure went to the fields, especially for so-called root crops, rotary heads (potatoes, beets) ...

Note that in this traditional system, where people did their business in the barn or at the bottom of the vegetable garden, everything ended up being recycled. The "chemical" fertility (content of mineral elements) was only increased by the decomposition of rocks and I had forgotten them, the precipitation.

On the other hand, the techniques brought a horizontal displacement of this fertility ... Classically natural meadows towards the fields (and vegetable gardens, which were in the first circle, behind the house).


Yes, vegetable crops under cover are one way. It is just difficult because to make dozens of different vegetables coexist with dozens of spontaneous weeds, it is not easy ... Well, I am too often on my keyboards or in conference rooms, and not enough in my vegetable garden. This is of course, and this is why I mentioned it, a path to explore. No doubt it will be necessary to deal with a part of imported hay (to, from time to time, "subdue" weeds that are too exuberant for the crop to be set up) and a part of nutritious biomass left on the spot.

And undoubtedly one must start from a fertile system at the start. Because, apart from the nitrogen fixed by a symbiotic or free way, the other elements will only be recycled. In a land poor in potash (because the bedrock does not contain any or few minerals containing potassium), we will recycle the poverty in potash, without external contributions. So it is still necessary to make a detailed diagnosis not to remain, except for nitrogen, in a "moderately poor" system!

[Arnaudch]

We are still in winter, a season a little more conducive to the keyboard than the deckchair!

A displacement of fertility so, interesting! A displacement of the vegetable plot within the meadow seems beneficial then!

Regarding the culture under live cover, the ideal would be to leave a kitchen garden lazy Do you have sources of information to give me the top? People in experiences in their vegetable garden? Because on the internet, we can find a lot of videos or documents, but rather for the cereal culture ... not vegetable.

Thank you for this wise advice!

[to be chafoin]

Regarding the displacement of the vegetable plot, and although it seems well founded on the life and fertility of all the soils of your land, I think this is not the best idea. It seems that one has to count in ten years to perceive a significant evolution of the fertility of a managed plot, as in phenoculture, by contribution of organic matter. Some market gardening participants on Sol Vivant seem to claim the opposite (3ans even a few months according to my vague memories) but it is provided with huge contributions outside the farm, and for me, in the current state of our knowledge , I think it will be much more patient and especially if you operate in almost complete autonomy as it seems to be the direction you take. So I wonder if it would be better to concentrate and repeat the contributions years after years at the same place.

Privileging a well exposed, protected and easily accessible space for you seems to me as important because, in my experience, I sometimes had to (often) fight laziness in order to go to the kitchen garden (almost) every day, ( almost) all year ...
Otherwise disappointments arrive quickly!
To take just one example, if you practice phenoculture, the problem n ° 1 is probably the slugs: I think I hesitate a little to go pick up a seal of slobbering every night at nightfall between May and June if I have to go after my 3 ha! I say that but of course it's still possible (in the end it's a little what I did this year because my garden is 10-15min bike!).