Le Potager du Sloth: Gardening without fatigue more than Bio

[Rajqawee]

An interesting pdf on water in market gardening: https://www.latelierpaysan.org/IMG/pdf/76819159.pdf

In particular the graph of water availability as a function of the quantity of water and the type of soil:

In principle, I find it so great simplicity ... After to equip properly, the bill can perhaps quickly become salty ...
But coupled with your tanks, to let the hydrometric tension of the soil control the irrigation, it would push laziness a little further ...

Regarding the graph, it's interesting. In fact, there is little point in aiming for maximum water retention in the soil, since from a certain level of clay, as much water is spent in a reserve inaccessible to plants as the accessible one? On the other hand, the famous balanced soil is profitable, most of the additional water retained compared to more sandy soils goes into the useful reserve?

Regarding the water equipment: I am thinking (because maybe moving on a plot of 3500m2 ... with access to a river ...), and I say to myself that it may be necessary be aiming for a certain profitability cost / lifetime, otherwise, we can start to fall back into attitudes a little too "rolls royce". The pdf is super interesting, I went through it and learned some things. Basically, there is no miracle solution ... but the drip is not part of it either (although it can give that impression, since everyone uses it)

[Did67]

Regarding the graph, it's interesting. In fact, there is little point in aiming for maximum water retention in the soil, since from a certain level of clay, as much water is spent in a reserve inaccessible to plants as the accessible one? On the other hand, the famous balanced soil is profitable, most of the additional water retained compared to more sandy soils goes into the useful reserve?

I am afraid that you are reasoning the other way around: the water "held back too strongly", you cannot cut it ... You have to maintain a humidity level always beyond the withering point. In other words, part of the water in the ground is always inaccessible. But in fact, this quantity is variable depending on the soil.

In my opinion, a piece of data is missing from the graph: a blue "dotted" representing 1/3 (or 1/4) of the UK, limit below which it is harmful to go down because the plant reacts by closing the stomata.

Note that before this limit, a soil is, apparently, for an "average" gardener, very dry !!!!

This is what I want to show with my blood pressure monitor: dry soil, sometimes it is dry (in the sense of assimilation by plants), but sometimes it is not dry at all!

[Uncle Buzz]

Then, because I want it to remain "generalizable"

It seems to me that since your sharing aims more to teach people how living things work, in particular according to their own environment and that there is therefore no ready-made recipe, than the goal is above all not to give a method to copy, the fact that you in your garden you do something that cannot be generalized should not be an obstacle, especially if you can learn from it to transmit on how management works in one soil or another of water by plants.

You have done soil analyzes, which have a cost, which not everyone can necessarily afford, nor has an interest in reproducing without your skills as an agronomist to draw such or such a conclusion.

Likewise, some people simply do not have a garden, living in an apartment, the vegetable garden itself is not generalizable to everyone!

If you can learn from them and share them afterwards, take apart some common irrelevant untruths that you are doing something that others cannot do should not pose a problem for your conscience all the more. if you emerge from it knowledge that you will share so that everyone can learn from it.

If the use of a tensiometer allows better water management, saves water and avoids stressing the plants, you might as well know, even if we cannot all do the same thing. Automatic watering programmers are not given, a tensiometric probe costs around € 4, it remains affordable even if it is not generalizable over 500m², but the interest is rather for greenhouses where water management is mandatory and critical, and the surface area generally very small.

[Adrien (ex-nico239)]

I have a series of videos on "water in the soil" and therefore "watering" on the job. It is not moving quickly.

And to think that mine must have been in its box for .... a year .... .
It is even more not to move quickly it is downright stagnating ... pfff
To slap myself.

[Adrien (ex-nico239)]

Have finished watching the video, finally the last one: and it is good for the brain.

[Did67]

Oh no ! Concomitantly, the last news was put online ... You run behind!

[Doris]

Passive thermal defanage, pretty ..... Have you thought about the patent?

[Rajqawee]

Regarding the graph, it's interesting. In fact, there is little point in aiming for maximum water retention in the soil, since from a certain level of clay, as much water is spent in a reserve inaccessible to plants as the accessible one? On the other hand, the famous balanced soil is profitable, most of the additional water retained compared to more sandy soils goes into the useful reserve?

I am afraid that you are reasoning the other way around: the water "held back too strongly", you cannot cut it ... You have to maintain a humidity level always beyond the withering point. In other words, part of the water in the ground is always inaccessible. But in fact, this quantity is variable depending on the soil.

In my opinion, a piece of data is missing from the graph: a blue "dotted" representing 1/3 (or 1/4) of the UK, limit below which it is harmful to go down because the plant reacts by closing the stomata.

Note that before this limit, a soil is, apparently, for an "average" gardener, very dry !!!!

This is what I want to show with my blood pressure monitor: dry soil, sometimes it is dry (in the sense of assimilation by plants), but sometimes it is not dry at all!

What I wanted to say, in essence, is that from a certain point, the grounds do not retain much more useful water, finally. They have a great capacity for total water retention, but the part to which the plants have access increases less quickly than the total water that will be put in: no need to try to fill the reserves "thoroughly" with the watering therefore. I reason in my context where it never rains in summer, maybe it is that too?

On the other hand, the blood pressure monitor, if it costs so little (a few euros), it's super interesting. I have already noted that there was not always a correlation between the feelings of the gardener and the real state of the plants. Sometimes I find the soil dry, even very dry, but the plants (especially my indicators like a young cucumber stalk and therefore little rooted) are doing very well.

The other day I had an interesting "experience": when I got to the vegetable garden, a tap had been running for several days, but we left a trash can underneath (precisely if it ever leaks. Shared gardens!), Which was full.
Rather than not using it, I turn off the tap and I decide to empty the trash with the watering can on the most demanding crops (mainly squash). Well, each time I emptied a 2L watering can at the base of a squash, and then I lifted the mulch to see: no visible difference. However, there are indeed 2L of water that went into the system, at the foot of the plant, which is not negligible for her, but it did not "wet" the soil.
So I said to myself that clearly, watering the feeling, it's not at all obvious ...

[Did67]

Passive thermal defanage, pretty ..... Have you thought about the patent?

Since I try not to "scratch" for anything anymore, I refrained from a heavy allusion to "self-fertile mounds" - but that's what I was thinking when I say just give a high-sounding name. ..

[Rajqawee]

Well, as the procedures are progressing on my possible move to a "large" plot (3500M²), I am already starting to bring about discussions .... because I have a lot to think about with regard to the vegetable garden (and the orchard .. .. because there is an old orchard ...)

The land is rocky in some places, and the neighbor who is building showed me a nice pile of a few cubic meters of stones (up to the size of a good little dishwasher!), Which may possibly be problematic when setting up the vegetable garden, I think.

Would there be a tool, a method, to "probe" the ground in certain places to avoid planting above a huge pebble? I thought about poking with a spade to see if we come across things .... but poking a few hundred square meters, I imagine it might take a while.

The plot where I plan to set up is for the time being a low scrub about fifty cm high. It is not meadow, I think it is more advanced in the climatic forest stage, it is rather brushwood. lots of questions in progress!