New Lazy Potager in the 37

Agriculture and soil. Pollution control, soil remediation, humus and new agricultural techniques.
pheno37
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New Lazy Potager in the 37




by pheno37 » 28/03/18, 13:59

Bonjour.

I co-rented in September 2017 a family garden (200 m²) remained fallow since May (Photo1) and located in the vicinity of Tours (37).
Previously, it was a "traditional" vegetable garden kept in good condition, according to neighbors.

Objective: devote 50 m² (10 * 5) to a first “sloth's vegetable garden” experience.

I initially consider transplanting (tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers, potimarrons, potatoes, leeks, etc.). For sowing, I will see later, except for beans and peas (in small pockets) and in small quantities.
Of course, for this first year, I'm not looking for quantity. We must first see how the system reacts and overcome the first mistakes.
I am experimenting in parallel with bottled seedlings after a successful first experience last year.

Until October 15: cleaning. (Photo2) Cleaning waste left behind.
From 10 to 15 October preparation: lawn and vegetable mowing waste from cleaning (Photo3).
Between the 15 and the 20 October, cover a little irregular in hay (bales) about twenty centimeters. (Photo4). The neighbors looked at me with a funny look but Didier67 had warned me ...
I learned later that I had laid hay too soon ...
From October to March: nothing! I just pulled weeds here and there and plugged a few holes in the blanket.
The 25 march, the thickness has dropped. (Photo5). No weeds except a little edge. The hay is dry on 2 3 cm and very wet on 5cm below (Photo6).
I consider the first transplants in the first dekad of May, if the humidity has sufficiently decreased, starting with tomatoes.

Now a few questions:
1) What is the correct humidity range under the hay to start transplanting?
2) Same question about the temperature of the earth?
3) Should I consider adding a small layer of hay just before starting to transplant, as I laid the hay a bit too early last year? I will only do this if it is "dry enough" below (see question 1).
Thank you in advance for your comments.
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olivier75
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Re: New Lazy Potager in the 37




by olivier75 » 28/03/18, 15:39

Hello and welcome,
For me,
October is not too early to convert a traditional garden, the earth is humid is hot, and allows the living to settle, the earth to deteriorate. The counterpart is a more important "" consumption "of hay.
Under the hay the earth remains wet and must remain, it is the reserve of your soil, because only the heavy rains recharge under the hay.
I do not pay attention to the temperature of the soil for transplanting, and little for the sowing. It will not catch up with the bare soil until autumn thanks to a slower cooling.
The addition of hay is to be estimated from the duration of the crop and its resistance to competition.
I add that in phenoculture we are, it seems to me, agree that we can without worry clutch plants more than traditional.
Olivier.
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Re: New Lazy Potager in the 37




by Did67 » 28/03/18, 19:24

It looks very good!

I think you can definitely consider sowing (you have to lift the hay, to see if below, almost everything is dead or not).

Don't be surprised to "mess around" in the allotment gardens. It is generally the race to who has the biggest, to who cultivates the most beautiful desert, etc ... If you do not throw, consider yourself happy and enjoy! Another one or two years before the first doubts appear in your interlocutors - by then, low profile: from their point of view, they are the best gardeners in the world !!!

[I am giving a conference in mid-April in front of the general assembly of the allotment gardens of Sélestat; I gave my consent to the president on the condition that he guarantees me the "right to express myself" and calm any opponents / complainers during my presentation; afterwards, I answer all the questions ...].
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pheno37
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Re: New Lazy Potager in the 37




by pheno37 » 29/03/18, 19:23

Thank you for your answers.
Maybe I'm freaking out about humidity and temperature. I only plan to transplant from the first decade of May. Ice Saints traditionally oblige in Touraine. In the meantime, I will perhaps top up with hay "by feeling", not very thick.
A friend will lend me a thermometer / hygrometer / ph-meter (I see the smiles here ...) it will allow me at least to fix the ideas on the current approximate values.

@ didier67: For me, the gray-black color is pretty dead. No "greenery" which points the tip of the nose on several surveys. (See photo 6) I did not start on a meadow but on an old "traditional" vegetable garden.
But I fear a little sowing in the wet this first year.
A few cables away, there is a second "phenoculteur". I haven't been able to meet him but I will persevere. He put on a layer a little thicker than me. There is also a "straw" and a "brf-eur". that's 4 out of 500 ... In the month, we can type the belotte! 8)
Good luck for Selestat! You like to live dangerously, to what I see ... : Mrgreen:
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Re: New Lazy Potager in the 37




by Did67 » 30/03/18, 09:30

1) "Wiping" (the excess water which is withdrawn by gravity) depends very much on the texture of the soil (content of clays / silts / sands). As soon as a soil is wiped out, the air begins to circulate again, even if it is very humid. In what is called "macroporosity" - the "big holes" between soil aggregates, which are only temporarily saturated). From there, the useful (aerobic) organisms get back to work ...

2) So you can sow and plant in a land very humid, as soon as it is wiped. The fact that a soil must be "dried" on the surface is an avatar linked to the fact that otherwise, in conventional gardening, it cannot be worked: digging, raking ...

The conventional gardener waits until his land is dry, then works it, then plants or sows and .... sprinkles !!!

Just get rid of all this nonsense and voila!

3) Attention, even if a moist soil can settle and take in mass ("like concrete") if you walk on it: you must walk on planks. You therefore need a set of boards to move around and plant without causing irreversible damage (for a few months).

4) Do not forget that this humidity, which may seem excessive to you, is the "useful water reserve" which will prevent you from watering (or will allow you to water much later!).

5) A good hint: let 2 or 3 spend more weeks, compared to conventional gardeners in bare soil. So you can go there, even though the soil is very wet and looks like play dough. And you make an appointment at harvest time: very often, 15 days have been caught (of course, not with 21 radishes days!).

If you have a multimeter: the soil should have 14 ° so that nitrifying bacteria really get to work!

YOU will no doubt be surprised to note that rather quickly, in a still very wet ground, the device will indicate "normal": it is right! It is the conventional gardener and his parched soil who has it all wrong! The proof: he knows it himself, he waters!
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pheno37
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Re: New Lazy Potager in the 37




by pheno37 » 01/04/18, 13:04

Here I am a little reassured.
At the same time I am well aware, and you often remember it, that it is with the experience that everything will clear up according to my local conditions.
Great beginners love ready-made recipes and I experienced this 12 years ago when I started my first "traditional" vegetable garden.
I read somewhere, in your book or elsewhere, that putting hay too early did not make it possible to take the necessary nutrients to the sown or transplanted vegetables at the right time. that too, it worried me. But that does not make me insomniac ... :)
Another question: what happens to the soil after several years and therefore several successive layers of hay? Doesn't that look like some form of "humus"?
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Re: New Lazy Potager in the 37




by Did67 » 01/04/18, 15:41

1) This shows how much guides, speeches, pubs have perverted our minds: there is no reason to fear that a living system does not work! There is, however, every reason to believe that it will work. Since it already worked so long before the man. And that 50 years of destructive bullshit of the latter did not stop the system from continuing to walk !!!

You have to start by getting those slags of thoughts out of your head!

When we get into our cars, we assume that it will not work [and yet a car is a horribly complex system to transform chemical energy - fuel - into a fast and comfortable movement!]? Or when we turn on our computer ??? [even if a breakdown is possible!]

2) Humus is a portmanteau that everyone is talking about and hardly anyone knows what it is. This is the deception of the century! How many imbecilities have I read!

I sketch elements of reflection in my book (but of course, I had to write 100 or 150 pages to clarify a little better the subject). Forgive me for not rewriting 194 pages here to 204 who are trying to make a succinct point. Laziness. On the main thread, I developed this subject one day. Maybe you can find with the search engine of the site?

So yes, hay, like other organic matter rich in fibers (cellulose or lignin), will contribute to the process called "humification", which is the formation, in all living soil, of humic substances, which have particular interesting properties. . Based mainly on the activity of fungi (even if there are many theories and this matter still not elucidated!).

But the nature being well damned, when one increases the inputs of substances likely to form humic substances, the stock increases.

But also the mineralization of these substances: the more there are, and the more there are disappearing!

And oh miracle, it balances (at a higher level than before, therefore with a "better" ground) ...

I put the reference of a video of an American who after 30 years of phenoculture without tillage displays a record rate of 8,7% of organic matter in his soil.

In short: it can only do good ground!
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Re: New Lazy Potager in the 37




by Did67 » 01/04/18, 15:46

pheno37 wrote:I read somewhere, in your book or elsewhere, that putting hay too early did not make it possible to take the necessary nutrients to the sown or transplanted vegetables at the right time. that too, it worried me. But that does not make me insomniac ... :)


I sometimes lose my train of thought, but I don't think I wrote that: the risk, by putting the hay too early on the ground, is that it will still be "hot" (more than 14 °); the bacteria will be active; the hay will begin to mineralize (decomposition); suddenly, what has decomposed will make up for the spring / summer to come; above all, this mineralization produces nitrates, which will be washed away during the winter by precipitation. We risk a shame: polluting the groundwater in the name of a so-called "natural" method !!!
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pheno37
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Re: New Lazy Potager in the 37




by pheno37 » 01/04/18, 19:18

Did67 wrote:I sometimes lose my train of thought, but I don't think I wrote that: the risk, by putting the hay too early on the ground, is that it will still be "hot" (more than 14 °); the bacteria will be active; the hay will begin to mineralize (decomposition); suddenly, what has decomposed will make up for the spring / summer to come; above all, this mineralization produces nitrates, which will be washed away during the winter by precipitation. We risk a shame: polluting the groundwater in the name of a so-called "natural" method !!!

In time for me! I did well to ask the question.
Consider this to be a rough interpretation of Boeotian. I still remember that I "unrolled" a good month too early. Or two...
never mind, I'll put a little more fertilizer.
You see, I understood everything ... : Cheesy: : Cheesy: : Cheesy:
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pheno37
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Re: New Lazy Potager in the 37




by pheno37 » 01/04/18, 19:44

Did67 wrote:2) Humus is a portmanteau that everyone is talking about and hardly anyone knows what it is. This is the deception of the century! How many imbecilities have I read!

That's why I put it in quotation marks. In any case, I'll see.
... in four or five years. 8)
Did67 wrote:I sketch elements of reflection in my book (but of course, I had to write 100 or 150 pages to clarify a little better the subject). Forgive me for not rewriting 194 pages here to 204 who are trying to make a succinct point. Laziness. On the main thread, I developed this subject one day. Maybe you can find with the search engine of the site?

OK, thanks; I will reread this part. I also remember a video where you show the grain size of the soil under the hay. At home, it's still a little compact but it dissociates easily.
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