My garden is basically a huge PIB !!!

Western · Jun 26, 2011

JDgreen227 said:
Thanks for your input and information. Back about May 12 I decided to dig out an area of my garden plot that was about 5 by 5 feet, it was heavily infested with quackgrass and I had never cleared it out properly, because it was infesting an asparagus patch. Look at the wheelbarrow in the background, perhaps a quarter of the contents is asparagus roots, but the remainder is quackgrass and roots...from a 25 square foot area !!!

Made up my mind, I don't want any "quackgrass"!!!

I feel for ya brother, I moan when the Bermuda gets in the garden. A quick googel of that stuff, it's like the devils spawn!!!

Chuck52 · Jun 26, 2011

ShenandoahJoe said:
So much reassurance in this thread! Troybilt, 5030, you guys give me confidence I'm doing it right. That, and the soup my wife made out of my yellow crookneck squash this evening.

Hey, Chuck, if you have access to an unlimited amount of horse manure, does that mean you work for the same company I do?

The manure I get from on high in the administration is, unfortunately, not useful as a soil additive. If I could spread it somehow, I do think it might lower the expectations of the weeds....that's how it affects me!

Chuck

Car Doc · Jun 27, 2011

Hay and straw are 2 different things folks hay still has the seeds its used for animal feed and straw is the stalk less the crop just to clear that up for the city folks. :thumbsup:

Why would anyone want to "plant" alfalfa or wheat or prairie grass in their garden when its weeds they are trying to snuff out? :confused2:

(straw is what you spread in a garden)

troybilt · Jun 27, 2011

Car Doc said:
Hay and straw are 2 different things folks hay still has the seeds its used for animal feed and straw is the stalk less the crop just to clear that up for the city folks. :thumbsup:

Why would anyone want to "plant" alfalfa or wheat or prairie grass in their garden when its weeds they are trying to snuff out? :confused2:

(straw is what you spread in a garden)

Gardening is an art to me, so i can garden however it suits me.

Mulch is whatever you have. Hay and straw are mulch and do the same thing. i prefer hay because it is free and is the whole plant, versus straw. If i had straw and no hay, then straw would be what i use.

Alfalfa, wheat, or prairie grass is not a problem if you till between rows and then set in hay, straw or any other kind of mulch. On the surface this may not appear to be right, but i have been doing it for years.

It works.

Any mulch will keep the weeds down and add to your soil. Since your soil is already full of weed seeds does it matter if you have 100,000 or 300,000 weed seeds in the garden? When i till, weed and mulch, its over for the weeds. They may come back next year, but i have a solution for that: till, weed and mulch. There is a pattern emerging here.

i suppose if i was a Big Acreage Farmer, then only the proper elements would be used. Perhaps one is more efficient over the other. For the rest of us, this certainly is not the case.

For instance my son schooled me in harvesting hay by hand last nite: Dad just grab two hands around it and pull. Well i did and we harvested hay together and i mulched the potatoes.

Now both of us are happy, the potatoes and my son and i. The physical exercise did us much good and my potatoes are the best in years.

We also rode our bicycle out to Subway, just for fun. Yeah, i could have jumped in the car and powered my way there, but we ride a tandem and did something different than 99% of the rest.

A trail diverged in the woods and i took the one less traveled. To this day it Still makes the difference.

Western · Jun 27, 2011

Car Doc said:
Hay and straw are 2 different things folks hay still has the seeds its used for animal feed and straw is the stalk less the crop just to clear that up for the city folks. :thumbsup:

Why would anyone want to "plant" alfalfa or wheat or prairie grass in their garden when its weeds they are trying to snuff out? :confused2:

(straw is what you spread in a garden)

CarDoc, I usually plant oats or wheat/rye mix in my garden in the fall. reason for me is, If I leave the garden I have now which is on a slope, I will have some minor drainage problems (erosion). I grow it thick and fertilize it like a "crop" then about a month before I want to plant, I till it under. I will till it again prior to planting to catch any regrowth. This puts material in the ground and has help build my soil.

My Grandfather did this and would turn his cows in for a bit to mow his oats down and get the free fertilizer, which I did when I had cows too.

Car Doc · Jun 27, 2011

Guys dont take that personally it was simply a generalization of what gardeners have been saying for generations - hay is for horses straw is for mulch.

I have read several times so far people saying hay when they may mean straw thats all its simply terminology thats all I was pointing out if they intend to say hay for their reasons then this didn't apply to them.

IMHO to say whats the difference over seeding vs not since you are tilling anyway and expect someone to buy that is pure non-sense and happens to be the topic of this entire thread.

edit: And there are people that read these threads that dont know things and are here trying to learn from us so thats another reason to get the terminology and or methods straight.

JDgreen227 · Jun 27, 2011

DocHeb said:
Every gardener should read the book The $64 Tomato by William Alexander. It is a quick read, and will having you shake your head in agreement!

THANK YOU for your suggestion to read that, I went thru my copy in three evenings. The story made me feel so bad for the author, and I sincerely admired his patience as he struggled to establish his crops and deal with all the complications. The chapter alone about the woodchuck who continued to outfox the electrical fence made the book worth buying !!

troybilt · Jun 27, 2011

DocHeb said:
Every gardener should read the book The $64 Tomato by William Alexander. It is a quick read, and will having you shake your head in agreement!

At one time i was making $64 tomatoes, but the economy is changing all that and i have learned to appreciate thinking for myself and looking for good advice from others in how to really simplify this rural life. Organic ways were the answer and have given me an abundance from land that many would consider to be of poor quality.

Another good read is The One-Straw Revolution by a Japanese farmer Fukuoka. The farmer was able to refine traditional natural farming into a method requiring less labor and less disruption of nature than any other, while maintaining the same yields per acre as his farmer neighbors.

Car Doc said:
Guys dont take that personally it was simply a generalization of what gardeners have been saying for generations - hay is for horses straw is for mulch.

Straw is a better mulch over hay in the sense that you don't get weed seeds.

The problem is the $64 tomato: free hay is everywhere, free straw is not. i have yet to have any problems with hay or hay seeds, any kind of mulch does not allow weeds to grow through in my garden. My soil is sandy and just a few inches of mulch are sufficient to control weeds and nurture the plant to abundant harvest. Add some composted manure and my garden is the Green Revolution.

Another excellent read is How to Grow Vegetables and Fruits by the Organic Method by JI Rodale and Staff.

Rodale has put out many editions of their encyclopedia and i have two of them: a newer one and this older one which i will quote from:

People are always asking Ruth Stout a great many questions about the year round mulch method: what kind of mulch to use; how much; when to apply it. Here are some of her answers:

Kind: Hay, leaves straw, seaweed, pine needles, sawdust, weeds, garbage-any vegetable matter which rots. Some people write me and complain that the bales of "hay" they bought were all coarse stalks, weeds, etc. That is all good mulch.

Ruth Stout was an advocate of hay mulch and wrote a best seller gardening book on that back in the day. She was an older lady that about gave up on gardening until she learned how to permanently mulch her garden:

"Ruth Stout And Permanent Hay Mulch" Mother Earth News

Ruth Stout's "no work" gardening method was covering everything in hay.

A generation ago, Ruth Stout was world famous as the "No-Work Gardener." Her secret was a permanent straw or old-hay mulch over everything. She was best known for growing potatoes by "just throwing them" on the ground and covering them with hay. Then, in a couple of months, when tiny new spuds were developing, and onto full harvest time, she'd just "kick the straw aside" and pick potatoes off the ground.

Modern agronomists have tested the hay mulch method and found production to be at least equal to in-soil planting especially in the South where a deep mulch can keep soil closer to potato's preferred around 50ｰF temperatures. In the North, particularly during a long, cool, and wet spring, it can keep soil too wet and cool for top production.

If you try the Stout method, the agricultural school experts recommend spreading eight to ten inches of loose straw or hay over seed potatoes and then maintaining a settled-hay mulch of four inches. Of course, dear Ruth never bothered to measure.Ruth Stout And Permanent Hay Mulch

To this day Ruth Stout influences me, especially when i plant potatoes. This spring i trenched my potatoes and covered them with old Hay. On top of that i piled on some composted manure.

Result? The best potato crop i have grown on this soil in over 20 years. Very few weeds and a bug free crop. i think old hay almost acts like a weed killer, but that may be stretching it.

When i get older and wiser like Ruth Stout, perhaps i will forgo all power tools, tillers, tractors and farming implements.

Then what? Enjoy a simpler garden of full time mulch. In the spring, spread the mulch and pop in the seed/transplants. When they start growing, close up the mulch around them and listen to the birds.

Kyle_in_Tex · Jun 27, 2011

I did "garden lite" this year as I anticipated the continuance of our extreme exceptional drought conditions.
I paid $3.50 for one tomato plant to start early and have got about $3.50 worth of cherry tomatoes from it. Not to mention the $64 dollars of water I've poured on it...

We finally got 2" of rain last Wednesday and the place is greening up. But there is a high pressure system overhead keeping rain away and temps punching the 3 digit mark daily.