Those who pursue a different path often meet with skepticism in our society. This is perhaps nowhere quite as true as in the area of agriculture.
Continue reading The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer
You don’t have to read many gardening books or websites to catch on that mulch is highly recommended for all gardens. But knowing that you ought to mulch your garden and deciding what to mulch it with are two different things.
First off, it is important to recognize that everyone’s circumstances are unique. Factors that will affect your choice of a mulch include:
Therefore, it is a good idea to know going in exactly what you are trying to accomplish, whether that is weed control or soil improvement.
Once you have a clear objective for mulching, then it’s time to choose the material, or perhaps several materials for different beds and purposes.
You are ready to weigh the pros and cons of the most common mulch materials.
Straw and hay are not the same. Straw is simply crop stubble, while hay is the entire grass plant, including seed heads. Straw is an effective weed barrier, while hay is primarily a simple mechanism for introducing a host of new weeds to your garden. Make sure you mulch with straw, not hay.
Pros:
Cons:
Best Application: General-purpose vegetable garden mulching, summer through winter.
Lawn clippings should be used with care. They should be applied only when dry and preferably in conjunction with coarser materials to avoid forming a heavy, moldy, anaerobic mat. Also, if accepting bagged lawn clippings from other people, always check to make sure that they do not use herbicides, as accidental contamination can spell speedy death to your flowers and vegetables.
Pros:
Cons:
Best Application: Mulching summer vegetables with high nitrogen requirements.
LeavesLeaves can improve your soil texture and nutrient profile in an amazingly short amount of time. Unfortunately, they can also be difficult to manage in the garden, as they blow away when dry and form heavy, waterproof mats when wet. Want to avoid some of the problems associated with using leaves as mulch? Shred or partially compost the leaves before applying them. As a final word of warning—do not use walnut leaves, as they are toxic to many plants.
Pros:
Cons:
Best Application: Protecting and enriching vegetable garden soil over the winter.
Pine straw is just pine needles used for mulch.
Pros:
Cons:
Best Application: Mulching acid-loving plants such as blueberries, hydrangeas, or rhododendrons.
There are many varieties of wood mulch to choose from, all with their own unique benefits. Cedar even provides a certain level of protection from insects. Just watch out for toxins—if you purchase your wood mulch, stay away from mulches containing dyes. Also, never use black walnut, as it contains toxins lethal to many garden plants.
Pros:
Cons:
Best Application: Ground cover for perennial beds.
CompostDon’t have your own compost pile? You can purchase bagged compost at garden centers, but commercial compost is typically made with only a couple of ingredients and is thus less balanced than homemade compost.
Pros:
Cons:
Best Application: Feeding garden plants of all types under another mulch material.
Peat moss is harvested from peat bogs. It has some unusual characteristics that can be either good or bad depending on your requirements. For one thing, it can absorb water like a sponge, which improves boggy soil considerably but may allow plants to dry out in hot, droughty weather. For another thing, it makes the soil more acidic, although typically not enough to present a problem.
Pros:
Cons:
Best Application: Improving heavy soils that drain poorly.
If you do plenty of woodworking, sawdust is definitely a mulch you should consider. Just be careful about what sawdust you use—dust from treated lumber can add toxins to your soil.
Pros:
Cons:
Best Application: Mulching acid-loving plants for cheap.
Cardboard is the go-to mulch if you have a serious weed problem—nothing can penetrate it! Keep in mind, though, that cardboard can be a pain to deal with. You will want large sheets to cover as much surface area as possible without leaving cracks for weeds to grow through, and you will want to cover it with straw to keep it in place but out of sight.
Pros:
Cons:
Best Application: Putting the brakes on heavy weed infestations in perennial beds when used in combination with another mulch material.
While many gardeners avoid mulching with newspaper for fear of lead contamination, newspapers phased out lead-based inks long ago. Black-and-white newsprint is perfectly safe for the garden these days; colored inks may still contain some heavy metals. Note that newspaper is prone to blowing around. Cover it with another mulch, such as straw or wood chips, to avoid inadvertently trashing the neighborhood.
Pros:
Cons:
Best Application: Preventing weed growth between rows in a vegetable garden when combined with straw or another mulch material.
A rock mulch is about as permanent as it gets, and it can be very attractive in landscaping. Keep in mind, however, that rock works best with heat-loving plants. It is a popular choice of mulch in cactus gardens.
Pros:
Cons:
Best Application: Around woody perennials or in desert landscaping.
PlasticPlastic mulches come in several different colors. Black plastic is effective at warming the soil. Clear plastic warms the soil even faster, but has the disadvantage of permitting weed growth. Red plastic reflects certain wavelengths of sunlight onto the plants, enhancing the yields of tomatoes and other summer vegetables. Whatever type of plastic you use, remember that rain cannot penetrate to the soil, so you will need to combine the plastic with soaker hoses or a similar form of irrigation.
Pros:
Cons:
Best Application: Warming the soil in the spring, particularly around warm-season vegetables.
Landscape fabric should be covered with another mulch material for both looks and longevity. Keep in mind that some weeds can grow through the fabric.
Pros:
Cons:
Best Application: Around landscaping perennials.
For whatever reason, finding quality potting soil is very difficult anymore. Most brands seem to harbor diseases, weed seeds, and bug eggs. And the nonstandard brands frequently appear to be nothing more than poor-quality topsoil dug up from the “manufacturer’s” backyard!
In light of this dilemma, we currently recommend Black Gold organic potting soil. Not just because it is organic (although that is certainly a plus), but primarily because several years of use have yielded satisfactory results in the form of healthy plants without unexpected weeds or small swarms of gnats flying around the seedlings.
Peat moss and forest humus provide a light, loose texture that works well for starting seedlings indoors. Compost and screened earthworm castings add just a little bit of all-natural nitrogen for a good start (of course, potted plants will still need to be fed periodically).
Shop around a bit before you buy—the prices do fluctuate and sometimes (but not always) a bigger size is a better bargain.
Start 2019 right with some fresh inspiration! Try a reading challenge!
This year’s theme is sustainable agriculture. To complete the challenge, all you have to do is read 12 books, one from each of the categories listed below, by the end of the year. If you can read an average of one book per month, this should be no problem.
The categories are:
A few rules:
Need some help finding the books? Check out The Homestead Bookshelf to browse our favorite titles. Then sign up for On the Range, your free weekly country living update (learn more here). At the end of every month, we’ll suggest a book for one of the categories.
Let us know what you decide to read! We’d love to hear from you!
What color is your garden soil? Does it make a difference?
Yes! Some of the factors that alter the color of soil include:
All of these considerations are very important to the health of your garden plants.
Continue reading Garden Soil Colors and What They Mean
Vermicomposting is the process of creating compost with the aid of earthworms. While all composting relies on microbes to do much of the work, vermicomposting allows worms to come to their assistance.
The worm starts the composting process by ingesting organic matter and breaking it down with digestive enzymes. However, the digestive system of an earthworm is rather inefficient, only absorbing about 5% to 10% of the food the worm eats. This is good news for vermicompost, because the rest of the organic matter, now moistened and considerably broken down, is excreted and offers a rich buffet for hungry microbes.
Note that vermicompost and worm castings are not the the same. Worm castings are simply the excrement of the earthworm. Vermicompost includes worm castings, but also worm bedding, food, and remains in various stages of decomposition, all supporting a vibrant community of microbes.
Vermicompost is typically made in a “worm bin” filled with bedding (usually shredded paper) and organic material for the worms to eat. A suitable worm habitat is further created by keeping the bin dark and moist.
Two worm species are typically used:
The red wiggler is particularly popular because it is easy to care for and produces castings quickly and efficiently.
Of course, you can theoretically dig up any old earthworms in your backyard to populate the worm bin, but there is no guarantee that you will find effective compost-building species this way. A surefire solution is to order red wigglers online.
Finished vermicompost looks very much like high-quality soil, but it is incredibly rich in microbes.
Most kitchen scraps and waste paper products make good worm food. However, you will want to avoid anything that produces a foul odor, especially if your worm bins are indoors. That includes meats, oils, dairy products, onions, garlic, potatoes, and anything in the mustard family, such as broccoli. Also note that worms are not a replacement for the neighborhood recycling facility—they cannot process plastic or aluminum.
Vermicompost is equally suited to trees, vegetables, flowers, and potted plants.
Because vermicompost is made in relatively small quantities, gardeners will want to use it wisely. A good rule of thumb is to use it to fuel rapidly growing plants.
The best place to apply vermicompost is around the drip line of the plant. Imagine a circle on the ground around the plant roughly marking its circumference. This circle is called the drip line because, if you were to spray the plant with water, this is where the water would drip off of the leaves. Many hungry roots are waiting just below the drip line. Spread the vermicompost on top of the soil along the drip line.
So will vermicomposting meet your needs? Likely not if you have a large garden. For a small garden (or for a good hands-on science project), however, it can be a quick way to improve poor soil.
The carbon-to-nitrogen (C:N) ratio is often considered to be of utmost importance in composting, particularly hot composting. If the C:N ratio is too high, the compost will break down extremely slowly. If the ratio is too low, the pile can produce a displeasing smell as excess nitrogen escapes into the atmosphere in the form of ammonia.
While many gardeners probably obsess over C:N more than is strictly necessary (and those who use cold composting methods typically do not need to worry about it at all), attention to the C:N ratio of your compost pile can keep it working smoothly and quickly. And it may be useful for troubleshooting!
Experts disagree on the optimal C:N ratio, but most scientific literature typically recommends something between 25:1 and 30:1. Higher ratios are fine if a slow composting process is acceptable.
Here’s a list of the average C:N ratios of common compost ingredients, pulled from a variety of sources:
Gardeners often simplify matters by thinking in terms of color—materials with a C:N ratio higher than 30:1 are browns, and materials with a ratio lower than 30:1 are greens. (Note that high-nitrogen materials can actually be brown in color and vice versa.) However, a compost pile that has a ratio of 30 parts brown material to 1 part green material actually has a disproportionately high amount of bulky carbon. If you are using browns:greens instead of C:N, you will want to use the ratio 1:1 or even 1:2, both of which take bulk into consideration.
Do the math to see why 1:2 works. Let’s say we’ve chosen to use one part leaves for our brown and two parts fresh grass clippings for greens:
This C:N ratio is slightly on the high side, but with patience should come out just fine. The mathematics will work on any other combinations of ingredients we choose to evaluate.
Also of interest is how the C:N ratio applies to plant residues left on the surface of the ground to protect the soil. The same 25:1–30:1 rule applies. If the ratio is lower, soil microbes will eat up all of the available carbon too quickly and leave the soil bare. If the ratio is higher, the microbes take a long time to eat up the high-carbon materials, leaving a great deal of chunky debris in the soil. Furthermore, the microbes will need to absorb more nitrogen to balance their diet, and this will have to come from the soil—leaving less nitrogen available for growing plants.
The practical implications? Often the best cover crop is a blend of high-carbon grains and high-nitrogen legumes. This mix, highly favored among organic gardeners, works because it keeps the C:N ratio close to optimal.
The C:N ratio will also affect the mulch you use. Wood mulches are attractive in ornamental gardens, but they pull a great deal of nitrogen out of the soil to balance out their high carbon levels—not good for growing sweet corn. For a vegetable garden, something a little closer to the optimal C:N ratio will foster healthier plants.
As you enter the field of sustainable agriculture, one term you will come into frequent contact with is permaculture. Permaculture is a very complex, systems-oriented topic and is thus difficult to summarize without leaving out any pertinent information. This discussion is intended to be merely an introduction.
In short, permaculture seeks to imitate natural systems and take a holistic approach to sustainable living and growing food. This emphasis on natural design results in a system that can be modified and applied anywhere around the globe (thus its appeal to urban gardeners). No design element is emphasized more than another because the key lies in the interaction of elements. In other words, the whole is larger than the sum of the parts.
The word permaculture was originally a portmanteau word combining permanent and agriculture. It is now considered a combination of permanent and culture, reflecting an expansion of the system into all aspects of society.
Note that, while permaculture is usually organic in nature, it is much more than simply growing things without chemicals. What is typically regarded as “organic farming” is often a prime example of a focus on one part of the system to the exclusion of all others.
The roots of permaculture go back as far as interest in sustainable farming practices. The term itself, however, originated from the subtitle of a 1929 book by Joseph Russell Smith, Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture. The concept of forestry agriculture sparked interest among those seeking ways of making farming sustainable.
Besides forestry agriculture, other ideas and systems from the early and mid-1900s that may have influenced the various renditions of permaculture include:
In the late 1960s, Australian scientist Bill Mollison and his student David Holmgren began their observations of the rise of industrial agriculture and its consequences. A brief examination of the loss of biodiversity, topsoil, and water quality associated with commercial farming convinced them that a more sustainable system needed to be developed. As a wildlife biologist, Mollison was particularly disturbed by the effect farming was having on natural ecosystems. However, he quickly came to the conclusion that he wanted to respond with a positive solution rather than impotent rage. The result was the term permaculture (coined in the mid-1970s by the scientific duo) and the system it represented.
Permaculture has continued to evolve since its creation. One of the earliest changes came in the 1980s, when the focus shifted from farming specifically to society as a whole.
Permaculture is now popular among sustainable farmers across the world. Elements of permaculture design have influenced many more farmers who do not adhere dogmatically to any particular theory (e.g., Joel Salatin).
Permaculture advocates often list the following benefits of their system:
It has been noted that a permaculture system is only as good as the designer. Because permaculture is inexorably founded on ethics and observation, the whole system breaks down in the hands of the unethical and the unobservant. The permaculturist must be willing to continually learn, grow, and plan.
Permaculture and agroforestry are not inherently synonymous (although one might think so reading some descriptions of permaculture systems). Permaculture is, by design, adaptable to any ecosystem. But the heavy emphasis on creating forests may present a challenge to those seeking knowledge on practicing permaculture in native grassland environments. Building a grass-based permaculture system will require particularly close attention to nature and some dedicated research.
And, of course, conventional agriculturalists argue that permaculture cannot match the yields of modern farming methods. But they are not the only ones. Some biologists also note that the natural forests permaculturists seek to mimic are not capable of feeding the world—in fact, that is why humans developed agriculture.
Again, this post is merely an introduction to a complex topic. Permaculture is an involved subject in and of itself; plus it takes on a variety of forms as it is adapted to varying circumstances. Farmers of all stripes and beliefs use permaculture, and the system tends to reflect their different values. If you are interested in permaculture, take the time to search for a presentation that will fit with your values, as well as your natural ecosystem.
You Can Farm
This book from Joel Salatin is an excellent demonstration of permaculture-influenced agripreneurship. Read our full review.
Running a farm or ranch is not the only way to cash in on your agricultural interest. These days, there are plenty of fields where a knowledge of agriculture and agricultural sciences can be a plus, and where you will have an opportunity to aid those who have chosen to work the land.
Here are a few ideas:
Are you looking for new ways to improve your garden soil faster? Have you thought about ditching the rototiller?
No-dig gardening, no-till farming’s little brother, offers an exciting way to improve soil with less labor of the back-breaking variety. It also presents a far more natural way to garden—after all, Nature doesn’t own too many rototillers.
Are there pitfalls? The answer is yes. Even so, no-dig gardening may be right for your garden.
Let’s look at the pros and cons to determine the situations where no-dig gardening will be most effective.
Yes, no-dig gardening is a very natural way of building good soil. However, it requires an investment.
These two tips may make the transition easier for you:
