When do you get time to play games? Lol.Here are some of my ongoing mad scientist experiments. The focus is soil and fertilization. I have a 1/2 acre yard and I want to eliminate as many "outside" amendments as possible. Avoiding artificial fertilizers, pesticides, etc.
Those chemicals absolutely work (former TruGreen employee and licensed agrichemical applicator reporting in ), but I'm attempting to make my yard more self-sufficient.
So I am "growing" fertilizer and compost, as well as growing food. I am not new to soil management, so I've chosen a few methods and I will figure out what works best as I go. None of these options were expensive. The goal is to amend my soil using self-sufficient options in the yard and from my household instead of buying commercial options from the store.
The inoculated mushroom logs from last year are providing a boon of half-decomposed tree bark. As an aside, my mushroom straw bags have not sprouted. I'm pretty sure I failed. But it makes no difference, since I can simply use that straw in my compost. I will try the mushroom bags later this summer since I have plenty of empty sleeves left over from my last attempt.
This stuff takes a long time to fully break down. The bark adds carbon, potassium, and lignans to the soil. I layer it on top of my compost pile. I have been clearing dead trees from a no-man's-land property between my yard and other buildings in the area (most of which are businesses). There are tons of dead trees, fallen and standing. So, my aim is to keep clearing the dead stuff and using the wood and bark for mulch and compost.
There's a daycare directly behind my yard and I would like for those kids to (eventually) have a nice, flourishing garden area next to their playground instead of a swampy-looking bramble patch with half-fallen trees leaning upon one another. I think a bit of neighborly land management will make that a possibility over the next year or two. We'll see.
The compost pile pictured above is mostly made of rotten tree bark, tree logs, straw, and a lot of green weeds from the yard. In spring, you can gather a ton of biomass merely by picking weeds and thinning out wild plants like tiger lilies. Very little compost pictured here comes from our kitchen scraps. I did jumpstart the microbial activity by pouring some milk kefir whey all over the pile.
The disgusting vat pictured above is half-liquified green yard scraps. It consists of a lot of water and about 5 wheelbarrows full of dandelions, cleavers, random turnip and mustard plants that survived the winter, wildflowers, and all other various weedy plants. The goal is to put as much green stuff -- doesn't even matter if it's a weed -- into the bin and let it rot down over the course of a month, give or take. This 55-gallon/208 L drum of worthless yard scraps will produce at least 250 gallons / 946 L of liquid fertilizer, since the stuff is watered down to a 5:1 (or even 10:1) ratio. Like the compost heap above, this was inoculated with a bit of milk kefir whey to jumpstart the microbial processes. Once the cauldron of awful-smelling stuff turns black, I'll know it is ready to use. The rotten scraps can later be put onto the compost pile when the liquid is all used up.
As an added bonus, hoverflies lay eggs and multiply on the top layer of the liquid compost. Not only will they help to pollinate my plants, but they will control aphid population in my garden. Aphids destroyed my brussels sprouts last year.
The compost pile, the liquid vat, and the worm bin (below) are not very active right now. The warmest days are only getting up to 65F/18C and nights are still plunging down to 45F/7C. Once it is warmer (especially overnight), these should take off much faster.
I purchased worms. I think that officially makes me an old man.
The worm bin will be an interesting experiment. I aim to get three products from it: worms (obviously) to scatter in the garden and in the yard, worm casings to use as fertilizer, and "worm juice", which is made by soaking the worm casings in water and using the filtered water as a fertilizer.
Between the milk kefir whey (produced by cheesemaking), the worm juice, and the disgusting vat of rotten veggie juice, I hope to start spraying a mixture of these three (watered down, of course) in my garden and on my lawn this year. I have a nice 4-gallon backpack sprayer so this will save me a lot of time. In a pinch, I can also inoculate the soil with sauerkraut leaves and/or juice. Building up the microbial activity in the soil helps to improve its health over time.
I predict I will be able to manage the weed population with healthier soil underfoot. That's the idea, at least.
And finally, here is a comparison shot to the mustard from last week:
The flowers will eventually drop seed, After, the mustard plants will weaken and die. You can see how leggy they are when packed closely together. This makes for excellent self-fertilizing "hay" that you can chop up and put right back into the soil once the flowers drop their seeds. In the meanwhile, I've been harvesting several handfuls of leaves and tops (which taste like spicy broccoli).
Unless you subsidize it yourself using available equipment.Let's put things into perspective.
My sister spent $600 on fertilizer, seeds, composting equipment, etc.
So far after ~8 months her garden has produced ~$20-$30 worth of veggies. Perfect, giant, juicy veggies. But the scale is scuffed. You can't make it worthwhile without planting thousands of crops.
It's just not worth it unless you own a farm sized plot of land. But even then, governments have to subsidize farmers here in the west...
Unless you subsidize it yourself using available equipment.
Where we’re going, we don’t need tractors...Those multi-purpose tractors cost like $200,000 a pop. Then there's the water bills...
I still play games. The garden doesn't take a ton of my time.When do you get time to play games? Lol.
There are volumes of books dedicated to the idea of a sustainable homestead using only an acre, 1/2 acre, or even 1/4 acre. The approach must be different than traditional farming but you can get high yields in very small square footage. For instance, with potato boxes or square-foot gardening or aquaponics.Let's put things into perspective.
My sister spent $600 on fertilizer, seeds, composting equipment, etc.
So far after ~8 months her garden has produced ~$20-$30 worth of veggies. Perfect, giant, juicy veggies. But the scale is scuffed. You can't make it worthwhile without planting thousands of crops.
It's just not worth it unless you own a farm sized plot of land. But even then, governments have to subsidize farmers here in the west...
Dang, that's awful. It sucks to invest so much money and to have it fail. My soil is pretty dependable, compared to Australia.She used the square foot gardening method, with some fancy soil (our soil here is trash, kills anything you plant in it).
Some regions are just not naturally arable, that would be 95% of Australia.
One might import / harvest sea plants from Australia's own coastal regions and slowly fertilize inward. I'm just spitballing, not trying to solve Australia's agriculture with a forum post. I know that rainfall is a huge problem. It fascinates me how differently each region of the world deals with agricultural issues.We have a high amount of salty sand in our soil near the coast where there is ample rain. Then the further away from the coast you get, the soil gets super dry and dead due to lack of rain. There are very few sweet spots and they're almost all used by vineyards. We import 99% of our food.
What do the Praying Mantis’ do?
More golden oyster mushrooms from the same set of logs as last season's harvest (pictured on the first page of the thread). On the right is a jar of air-dried oyster mushrooms and I'm about to dry this fresh bowl now. Dried mushrooms are my preferred way of storing them even though I do like to fry them up in a dish, too.
Strawberries and sweet peas are the first major crop to come in. I've gotten ~two quarts/liters of peas so far and many more to come. I'll take a picture of those when I fill a bowl of them. Strawberries are not as prolific as I would've liked, but I have to be patient. My plot of of strawberries is about 12'x30' and so there's a lot more room for them to fill up before I get big harvests each year. When we have enough, my wife and I will make jam out of them (currently, we have to buy strawberries from the store to do this yearly routine).
Blackberry bushes are going wild. I will take pictures of those ones the berries darken.
Wild grapes are also growing prolifically. No promises, but I'm hoping for a decent harvest which I will rinse and ferment into a simple wine in a swing-top bottle. Wild grapes are excellent for this exact purpose.
My biggest additions this year are six new apple trees and two cherry trees. They are pruned stems/whips and won't produce anything for another 2-3 years. However, I'm kicking myself for not planting these trees the day I moved in, because right about now I'd be enjoying a yearly harvest of fruit. Oh well. Better late than never.
The worm-bin and the compost piles are doing quite well and will be ready for a fall distribution of compost. I've sown cover-crops on the marginal parts of my yard to create a bulk of green biomass that can be used as "straw" over the winter.
Beets, carrots, leeks, onions, kohlrabi, cucumbers, tomatoes, turnips, mustard, kale, broccoli, and bell peppers are still growing but are not yet ready to harvest. The hot days and heavy rainfall have made gardening this year very easy so far.
I also released a nest of praying mantises into my roses, my sweet peas, and in a few other parts of my yard. You can buy them off Amazon for about $10 or so. What a wonderful, strange world we live in where I can have garden bugs shipped to my doorstep for the cost of a decent 6-pack of beer. There is a lot more fauna in the yard compared to last year: more robins, more worms, more dragonflies, more butterflies, more bees, more hoverflies, etc.
The praying mantises are predators and will eat a lot of pest insects in the garden. Since I am not using any artificial fertilizers or chemical sprays, I have to use other means of pest control.What do the Praying Mantis’ do?
Also, cherry trees are awesome to have.
It's goin' good. Nearly complete with the beds and setting up a new "Nurgle bin" to compost more woodchips and leaves (should be done by Autumn). Gonna plant first seeds and sprouts this weekend (May 9-10) if the weather holds.How’s it going, Dundun?
Similar here. Lettuce, spinach, basil, parsley are all growing like crazy.Everything planted and coming up, new season has arrived.
Can allready pick all the spices, the first lettuce should be ok to pick next week. It's allready really dry here though, so have to water every other day. So early for it to be so dry.