Seeking advice or thoughts on a question I have..

Grow some food and stuff!

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Re: Seeking advice or thoughts on a question I have..

Postby GrahamB » Sun Sep 22, 2013 1:33 am

Guy I can't say I dug up the potatoes, but I can say I lifted up the spoilt hay and there they were. I attempt to dig but if I hadn't been a wimp and given up, I'd still be digging today. So I tried a test patch and just placed the seeds on the bare earth and covered them with hay. Like Matt I just kept adding more as they grew. By the time they were ready for harvesting the hay had made a thick solid mat and it just lifted right up.
Another thing I noticed was there were very few weeds among them compared with the patch next to them that I had covered with sixth inches of woodchips. Also the grasshoppers seemed to leave them alone compared to last year when they literallly ate them to the ground.
I intend to leave the hay where it is to let it rot over the winter. I'm planning a larger patch at the moment. I am going to sow some hairy vetch in the next few weeks, lightly covered with hay. Then in the spring I will sow corn, sunflowers, bush peas and amaranth. Once all the spring sowing is down I will cut the vetch and use it mulch the sowing.
I've been reading a lot on Fukuoka and also the early Rodale stuff and kind of adapted to suit my needs. Hopefully this time next year I should have a success story to tell. Oh, I'll be doing the potatoes again on a larger scale.
No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress, you are still way ahead of everyone who isn’t trying.
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GrahamB
 
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Location: SW Missouri

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