Hans Harker

The manure wil stink like a pile of horse shit until you spread it as a layer of a few inches. As soon as the aerobic bacteria take over (a day or two) the stink will get replaced with a nice earthy fragrance. A lot of plants should do good in it if you let it sit like that over the winter.

I did it a couple of years ago. I didn't even use biodegradable containers but potatoes seem to transplant very easily.

It didn't seem to be worth the trouble, the ones planted directly in the ground did as good as the ones started earlier and transplanted.

I may need to do it again this year though because of the squirrels (or who knows what) who keep on dining on the potatoes that i put i the ground.

For now i'm cutting off the parts of the tubers with eyes, pretty thick ( bake and eat the rest ) and then plant them deep enough so the occasional frost we still have ahead of us won't damage them.

Like Tyler said. Now if you want to move the pile after a couple of months, you'll find a nice patch of vegetation free - ready to plant patch of soil and all of it without tiling.

I wonder what kind of mushrooms they are using and if they could be regrown from the package. It'd be neat to be able grow own thingies like that. Seeding trays are the first that came to my mind.

Davis Bonk wrote:So overseed legumes so they choke out the weeds and themselves but can't compete with the garlic. I think I'm gonna give this a shot. Its still gonna require cultivation and or mulch around the plants.

It could work but i feel like that'd be sort of an anti-guild. I dunno.

Chadwick Holmes wrote: I was thinking on the lines of white clover etc

The theoretical objection that comes to mind is that since garlic is known to suppress the growth of some legumes clover might not do so great with it either. But that's just theory…

I've planted some garlic last fall and and it began to shoot green few weeks back. I'm planing on growing it with carrots, parsley and peppers (with wood chips as mulch) and see how it goes. But that would not be considered cover crop and will require some weeding. The only thing i can think of in terms of cover crop for garlic would be strawberries. From what i read the are compatible with garlic. plus they don't grow high enough to suppress it and definitely could cover the ground dense enough.

We're renting a house that's sitting on a 3/4 acre lot in northwest Chicagoland. I sort of sheet-mulched about a half of it last September/October. Well actually i hauled in about 80 tons of (wood shavings based) horse manure and spread it about 8-10'' thick over maybe 20000 square feet. I casted winter rye seeds over all of it in November and early December and some of it (but not a lot) started sprouting before it got cold.

We also have a hugel structure that i made last year - about 1000 square feet 3 foot deep pit filled with wood and covered by soil, surrounded by a c shaped (and facing south) hugel bed - currently a skunk residence, who have been helping us with 'kitchen waste' recycling all winter long.

The soil here is quite good, loamy with maybe about 3 feet of topsoil. The previous owner was from what i heard very firm about not using any chemicals on or around the lot.

The plan is to grow food for our family (of six), sell the excess and save the income for a downpayment so we could purchase this (if the landlord is wiling to sell or other) property.


My grandparents were farmers and i did a lot of work around our garden with our parents but it was mostly till twice a year, plant in rows and weed a lot kind of farming. I'm trying to figure out how to do it the no-till, company planting style.

The soil is still frozen but i'm getting ready to start planting indoors. Tomatoes (which i plan on making our main $ crop) actually seem to grow better when transplanted so i'm thinking i could start with them about now. Maybe peppers as well since we're about 2 months from our last frost.

Comments, critiques and ideas are welcomed.

Cristo Balete wrote:Urban places are mostly privately owned, or maintained by tax dollars, so it costs everyone when plants show up that shouldn't be there.

These ripple effects are huge, and they can go on for hundreds of years

This is the State park motto: LEAVE ONLY FOOTPRINTS - TAKE ONLY MEMORIES.

I've seen the park crew in our municipality as they were spraying pesticides to contain the mosquito plague we had last summer, the ripple effect will include more mosquitoes next year and more pesticides i think.

Land ownership and tax dollar are important parts of of civilization which is apparently endangering the whole planet. Guerrilla gardening is an effort to change the paradigm and save us (humans and the rest) from extinction.

Update:

The hugel mound did so so in terms of producing vegetables this year with the exception of the bottom part that did fairly good.
The flat, buried in the ground part did and still is doing exceptionally well. Beets, carrots, parsley, potatoes, tomatoes, herbs, beens and peas grew abundantly. The only hing that didn't grow was cucumbers that started off nice but when the fruits started showing up they were very pale and the plants wilted quickly.

Cabbages, kale, onions and beets are still growing.

I added two more mounds on the sides connected to the one on the north end last week so now we have a C shaped space protected form the east, west and north and exposed towards the south. I'm planing on growing worm weather plants in there next year or even getting some greenhouse foil and growing things for transplants there early spring.