Hal Hurst

I regret not stripping the plastic tape off of the repurposed cardboard boxes.  The cardboard is gone after several years, but I still am getting strips of plastic that surface when I hoe and/or rake.

I used this technique creating an annual garden on a slope with thin soil- logs on contour, spaced wide enough to allow a row and a path. Broadfork one pass upslope of the log.  Cover that with nitrogen rich mulch. Layer cardboard on the whole row.  Just uphill of the logs is the bed area.  Layer on some soil and nitrogen rich compost.  Uphill of the bed area, cover the path with nitrogen-poor mulch like fresh sawdust or wood chips. This path becomes a thin composting area for next year's bed.  Plant your pre-started annuals or direct seed through holes made in the cardboard. Throw the weeds and garden waste in the path and walk on it as you garden.

I appreciate the Hell out of Joseph Lofthouse and his landraces of beans, squash, etc.  But for this gardener the effort to breed promiscuity into the auto-erotic common heirloom tomato is misguided.  Here's why:

I have searched far and wide for heirloom tomatoes that will grow and produce in my local conditions.  I have found a few that I like and will do well. I want to plant the three varieties- slicing, paste, and cherry- in adjacent rows, and save their seeds for next year, and get the same tomatoes.  A promiscuous phenotype will force me to use several plots widely separated in order to do that.  And we know that solanums have to be rotated to limit blight building up from year to year. So where shall I plant the next year's crop? - my gardens are not infinite.

If I can't find tomatoes that will produce satisfactory results then a landrace approach might make sense.  But it's a lot of extra effort, and life is short.  Let's concentrate on, for instance, a cool weather watermelon.  I'd really go for that.

If the SEEDS are considered when calculating protein content- and with food that passes through a gizzard I would think it should be- then I assume the protein would be somewhat higher than with juice alone...

I've been running a reality check while reading this thread, comparing it to my acres of heaven, and I have to say that I will never be able to lose my sole the way some posters have done.  

My place is overrun with Himalayan blackberries, wild roses, and poison oak. So I don't imagine I could ever go shoeless except in strictly controlled areas like my annual garden, where I weed regularly and the paths are strewn with wood chips and straw.  

Now when I get my runner bean hedge going I might shed whatever gets in the way of the sun, but only while in the curated patch for annuals, and for sure a session of blackberry picking has got to include boots and overalls.

I'm wondering whether you have considered that children are likely to grow up and move on to other pastimes faster than a living fence will take to control them. Unless there is a succession of them, as in a school or if there is a high turnover in owners/ renters in the property next door.

For those of you that DIDN'T grow up in Southern Calif, that was the logo of Pea Soup Anderson's, previously of Santa Nella.  My Dad's favorite oasis when driving to or from regions to the north. Now consumed by the press of newer businesses.

Matt: still involved in moving in- greenhouses are in my list and now it looks like Feb for the build. Still interested long term.

does this help?

I unnecessarily raised the hackles of some folks thanks to my incendiary headlining.  Nonetheless I have watched and read the material and have concluded that 1) there are ways to do this without collecting a lot of surface water in the slope and 2) I might as well wait until early January when I will be in residence before detailing my system, so I can measure particular slopes, etc.