Oliver Huynh

paul wheaton wrote:Crop rotation has been proven, over and over, to be an excellent strategy ...    for monocrop systems.

Good morning Paul,
Indeed i start from a monoculture.
If I left the garden for a year I would find a 2-feet high carpet of goutweed, smothering everything including young trees.
The chards, nettles and parsnips i mentioned earlier are not able to compete without intervention.
It is freeze- and drought- resistant, immune to slugs, loved by wild bees and fortunately delicious with garlic and olive oil.
The point is I cannot eat it three times a day every day, being its sole predator around here. Lime and mowing weekly will also contain it.
So under my conditions i have to do some babysitting to introduce diversity at this present time. Rotation allows me to mitigate other constraints as space, water and slug pressure, but we are talking about tens of square feet and not acres.
Hopefully some beetles or butterflies with an interest in it will come to balance the system, or it will exhaust naturally.
We'll see that with time.

Jeff Marchand wrote:   I had to re-read "usual spring drought" twice.  

It is quite unexpected in Belgium, but repeated the last 3 years so it becomes a pattern : no rain from february to the end of may with temperatures peaking at 25-30°C in march-april.
Then irregular storms with hail in may-june, then again dry heat until september.

By irregular, i mean neighboring villages might receive fifty liters per square meter or more overnight and no single drop here.

We used to have consistent rain throughout the year before and adapting to this new reality is quite hard.

Have a nice evening,
Oliver

Hello,

I would say 'as much as you can realistically manage in your climate'. My great-grandfather had around 50 pear and apple trees in a suburban garden over his veggie plots, all trimmed in goblet and espalier form, and the matching cellar to keep the fruit in winter.

You can plant dwarves. Some with real dwarves' houses at their feet for morning dew / lizards / toads.
You can plan fruiting perennials, shrubs. Climbing actinidia or grapevines on treillis.
A fruiting hedge.
Espalier along a fence or a wall, mixing varieties. Cordon-shaped trees along paths.

Just remember they will need watering during their first two years, and that rasp- and blackberries will visit your neighbours.

The more you plant, the better chance to harvest anything. What you don't eat will never be lost anyway.

Have a nice evening,
Oliver

In Normandy around 2015, around four acres were enough to comfortably feed a family of 4 at the 'Ferme du Bec Hellouin', as was studied by the French farming research agency (INRA).

From there i would say it depends.

I am sure they had lots of birds to listen to, but if you prefer the song of a high desert under the morning mist or the murmur of wind through elder cedar trees, you will need much more, and your harvests will differ.

Have a nice evening,

Hello,

I also think it depends on your conditions. For me it is slug pressure under heavy but very short rainfall.
Departing from an unproductive (for my little stomach) mixed polyculture, I planned a rotation in the veggie garden this year, with potatoes - pulses - leafy green - roots.

There is still a perennial structure in the form of ash, redbuds and pear trees that are scattered in the garden, feral parsnips and chards that grow wherever they please, and the drip lines running just under the surface and used once a week. The paths are covered in wood chips and full of wild mushrooms.

Still I have to feed my growing soil with mulch, compost and hay, and on the other hand litter-covered soil is a shelter for slugs and snails that were able to destroy nearly everything I planted until now.

So I concentrated all the mulch of the year in the potato part, and the remaining surface is only protected with goutweed between veggies. I plan to rotate this every year.

So far, we have had our usual spring drought and peas, goutweed, chards and celeries have been quite good ; storms came in last week as forecast and the slug pressure has been much lighter than usual in the veggie garden.
I am facing the summer with exploding greenery and around 9 weeks worth of water in the tank.

We'll see ...

Noah Robinson wrote:I will continue to not cut my grass and let everything get out of control :)
Thank you

The veggie garden is under strict control ;)
I could not let young foxgloves mix with borage for example.
There are wild parts, but i use them for mulch and not cooking.

Hello,

I would add two things that seem to work better for me this year :

- Never water on the surface. Filling a planting hole with water before planting instead of watering after, buried drip lines and ollas do not attract slugs as much. Above-ground watering on a dry soil in the evening can be a death sentence.
- Slugs seem to be quite disoriented when an orderly garden becomes a urban jungle. The more greenery I have, the less slugs I see and the less damage.

Have a nice evening,
Oliver

Hello,

I would keep an eye for suspicious plant activity too.
On my front garden, I have a marvelous nettle patch, in the middle of a very dry area.
When we last emptied our septic tank, we found the exit pipe was not directed towards our sewer as it should per code, but going in the opposite direction, right to the nettles patch.
And the next sewer access in that direction is buried under the neighbour's fence.

Now do I really have to dig a trench all the way from the tank to the neighbour's land to find the leaking pipe and reroute it to the sewer instead of using the nettles ...

Have a nice evening,
Oliver

Not quite the same ... But I tend to hide my lapses behind a cloud of distraction or dreaminess.
In my experience, 'Hey, sorry I did not see/hear that' is better than forcing your mind to fill a blank face or a split second of white noise.
Weird when talking in front of the person in a quiet location, but still better than nothing.

Have a nice evening,
Oliver

Hello,

There are many variables that will influence an answer. I do not know of any panacea.
What is the climate in your area ? The nature of the soil / dirt you are dealing with ? How is your growing season, what do you intend to grow and what is naturally occuring in your area ? How are nearby gardeners doing ? How much water do you need or store, when and where is it flowing ?

I would think about fertility first, before even planting your first crop. What (ideally perennial) nitrogen fixers do you have, what dynamic accumulators are growing in your area (comfrey, dock, thistles, dandelions, ...), what is your mulch source and when do you harvest / apply it ? What is your rotation, is it possible to intercrop pulses for nitrogen ?

Are there trees or hedges you could use for mulching in winter without compromizing your growing space, then rake the mulch in spring before you plant to expose slugs to every bird's eyes ? Do you have snakes when it is dry, or ducks / toads when it is moist ?

For chicken, I would say 'as long as the ground is fallow'. They will uproot everything they find, and their manure will burn the rest. Typically in autumn/winter after your last harvests.

Have a nice evening,
Oliver