Making life easier....

I stumbled across this useful video from 'chef mikey' a no dig farmer in Tennessee. I think it has some useful points to make life practical if you are gardening on a slightly larger scale.

I really enjoyed that video, thank you.

Great video, thanks.

I have my first patch under black plastic this winter as an experiment, after a few years of not gardening. Need to reclaim some land from the weeds. Now that I have it, I may well incorporate cover crops in future as well.

Michael Cox wrote:Now that I have it, I may well incorporate cover crops in future as well.

I think that cover crops can be a great way of rebooting the soil life and feeding it. Mikey makes it sound easy, but the type of cover crop and the timing of sowing/terminating are probably different for each site. I know that many commonly recommended cover crops would be pretty useless here, as they just wouldn't grow well for me for example. Fodder radish was reasonably good for me, as was rye. I love the idea of a bulky cover crop though.
Ideally you would want to have your own source of compost too rather than having to buy it in all the time, but extra land would be required to do that. I think Ian Tollhurst grows biomass willows and chips them for compost, whereas Helen Atthowe tends to chop and drop in situ. At the end of the day it is what suits your situation that works.

Did he ever talk about why not cardboard? I skipped a few short blobs in the final third of the video, so maybe I missed it. Like, I get PaulW's arguments against cardboard, but he's not advocated for tons of plastic the way Chef Mikey was.

It's fascinating to me how many different ways there are to garden.  It's been a coon's age since I've been able to garden at all.  I'm glad I research the dickens out of everything in advance because it's sure taken a lot of pressure off of me to do it right.  It's comforting to know that, even in gardening, there's not a one size fits all way.  It's turned my future garden (once I get moved) into something I absolutely can't wait to get started on!  Unfortunately, this coming garden season for me won't happen and I'll have to be content with finding small farmers and homesteaders to buy from.  (As long as they're being truly organic and natural about it.)  

But, right now, I'm getting ready to my own gardening -- a three mile walk in -8°F temps (before wind chills) to go grocery shopping before another snow storm tomorrow.  😞  Lord love a duck, I'm ready to move now!

I garden on a much smaller scale, and I don't use anything except mulchy stuff that I find around the place, a lot if it is just weeds I pull or chop down in the garden itself and the spent vegetable plants, also leaves raked up from the yard each fall. A lot of time, I just let low growing ground cover weeds like purslane or creeping Charlie do their thing, especially under tall plants like corn or okra.

I might be more sensitive that others, but I think plastic has an unpleasant chemical smell, especially if it's left out in the sun so I don't like it. I do use some plastic pots but that's because I haven't found a better option, yet. I collect them for free and after sitting out for a long while I figure most of the outgassing is done, or at least that's what I tell myself.

I think cardboard is pretty gross too. I did a short stint receiving product, mostly from China into a big distribution warehouse.  My oversensitivity may be in play again but the smell when one of those trucks was opened was unpleasant, at best. Even if the production of cardboard and inks used isn't an issue, which I don't believe, whatever might have been used to protect against infestations certainly is.

I let big-rooted weeds like dandelions, thistles and dock along with things like radishes and turnips do most of my tilling. If more is necessary, I use a shovel or hoe. I don't like the roar and stink of gasoline powered machines and enjoy my gardening lots more since abandoning them. Getting rid of that big tiller was the best thing I ever did as far as making things easier.

Christopher Weeks wrote:Did he ever talk about why not cardboard? I skipped a few short blobs in the final third of the video, so maybe I missed it. Like, I get PaulW's arguments against cardboard, but he's not advocated for tons of plastic the way Chef Mikey was.

No, Mikey just said that cardboard belonged in the recycling rather than in the garden - which is a good way of looking at it too! He did make a point that you need outdoor quality plastics - UV treated so they last well. It works for him. He did seem to use the plastic to accelerate the decomposition of the cover crops, at least that was how I saw it, as well as the initial clearing of the plants on site.

I find lots of life every time I leave cardboard covering soil
Worms most of all.
That doesn't mean it is bad , but I garden in buckets and fertilize with pea - I'm not concerned with some background contamination.

I  have used cardboard before for mulch barrier. It works, sort of. I found that it didn't kill all perennial weeds, and then made digging perennials more difficult without disturbing everything else. I like this look of this arrangement because it still allows targetted digging as needed, and the barrier of crimped mulch keeps the weed seeds from germinating.