posted 4 years ago
Hi folks,
Two years ago we wanted to put a garden into a spot that had been left to its own devices for a few decades.
It had originally been cow pasture, and then generally neglected apart from the odd mowing by the land owner. The dominant plants were goldenrod and some tall grass, a bit of fescue and remnants of the original pasture.
In the first year we ran a chicken tractor over the area with 70 broilers. They destroyed the goldenrod, and prepared the soil.
In the spring of 2020 we ran a tractor through the area with a plow to turn the soil over and then used rototillers to form the growing beds. We then planted potatoes in the beds and covered them with a foot of spoiled hay.
The disturbance immediately triggered an explosion in Canadian thistle, which punched through the deep hay mulch and reigned supreme. In the areas we didn't mulch, the growth was so thick and tall that you couldn't see a rototiller that was left on site.
We spent a total of 4 hours weeding the 9 30ft rows that first year. The potato's main function at this stage was to prepare the soil and compete out the weeds. The problem was that the deer are the potato tops and not the thistles so they had a hard time. After the weeding they fared much better.
In the fall, when we harvested the potatoes, we got an ok harvest, enough for next year's seed. Most of them were green which indicated that we didn't have enough mulch.
This spring when the snow melted, we found almost all that hay mulch as gone, eaten by worms. The hard compact clay soil was largely fluffy and easy to work.
Near the end of May, we planted the potatoes, and also dropped a few fava beans into each hole, before covering the soil with 18 inches to 2 ft of straw. It turned out to be a little thick and we had a patchy emergence of the potatoes and the fava beans.
Not too long after them came the Canadian thistles which seemed to struggle through the mulch but made it just the same. At this point I decided to weed every 2 weeks, and it takes roughly 1 1/4 hours to weed all 10 30ft rows. The thistles were easy to pull, and I would get long 3ft shoots which I would simply place on top of the mulch. We also had grasses and other weeds that get the same treatment.
June 10 we got a decent rain, and it was the last rain we got until yesterday (July 23). We've had 2 heat waves in the meantime with temperatures in the 90s, and the deer just keep eating the potatoes down. Then for a few nights in early July we got frosts when severely hit the potatoes.
During all this the fava beans have been thriving. The deer don't touch them, no bugs are eating them, and the extremely late frosts didn't effect them.
So here we are in late July. The Canadian thistle has in the most part given up and the creeping grasses are main target for weeding. This fall we will be planting garlic and Egyptian walking onions in some of the beds so this is good news.
From the outset, we decided to see just how far we can take this system. No irrigation and no deer protection up here in Canada is a real test, and so figuring out what works has been a challenge.
Right now we have potato beetle larvae in some areas and they strip a plant completely. So we are looking into ways of creating habitat for their predators. Our goal is to create a system where we can grow potatoes, beans, garlic, and that requires very low inputs.
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