Mark Master

Eino Kenttä wrote:You could try girdling (ring-barking) the shoots, preferably as low down as possible, and then keeping close track so that there are no new shoots forming below the girdle. If there are some, it would probably be better to girdle these too, rather than cut. I've also heard of vandals injecting lye into (or under?) the bark of trees to kill them, I suppose it works somewhat like the caustic lime Jim mentioned.

Thank you Jim and Eino!!

I have a coppicing question, but in the other direction...

Every year I cut the trees that grow around the foundation of the buildings, and and every year they come back.  Sometimes I cut many times a year and sometimes only once, but that doesen't seem to matter.  I've been unwittingly coppicing without knowing that's what it was called!  How do you stop a tree from re-growing when it is where you don't want it, up against a building?

L Anderson wrote:
If this isn’t a good reason to stop tilling, I don’t know what is. Free plants, no labor, suited to my garden conditions, and the great fun of the wonder and anticipation.

I have a funny story about an aspect of tilling.  I have a friend who tills at least once a week all growing season - to keep the weeds down.  He doesn't recognize the damage caused to all of the soil life, but that is for a different post.  I was at his garden before his first till of the year, and I was marveling at his volunteer spinach.  He said he was going to till it under the next day, and I asked if I could dig it up.  He agreed and I was on my way to a wonderful new aspect of gardening.  For my friend, the spinach was in the 'wrong' place.  He had something else he wanted in 'that' location.  Along with everything else he planted, he planted that year's spinach.

I took his 'wrong' spinach plants home and put them in my garden.  They flourished!  I was (consistently)  eating spinach from his plants for a month and a half before he was eating spinach from the replanted seeds in the 'right place'.  I explained to him what I had done, but he still tills everything under and starts over because he wants to be in control of where everything is.

I not only learned about spinach from this event, I learned that it works for many things.  We now let some of the lettuce and other greens go to seed intentionally, and in the Spring we are rewarded early with garden salads before the ground has thawed enough to be worked.  We get the delight of discovering fresh food in lots of areas, some far away from where the previous year's plants were.  Yes, it is unplanned - in part - but the abundance allows us to uproot plants where we really don't want them (this is rare), and we truly have more of a polyculture garden.

In addition, we are purposely allowing all the cross-pollination and adaptation that happens year after year.  We continually add to the mix with new varieties so we now have some delicious lettuce that doesn't have a 'proper' name.  They are crosses with crosses, with some (what do you call it?) down-breeding from the hybrids tossed into the mix.  I guess we are landracing?

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:

A harvest party is the most important part of harvesting beans... Invite your friends, family, customers, even strangers. Let everyone dance on the beans, and sing, and have a good time. Serve chili, refried beans, and/or other things made from beans harvested the previous year. That makes it a ritual: something to commemorate the cyclical nature of planting and harvest. After a few years, people will be calling to ask if they can attend the bean harvest festival.

The bean harvest festival is a great idea!!  I've been way more successful in growing large quantities of beans than I have been in making them edible (getting them alone in the pot).  Thank you for this idea!!

We also had a large rhubarb root mass gifted to us in the middle of last summer.  My friend was moving and wanted to preserve a rhubarb plant that had, in various places, been in the family for several generations, and he was not moving somewhere he could plant it.  The clump was smaller than the large pot in the youtube video and we split it into 14 clumps, some of them quite smallish.  They are all booming this year, outperforming our original rhubarb patch!  Spring and fall may be better, but we did it when it was available, in the heat of summer, and it worked too.

I have a housekeeping question: I started at less but then increased to $65. Since then I got an email that said I’m receiving this email because I’m not at the $65 level. Is this a problem I have to look into further? I really don’t want to miss out on the stretched stuff.

Ok, so here is the imagination station of the day (I took a photo but I don't know how to attach it to this post, so...): Imagine a photo of the most fertile part of my garden, right next to the lilac bushes that are 15+ feet tall.  The rich soil that has been tended for over a decade and is more that 16" deep (I started with barely any over the top of my clay - compost - compost) has been growing squash nearly bigger than I can carry.  It helps that it grows up into the lilac bushes - at the far end of the imaginary photo.  I now reach up to harvest some of the squash while the Earth bound squash still beckon me to bend over to harvest them.  Two years ago we gave one of the Amish Pie pumpkins/squash to a friend who took it around to her social gatherings and put out a jar for donations to the food pantry and for guesses on the weight of this beauty - see imaginary photo #2 where we strapped in into her child car seat for ease of transport.  It came in at 62 lbs. but we had already canned the bigger ones.  When we carved them, they had 3.5" wide flesh and I went and got a new (clean!) Sawzall blade to cut them up for cooking.  Ok, OK, stay on topic!!

I have been landracing several varieties of vegetables, but haven't gotten to squash yet. Please, as the squash say just before the hard frost: Pick me! Pick me!

T Simpson wrote:

The lower half of the property where there are not any water pipes is about 3 inches of gravel with an inch of compacted soil on top (like the drive way on the right side of the picture but with grass grown over it)

It takes a time, but you can literally plant a garden on top of a concrete slab - if you have composted enough there.  Over the gravel and compacted soil, pile as much organic matter as you can get your hands on.  Fall leaves, wood chips, old hay, straw, mix in some cardboard, weeds, lawn clippings, spent brewers grains from the local micro-brewery, banana peels, coffee grounds from the coffee shop, anything you can get your hands on.  I have a mentor that gardens over the top of a concrete patio in his back yard.  He piled mostly leaves as thick as he could, and now he has over 12" of the richest soil to grow in - in the small space he has to work with.  For trees you can't go over concrete, but you will be amazed at the transformation of hard compacted soil by doing nothing but covering it with organic matter.  No need to dig or till (or turn the compost pile), just DNR (dump N run) over and over!  It will take time, but it is the lowest amount of work for the amazing transformation that occurs.  

I had a spot where I could not get a shovel in 1/4", even with standing on the shovel.  It looked and felt like concrete.  I did nothing but mow the weeds around it with the mower discharge directed onto this area, covering it even minimally.  After 6 weeks I could dig with just my finger to a depth of 1 1/2 inches.  I planted some 65 day corn in mid July and got a crop the same year.  I am on clay.  Cover the ground to feed the soil life and you will be rewarded.

We need this as an alternative for when the fuel runs out - but we need to practice it now so we can use it then.