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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] ??no-till??

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: "Laura McKenzie" <laurabrownmckenzie@worldnet.att.net>
  • To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] ??no-till??
  • Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 00:17:13 -0500

I use newspaper and cardboard. I have mostly raised beds. My garden area was basically subsoil (chirt, sandstone and clay) when I started and in new areas that is what I start with. We live in Alabama, USA bordering zones 7b and 8.

Here's what I've found:

1. Putting newspaper on top of red clay to suppress wiregrass and then putting hay over the newspaper does not suppress wiregrass much and neither does it do anything for the soil. Putting hay down THEN newspaper THEN hay again works better. I spread lime and calcium over the wiregrass to help too. I recently took advice from another list and dug a couple of holes in the chirt/clay and made small mini-compost piles down into the clay between tomatoes spaced 4 feet apart. The tomatoes are looking VERY happy. Keep in mind that the soil I have cannot support vegetation other than wiregrass until I worked extensively on it using cover crops, mulch, compost, hugelkulture, etc. In some areas of my backyard nothing grows!

2. Putting one layer of cardboard over an area to be planted into a berry bed the next year does not suppress poison ivy. LOTS of layers are needed I guess... I'll let you know on that one. It was a naturalized island area in our small back yard but I was worried about the number of copper heads we kept finding in it so I'm making it a blueberry patch. Half of our land is forest so this small patch isn't going to be missed.

3. We're in a drought. If I had enough soaker hoses, perhaps I'd put the hoses down, then newspaper then hay and hope the hoses are doing their jobs. But since I have to use sprinklers for most of my garden, I'm doubting that having newspaper under the hay is a good idea... is the water getting under the newspaper? In the one bed where I have the newspaper and then hay (because it was one big bed of wiregrass) the tomatoes are doing ok but I have both the hay and newspaper pulled back in a circle of about 12 inches diameter around each plant.

4. If I had mulch enough I would lay out newspaper in the paths between the raised terraced beds and then mulch the paths. I think all the water in the mulched beds is being wicked away and into the dry and exposed paths. But I can't afford mulch for the paths this year. I had rye in the paths to grow more mulch but so far I haven't the water to start a summer cover crop in the paths and I'm told growing anything in the paths will draw away more water anyway.

5. In the late winter and early spring, under newspaper, I invariably find a few red salamanders (and other types of salamanders). I'm afraid I'm flattening them by walking on the newspaper so I take up any newspaper in areas where I need to walk.

6. A small rolled up bit of newspaper along the beans and topped with a little mulch helps suppress weeds. I plant beans on a diagonal and about 6 inches apart (maybe a little further apart depending on how poor the soil in the bed is) but I always have a straight space between rows. Using newspaper around beds depends on how much time you have for using newspaper in small bits rather than large. I tend to grow the beans in beds that are wiregrass free. I have to grow carrots in containers and I intensively plant them.

7. Speaking of wiregrass, I plant troublesome beds that have wiregrass in them with tomatoes, squash and melons so as to be able to mulch large portions of the bed. I never put root crops, beans, or leaf crops in these beds... those types of crops would simply be overwhelmed. I'm finding that I'm winning the war on wiregrass bit by bit.


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Laura's Homeschooling, Garden, and Genealogy Site
is found here: http://home.att.net/~ekyorigins
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