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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Subsistence Farming

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: "John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>
  • To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Subsistence Farming
  • Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2011 21:46:06 -0000


New land should be broken with a plow, a device that generally requires either a tractor or a draft animal, but a fair amount can be done with hand tools. Much depends on the time of year and the weather. In the spring after a good rain, it is possible to dig up 50 m2 in a day, even if one is not especially muscular. In August after a long drought, digging even 5 m2 in a day might be hard. But there are ways to the task easier: if the grass is long, it can be cut with a scythe before the digging begins, and hot weather can be avoided by starting work at dawn. When the sod has been dug up, it can be shaken thoroughly to release the soil. It should then be piled up and burned if it consists of perennial grasses, which are more like to take root again than to turn into compost.

<<<Can I just make one suggestion? A much used organic technique here is the "sandwich method". In this new land is covered with multiple layers of cardboard or newspapers to smother the vegetation and this is weighed down with compost covered with cut vegetation. After a few months or even weeks it is possible to plant crops with their roots in the compost layer.
A good variant of this is to cover new land with thick black silage plastic over the winter. Some silage plastic sheets can be 20 meters long or longer and as wide. Roll up carefully in the Spring and most of the resident slugs will stick to the plastic and be so removed . Weigh down the edge of the plastic with anything heavy. We have used bags of animal manure for this. This method does not exclude air from getting in as can be seen when the wind blows and the plastic billows up in the middle. Mulch in Spring and plant immediately. The plastic can be reused many times over. Potatoes are often an ideal first crop.
john





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