Building sustainable gardens-compost crops?

[Tracydr]

I was reading Gaia's Garden. She said that you need about 3-4 times as much lsnd to produce compost crops than actual crops.
Does anybody actually do this?
I've been kicking around getting a few comfrey plants and adding some cardoon in addition to the artichokes. ( I'm kind of afraid the cardoon will be invasive).
I have about 18 acres of trees and vines so maybe that's all I need? Obviously, I'm using all the pine straw, wood chips and leaves that I can physically collect without killing myself. Plus, kitchen scraps and our UCGs. I will see if my new work has an expresso stand that I can get larger quantities.
Once the chickens have a coop, I will have that. Once I get my horses set up, I will have manure, but that will be spread on their pasture.

[Cole_Robbie]

I think swapping the garden and the grazing land back and forth makes sense. Then the manure that the horses spread around can still be used as garden fertilizer without you having to scrape it up and move it around. If you put wheels on the chicken coop, it becomes a chicken tractor, with the similar idea of being able to move the animals around so that you don't have to move the manure.

[Tracydr]

Cole, the problem with that is pasture layout, horse water and fencing. My horses will be on permanent pasture with a cross-fence or two made from electric. I will plant cool season grasses/grains and clover on top of warm season sod.
Getting the warm season grass growing well can be a challenge with our poor, acidic soil. Better to get a strong stand and keep it.
I can't see this working if I'm switching from garden to pasture, plus I would need more expensive fencing and ways to get horses easily from barn/shed Ito the pastures with minimal effort.
I think the horses will need to be on permanent pasture and the garden farther from their barn. I can use poultry manure and will have an ample supply.

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by Tracydr

Cole, the problem with that is pasture layout, horse water and fencing. My horses will be on permanent pasture with a cross-fence or two made from electric. I will plant cool season grasses/grains and clover on top of warm season sod.
Getting the warm season grass growing well can be a challenge with our poor, acidic soil. Better to get a strong stand and keep it.
I can't see this working if I'm switching from garden to pasture, plus I would need more expensive fencing and ways to get horses easily from barn/shed Ito the pastures with minimal effort.
I think the horses will need to be on permanent pasture and the garden farther from their barn. I can use poultry manure and will have an ample supply.

I have to agree with Cole. In nature all herbivores including horses herd up and move. You have to figure a way to do that too or you land will deteriorate, or in the best of conditions stagnate. But it certainly won't heal.

Think this through as if you were a horse. You like such and such a grass pretty good, and such and such a weed is terrible tasting. You get put on a pasture with some good stuff and some nasty stuff...... What happens?

Every day you eat the good stuff and when it runs out maybe a bit that is so so..but never the nasty weeds. So the good stuff gets eaten every day and cant reproduce, while the nasty stuff grows unhampered and spreads. Pretty soon the whole pasture is nasty weeds. Then it costs money to buy herbicides for the weeds, and new reseeding of the pasture with good grazing species. The cycle repeats endlessly.

But if you move the pastures every few days simply by using a portable electric fence. The good stuff has a chance to recover and crowd out the weeds. In this case the pasture gets better and better each year.

Then you decide to move your garden in for a season to a corner of that good pasture. The soil is better because you managed the livestock better, and when the garden is finished for the season, you can spread a cover crop of native species that makes good forage. If you saw my project page you'll see that most the grass is undisturbed anyway. In the narrow rows you grow your tomatoes in, the grass will already be starting to come back. Walk away and put it back to pasture even better than it was before you did your garden.

Just a crazy idea from a crazy guy

[Cole_Robbie]

If the horses are too difficult to move around, you could get another livestock crop, like cows, goats, or sheep to perform the same function.

I think of livestock as a way of composting for impatient people like me. If you're trying to turn organic matter into black dirt, feeding it through an animal certainly speeds up the process.

[Tracydr]

I've been considering a couple of goats to cut down vines in the woods and maybe provide milk.
I guess I could put the garden inside the pasture fence and fence off with electric. Something to think about.