The Red Baron Project year two

[kenny_j]

Here is what I did this year in the way of permaculture, akin to the lady from Montana. Rows of tomatoes planted into 3 different types of rolled mulch, black plastic, black porous paper fiber, and gray felt. Felt wins on permeability and strength, the fiber degraded and tore easily within one week and let the weeds in. Just the weight of a sparrow hopping on it would tear it. Hoping the felt might be reusable for another year. White Dutch Clover sown between rows. Mistake I made was in not fertilizing enough in the beginning. The white clover seems to have competed heavily for nutrients. I have cut it twice, leaving the residue lay on the clover. This will decompose and is just now adding nutrients back to the soil, as well as the roots storing nitrogen taken from the air. I may till next year and use a crimson clover, which is an annual. The roots will die every year supplying nitrogen to the soil. White is a perennial, but a better gatherer of atmospheric N. The clover definitely worked as a weed suppressor. My first year at this, so its not perfected. Next year I will start rotating crops, my main garden has a lot of diseases due to growing tomatoes for many years, newer gardens have much less disease, the newest almost no bad leaves. I will mound rows next year. I used pins and dirt on the edges to hold mulch and dirt splashed on plants, mounded this should not happen, thus better disease control. Pics taken july 8.

kj

[Redbaron]

That really is beautiful Kenny. I have a question. Did you till that first? Do you plan on tilling in the future?

[Worth1]

At my house I have the perfect ground cover it is called horse herb.
It uses little water looks nice and is native to Texas.
If you leave it alone it will choke out other unwanted weeds and is easy to control.
If you till it up you end up with all of the unwanted weeds you can handle.

I have found that if you just till or hoe shallowly where you want the plants and mulch only around the plants it works great.
Horse herb is a herbaceous like plant with a woody stem so it comes up year after year.
I also have this stuff as a lawn to conserve water.
http://www.wildflower.org/plants/res...id_plant=CAVI2

Worth

[Redbaron]

A little update on what I have been working on recently. First off at the new acre I leased, the soil started off absolutely TERRIBLE. Hard as a rock. Harder than some soft rocks! Took me weeks and weeks to even dig tiny holes just large enough to set a seedling in! Destroyed 1 bulb planter and nearly wore out the second! I had blisters on my hands 1/2 the size of my palms before I got done. When I say this land was poor, boy do I ever mean it!

Yet the tomatoes are growing and producing. They won't set any yield records, but they are producing more than enough to pay costs and provide a bit of profit.

One thing I observed was that initially when I first planted, not a single earthworm was found on the entire new 1 acre plot. But when I replaced about a dozen plants that didn't survive the transplanting (I suspect cutworms mostly), I found a few small native earthworms already getting to work at fixing the soil health! That was only a few weeks later! Between the extra moisture this summer, and the worms, already I can call it soil instead of red brick concrete! Yay! Long way to go though.

On my old plot I tried two things. One was going over the same strips with paper and mulch again, and the other was letting last years rows go back to sod and putting the rows on the "virgin sod" between. So far it appears as if going between last years rows instead of reusing the same rows is significantly better. Actually less weed disease and insect pressure and better tomato growth. So that's a lesson learned. Amazingly the sod has completely recovered 110% after being smothered an entire year too. This surprised me.

As most of the readers here at Tomatoville know, a major part of my project is in putting together information I find from the web and integrating that information both in my project, and also spreading that information to others so they can experiment themselves. I am not a webmaster by any means, but I have been working on a youtube channel for The Red Baron Project. So far none of my own videos. Haven't learned how to do that yet. But I have put together playlists with a ton of information. Anyone who uses youtube and is interested in this project and/or organic, permaculture, ecoagriculture, etc.... please go there and take a look at what I have put together so far. Oh and PLEASE subscribe. There is easily a months worth of informative vids (all made by others) I put together so far. I also have a link there to bring new people here!

Red Baron Farm


One day I hope to add my own vids to the playlists.

[kenny_j]

Scott, sorry I took so long to answer. Didn't know I had any responses. Yes I did till, once I get a working system in place I hope to be no-till or minimum till. I will probably till again to relase N from the roots of the clover. Not sure if tilling will totally kill the perennial clover. There are still many unknowns. Should I go to annual crimson clover? Have to plant every year, but with the crop rotation and different spacing of different crops who knows what will work best. I like the idea of perennial always being there to combat weeds and store N from early spring going forward. I have laid out 2 new inground gardens next to the back 2, that will give me 5, plus 4 12x4 raised beds with a couple more planned. I need to figure out what percentage to leave in cover crop only, and for how many seasons, and fit that to a proper rotation schedule. I have close to the garden space I want so probably 2 ingrounds and 2 raised beds every year will be in N producing cover crops. I may collect my own winter wheat seeds from this to have going forward, lot of ifs and a lot of work, but hopefully a vast improvement. The septoria is rampant. Many of the ash trees on my property have it every yr, as well as black eyed susans that are along the fence lines. Low flat clay-based soil.
Worth: From what I now understand, any weed cover is preferable to bare soil. Just keep it trimmed to keep it from out-competing. I may decide to pull my slicer garden early, and plant more white clover where the rows are now, to establish it before fall. Next year putting down the 2ft wide gray felt the plants go into over a close cut clover would result in no loose soil to splash up on plants, as happened this past year. A little loose soil really splashes high up on the plants off of the fabric. I used pins and soil to hold the edges down, and had soil splash from day 1. Also considering cutting the felt into individual circles or squares just larger than cages with a small center hole and a slit AND installing that around each plant as I put them in. A small amount of grass clippings to cover the small hole and no soil splash, hopefully. So much to consider.
kj

[Tania]

Kenny, you garden looks so beautiful and peaceful! Thank you for sharing the pictures.

Tatiana

[kenny_j]

Thanx for the kind words Tania. I wished it still looked that nice. Septoria moved in with all the wet weather, I was overwhelmed with too many plants to keep trimmed of leaves, plus other commitments, then late blight hit. I have taken down many plants, and spraying diligently as I can with milk spray. 1 cup powdered non-fat milk to 1 gallon water. And despite my own skepticism, it has greatly slowed down loss of leaves. I have a control plot-meaning plants I never tried to save; Plants that had almost no leaves left on, and plants that were in varying stages of leaf loss. All plants sprayed with milk have showed a marked reduction in rate of leaf loss, those with no spray don't have a leaf left on them. So I am learning something. Watched the video linked to your FB, Back to Eden, very inspiring. The last couple years I have been reading a lot about Permaculture and naturalistic ways to grow food, and am moving as fast as I can in that direction. 2 new gardens I laid out for next year I now think to do in woodchips and see how that works, the 2 in clover will remain in living mulch. Every different technique involves differing variables, so it takes time to get it right. My heartfelt thanx to you and so many at T'ville and elsewhere who have helped me and others find so much good info and ideas on how to grow better food to eat.

kj

[Tracydr]

Kenny , I love your garden. Do you know if the white clover is shade tolerant? I'd love to plant as a grass sub in some of my part shade areas.

[peppero]

Originally Posted by Tania

Kenny, you garden looks so beautiful and peaceful! Thank you for sharing the pictures.

Tatiana

That is a TRUE statement.

jon

[kenny_j]

Tracy, most mixed grass seed contains white clover, not sure which variety. And I am sure it will tolerate quite a bit of shade. It is all over my yard, and the white flowers are usually evident everywhere. It is put in grass seed to fix nitrogen for the grass. You never really need to fertilize a lawn of this type, as long as you don't bag while mowing. I bought Dutch White, a perennial, for the garden. 6" to 8" max. height. My first year doing this, and not sure yet if annual Crimson Clover might have been a better approach. Investigating all aspects of permaculture and so much to learn. Just did a search and Dutch is considered the most shade tolerant of clovers, all of which do well in shade. The micro clovers are the smallest varieties, but seed is 3 times or so as expensive.
ADD: Just noticed you can see the white clover flowers in the lawn in both pics above. In the spring, with downed tree brances along the woods, and spots too wet to cut, small areas of grass get pretty tall, and the lawn clover tends to get a lot bigger like that in the garden, plus I always find yellow and several types of red mixed in. I have several perennial types in my flower gardens, one gets about 5' tall. pretty, but the bugs like it just as it starts to flower, and requires staking, so I plan on pulling it, just too high maintenance. I am really appreciating clover the last few years, the more I know it.

[Tracydr]

Thanks, Kenny. I'll get some seed and try it.

[Redbaron]

OK Update for today is the soil food web. Dr. Elaine Ingham is known as a leader in soil microbiology and research of the soil food web and is a leading co-author of the USDA's Soil Biology Primer. She was also named as The Rodale Institute's chief scientist. So while researching my project I have run across her name many times. She even has a course available. Problem is it costs $1,000 online and $3000+travel costs for her to teach in person. Way over my budget for the project. But I just found a great talk she gave for free. Not the complete full talk unfortunately. But until she started getting short on time, really good information that should make some of your heads explode! I know mine did. Why many of the things I have been doing are producing good results is explained in great detail. I learned a lot. With this scientific information I think I can further refine the project to optimise results. It's a three hour vid, but the whole 1st hour is Dr. Ingham. Most of the rest of the 2 hours is good stuff to know, but not part of my project yet. One day.



The main thing that I took from this vid is a better understanding of why, when I mow between the rows, it is an effective fertiliser for my tomatoes. It also helps explain how the double mowing before laying the paper and mulch both prepares the soil for my Tomato transplants and helps put the grasses at least temporarily dormant enough to let my tomatoes become dominant, if not actually killing them outright. (mow once and 3-5 days later mow flush to the soil only in the row to be mulched) Also helps explain the disease and pest resistance I am seeing. Also helps explain why I almost never need to water. Last but certainly not least, it has got those wheels in my head churning on a few things I may try next year.

[MissS]

Scott, Thank you for posting the above video. I found it to be most informative. It is too bad that there are not more clips of her out there. Very interesting lady.

[Tracydr]

Originally Posted by kenny_j

Tracy, most mixed grass seed contains white clover, not sure which variety. And I am sure it will tolerate quite a bit of shade. It is all over my yard, and the white flowers are usually evident everywhere. It is put in grass seed to fix nitrogen for the grass. You never really need to fertilize a lawn of this type, as long as you don't bag while mowing. I bought Dutch White, a perennial, for the garden. 6" to 8" max. height. My first year doing this, and not sure yet if annual Crimson Clover might have been a better approach. Investigating all aspects of permaculture and so much to learn. Just did a search and Dutch is considered the most shade tolerant of clovers, all of which do well in shade. The micro clovers are the smallest varieties, but seed is 3 times or so as expensive.
ADD: Just noticed you can see the white clover flowers in the lawn in both pics above. In the spring, with downed tree brances along the woods, and spots too wet to cut, small areas of grass get pretty tall, and the lawn clover tends to get a lot bigger like that in the garden, plus I always find yellow and several types of red mixed in. I have several perennial types in my flower gardens, one gets about 5' tall. pretty, but the bugs like it just as it starts to flower, and requires staking, so I plan on pulling it, just too high maintenance. I am really appreciating clover the last few years, the more I know it.

Thanks, Kenny. I'm trying to figure out if Crimson clover would do well here. I once had a thick stand of 2-3 foot high Crimson Clover in OK. It was so beautiful!

[kenny_j]

Tracy: I believe crimson clover is an annual. at least here in the north, so you may have to plant it every year. Dutch white is perennial, but I have read it does not do well as a stand alone lawn cover, except in very small spots, so mixing it with other grasses is preferred, and makes for an all around healthier lawn. I think going forward I will mix some other soil-beneficial type of plants in with the clover. Diversity within a living mulch, especially when you have different plant types improving soil in different ways, makes for the healthiest of systems. The key to my way of living mulch is to keep the mulch cut or weed whacked, this stresses it enough to keep it from out competing your main crop. An leave the cuttings in the garden to decompose back into the soil.

Scott: Haven't taken time to watch the video yet. Looking forward to it. Earlier videos you linked in the past are what got me going on this approach. ALL very eye-opening. I am forever grateful

kj