The Red Baron Project year one

[Redbaron]

I have described in various other threads my intent to develop an organic model using Permaculture principles that are scale-able to any size garden or Farm. I will be documenting my progress, successes, and failures here in this thread.

I would also ask humbly that anyone else interested in helping to try it out even in a small test plot themselves please try it and show your results here.

For my project I will be using various principles:

Principle 1: No till and/or minimal till with mulches used for weed control
Principle 2: Minimal external inputs
Principle 3: Living mulches to maintain biodiversity
Principle 4: Companion planting
Principle 6: The ability to integrate carefully controlled modern animal husbandry (optional)
Principle 5: Capability to be mechanized for large scale or low labor for smaller scale
Principle 7: As organic as possible, while maintaining flexibility to allow non-organic growers to use the methods
Principle 8: Portable and flexible enough to be used on a wide variety of crops in many areas of the world
Principle 9: Sustainable ie. beneficial to the ecology and wildlife
Principle 10: Profitable

[Redbaron]

For my first documented progress I will show the beginnings of bed preparation. To prepare it is easy as pie because there is no preparation!

All you do is lay out a paper or cardboard barrier and roll out mulch over it.

PS As you can see, I just pushed the roll of hay myself by hand. It unrolls easily. However in maintaining principle 5 "Capability to be mechanized for large scale or low labor for smaller scale", a bar could be inserted in the roll of hay and pulled behind a tractor for larger scale. I also laid down cardboard boxes by hand, but again for larger scale a commercial sized roll of cardboard or paper could be unrolled behind a tractor just in front of the hay. This would allow mechanization of the whole process. The labor is low, but it is even lower using a tractor, if you have larger acreage.

[Crandrew]

Keep it coming!

[Doug9345]

Very worthy project.

[Redbaron]

Just an interesting vid I found today. Seems there is a groundswell of people finally understanding. This only addresses one of the principles in my project, but it is an important one when my project reaches larger scale in future years. Right now I am focusing on the small scale. But I believe once this gets past this preliminary stage, this principle will help it all work. Principle 6: The ability to integrate carefully controlled modern animal husbandry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI

[Sun City Linda]

Intersting video Scott, although the speaker had a hard time keeping my attention.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by Redbaron

For my first documented progress I will show the beginnings of bed preparation. To prepare it is easy as pie because there is no preparation!

All you do is lay out a paper or cardboard barrier and roll out mulch over it.

PS As you can see, I just pushed the roll of hay myself by hand. It unrolls easily. However in maintaining principle 5 "Capability to be mechanized for large scale or low labor for smaller scale", a bar could be inserted in the roll of hay and pulled behind a tractor for larger scale. I also laid down cardboard boxes by hand, but again for larger scale a commercial sized roll of cardboard or paper could be unrolled behind a tractor just in front of the hay. This would allow mechanization of the whole process. The labor is low, but it is even lower using a tractor, if you have larger acreage.

What type of hay is that you are using?

[Redbaron]

In this case the hay is from Texas. It is almost all grass and isn't my first choice. But in Oklahoma after years of drought and lots of hungry horses and cattle, it is all that is available.

In my vision of how this will progress in future years I see making my own hay with plenty of other things in it like alfalfa instead of just coastal grass.

[Redbaron]

Update. Unfortunately I don't have pics yet, but so far I have made 6 rows (That's the easy part) and I have tried cardboard, burlap, Landscaping felt, and paper as my barrier layers. I also have planted so far cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, Kohlrabi, and started on my tomatoes and peppers. I have 3 row widths 4', 3', 2'.

It looks like I won't be incorporating any chickens this year. The lawn mower broke down and I had to buy a new one. There goes the budget!

But at least I still have the research I did for integration. Maybe next year.

PS as a side note: I wrote a wikipedia article from all the research I had done for incorporating animals in this project. You all are welcome to go look and see.

Holistic management

[peppero]

Scott you have a worthwhile vision and I wish you the best in your endeavor. keep us posted.

jon

[bughunter99]

Originally Posted by Redbaron

I have described in various other threads my intent to develop an organic model using Permaculture principles that are scale-able to any size garden or Farm. I will be documenting my progress, successes, and failures here in this thread.

I would also ask humbly that anyone else interested in helping to try it out even in a small test plot themselves please try it and show your results here.

For my project I will be using various principles:

Principle 1: No till and/or minimal till with mulches used for weed control
Principle 2: Minimal external inputs
Principle 3: Living mulches to maintain biodiversity
Principle 4: Companion planting
Principle 6: The ability to integrate carefully controlled modern animal husbandry (optional)
Principle 5: Capability to be mechanized for large scale or low labor for smaller scale
Principle 7: As organic as possible, while maintaining flexibility to allow non-organic growers to use the methods
Principle 8: Portable and flexible enough to be used on a wide variety of crops in many areas of the world
Principle 9: Sustainable ie. beneficial to the ecology and wildlife
Principle 10: Profitable

Good luck to you. I'm small scale and have followed all of your principles except for 5 for years. I highly recommend the book Gaia's Garden. It is the best thing out there that I have read related to the principles of soil health which is absolutely critical.
http://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-S...ds=gais+garden

Stacy

[bughunter99]

Originally Posted by Redbaron

Update. Unfortunately I don't have pics yet, but so far I have made 6 rows (That's the easy part) and I have tried cardboard, burlap, Landscaping felt, and paper as my barrier layers. I also have planted so far cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, Kohlrabi, and started on my tomatoes and peppers. I have 3 row widths 4', 3', 2'.

It looks like I won't be incorporating any chickens this year. The lawn mower broke down and I had to buy a new one. There goes the budget!

But at least I still have the research I did for integration. Maybe next year.

PS as a side note: I wrote a wikipedia article from all the research I had done for incorporating animals in this project. You all are welcome to go look and see.

Holistic management

If you have not already done so, make yourself large compost bins now and start adding to them immediately with your eggshells, veggie discards etc. Compost is key to your priniciples of minimal external input. In order to maintain nutrient rich and healthy productive soil you have to keep replacing the stuff the plants are removing.

Stacy

[zeroma]

Keep posting, as I'm also going to be starting a new bed employing this method at the Diabetic Garden Study Project this year. As well as on my own front yard. I'll start documenting with photos as well. Is it alright that that get posted here? I don't want to hijack your thread RedB. Maybe it is best I start my own.

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by zeroma

Keep posting, as I'm also going to be starting a new bed employing this method at the Diabetic Garden Study Project this year. As well as on my own front yard. I'll start documenting with photos as well. Is it alright that that get posted here? I don't want to hijack your thread RedB. Maybe it is best I start my own.

I have asked people to volunteer and to join in many times. It is not hijacking, it's the purpose of the thread. We are supposed to learn from each other. If you want to keep your results separate from others, just put a new thread "Red Baron project, Zeroma results" or something like that. If and when this project grows large enough, (hopefully one day) I would like to organize it similar to the dwarf project. But for now anywhere is fine. Who knows? Maybe one day I'll write a book too!

That's a long way off though. And assumes the project will get results worth writing about. Who knows? It might end up being a complete flop!

[zeroma]

Thanks Redbaron.

Keep thinking about YOUR book.