Everything’s set, the pump, the greenhouse, the tool shed, now it’s time to stretch some muscles (believe me, I have some, hidden under a thick layer of fat). The vegetable plots are probably the most labor intensive task we’ve done in the farm. Even though my father owned a small hand tractor, we decided not to use it. We chose not to disturb majority of the soil food web. We didn’t even put into practice double digging. Kilometers of worm tunnels made the soil naturally loose.With the use of a cultivation fork, a spade and a rake we started to build 1 meter by 5 meter elevated plots. We opted for smaller plots so we can easily diversify and manage our crop rotation. At the end of each day we plant mung beans on each plot. The beans will serve as our green manure (more in this on the next post). After more then two weeks we ended up with almost 60 plots, most of them already have grown mung beans.
To give you a brighter idea on how loose our soil is; it would only take two men less than 30 minutes to bury (vertically, of course) a 20 foot pipe.
4 comments:
You mentioned worm tunnels making the soil loose, did you directly incorporate the worms in the soil? Can you elaborate the process. Thanks.
worms are everywhere, but you have to make your soil the perfect environment for them. we did not incorporate worms in our soil. they were there naturally. they are not like the african night crawlers you can buy from stores. they are endogeic and epigeic worms. they live in the soil. an example is the lubricus terestis - bigger than their nightcrawler cousins.
Hi Raymond & Mariel,
Could you give suggestions on "making the perfect environment" for the worms. Did you spray your organic tea on the soil before you did any planting? Thanks, really appreciate your replies.
i'm not quite sure if we're making the perfect environment for them. i think it's best if you practice "no tillage farming". us, we do a litle tilling of our soil...
if you practice organic farming, they will come to you... "if its organic, they will come..." i think i heard that from a movie or something, or was it, "if you book them they will come..."
anyway...
in our farm we have very few rules aside from being organic. first, plants and and seeds should alway be newly watered. second, there should be no plots left unplanted. and finally, we should have a weekly harvest. these rules are followed strictly by the boys of daily dose farm...
we water our green manure (monggo) with compost tea.
Post a Comment