Hello from Missouri

[Rillowen]

Hello!
I have been an addicted user of the "backyard chickens forum" for the past year, but I am actually far more enthusiastic about gardening than chickens, so I am excited to join the community here!
I have had only small patio gardens until last year, this is my second year living in a place were we can grow a proper garden. I have no real generational gardening knowledge to speak of, so I'm trying to learn it all myself. I am still struggling with the learning curve! Since I am determined to do this right I tend to frequent gardening blogs, YouTube videos and everything else I can find, so my knowledge is somewhat patchy. I know far more than normal on some subjects, but am missing the very basics on others! My biggest struggle is how in the world do you keep a large in the ground organic garden without heavy machinery or absolutely massive amounts of hoeing and mountainous piles of mulch?! (and oh so much moving it)
I'm looking forward to meeting you all and learning so much more!

 

[digitS']

Good Morning, Welcome to TEG, Rillowen.

To be of some specific help with your questions, it would be best to know what you mean by large, in the ground organic gardens. Would 7000 square feet be a large garden, or how about 700 square feet.

I learned to dislike hoeing as a kid in the family garden. Only a small amount of tolerance has developed over the years. I'm okay with sitting around in the garden. Small hand tools and that approach work quite well for weeding. Larger weed and cultivation jobs — a spading fork with following work using a long handle, 4-prong cultivator work well.

Very many square feet requires hours of hand work or machinery. One thing that can be done is to limit the square feet by having permanent paths. Putting the garden in beds is an approach to making good use of ground for gardening and keeping foot traffic off of it. One doesn't have to use careful arrangements of plants within the beds although that makes sense for optimizing limited garden space.

The spading fork does the job with cultivation and it can be deeper than any rototiller that I have made use of. Patience with having something like 8-10 inches of depth may be a good idea — a couple of years of gardening, adding organic matter and keeping traffic off those beds should do it . One additional thing about the spading fork is that it's quiet so that you avoid all that noise of machines and instead, enjoy the sounds of nature.

I'm not much of a fan of mulch in that I have found that the rhizomes of some weeds don't have any trouble moving under mulch covering a 2 foot wide path and voles find mulch as very convenient cover. Darn it!

Steve

 

[Rillowen]

Good Morning, Welcome to TEG, Rillowen.

To be of some specific help with your questions, it would be best to know what you mean by large, in the ground organic gardens. Would 7000 square feet be a large garden, or how about 700 square feet.

I learned to dislike hoeing as a kid in the family garden. Only a small amount of tolerance has developed over the years. I'm okay with sitting around in the garden. Small hand tools and that approach work quite well for weeding. Larger weed and cultivation jobs — a spading fork with following work using a long handle, 4-prong cultivator work well.

Very many square feet requires hours of hand work or machinery. One thing that can be done is to limit the square feet by having permanent paths. Putting the garden in beds is an approach to making good use of ground for gardening and keeping foot traffic off of it. One doesn't have to use careful arrangements of plants within the beds although that makes sense for optimizing limited garden space.

The spading fork does the job with cultivation and it can be deeper than any rototiller that I have made use of. Patience with having something like 8-10 inches of depth may be a good idea — a couple of years of gardening, adding organic matter and keeping traffic off those beds should do it . One additional thing about the spading fork is that it's quiet so that you avoid all that noise of machines and instead, enjoy the sounds of nature.

I'm not much of a fan of mulch in that I have found that the rhizomes of some weeds don't have any trouble moving under mulch covering a 2 foot wide path and voles find mulch as very convenient cover. Darn it!

Steve

Yes the voles and Johnson grass have been a pain!!
I guess "large" is a pretty relative term!

My garden im attempting is about 750sq ft. We have room for a bigger one (and could use the produce!), but i need to get the hang of managment+ life first!

Last year the voles stole almost all of my tomatoes, peppers, and melons. The only things they left were the okra, cucumbers and butternut squash, which i got a huge abundance of. (Over 400lbs of squash! )

The weeds were terrible, I have 5 kids i homeschool, I can't be out there constantly and dont have the money for sterile soil and raised beds, or heavy machinery. I'm trying a cardboard over tilled ground covered in mulch approach this year. I dont quite have enough cardboard though, so I will have garden fabric down for some parts, only covered in a light layer of mulch so weeds can't just grow on top. I have been worried this will just boost the voles though.

 

[Rillowen]

I tried putting out mass amounts of baking soda and cornmeal bait several times a month ago, when I finally realized they weren't packrats. They seemed to love it and ate it all up... but im not sure if it actually killed them. They got quiet for a bit, but there is more activity now. I'll try putting out more. I have chickens that free range and a small animal eating dog, so traditional poisonbisnt an option. Our yard is riddled with holes! I guess all my melons really boosted the population last year.