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.

 

[flowerbug]

welcome to TEG from mid-Michigan.

i've found myself that it is much easier to have larger areas than many smaller areas to keep up. each edge and pathway is more work. i also like the freedom to rearrange the layouts in a larger space where in comparison to a smaller garden bed you may end up planting a lot of things in the same spots.

a stirrup, scraper or action hoe is what i use most of the time for larger empty spaces and for going up and down rows between plants and then for closer work i use a large knife.

to bury weeds that i know won't come back up i use a square bladed shovel. anything i suspect may try to regrow or has too many weed seeds i put on the weed pile to dry out or for the animals to pick at.

it may take several years to get the weed population down and you'll learn the rhythm of weeding you need to keep them from going to seed and making matters worse. cardboard smothering does work well but as soon as you disturb an area and leave any area open to the sky it will start to try to grow again. and like you've found it may encourage certain pests.

also i think that chickens will eat most garden plants so you probably don't want to let them roam through your gardens.

 

[digitS']

riddled with holes

Never "riddled" but the most effective approach that I have found for ridding a vole population from my gardens was running a small stream of water into a hole for 30 minutes, perhaps. Also, a conventional mouse trap has worked — baiting with a raisin and peanut butter.

I once had a female and a male cat. This was my first time for learning about voles and a heavy mulch. In that case, it was rain-spoiled alfalfa hay. When I discovered the vole problem, I began turning the flakes over one at a time. A vole raced out and the female cat grabbed it and carried it away. The next vole, the male cat caught and killed it. By that time, I had uncovered another of the rodents. He killed that 1 and stayed right beside me while I found several more. Yes, Ruben was quite the killing machine.

Here's something that was kinda funny that happened just yesterday. I was planting the potatoes. Up and down a path — I finally looked at the path and not just the bed. There was a vole, flat as a piece of paper. I must have stepped on it multiple times. What I figure is that 1 of the 2 tomcats that visit regularly killed that vole, didn't want to eat it and just left it in the path for me to step on it with my big, #13 clod hoppers.

Steve .