Buffer Zones
Removing the Vegetation
Hoe Farming Poor Soil
Animals
Buffer Zones
In one of your books it is mentioned that you use some of your most recently acquired land as a sort of “buffer” towards the neighbouring farmland that is exposed to the conventional use of artificial fertiliser, herbicides, pesticides etc. We have the farmer on three sides of our land, using the same way of farming, so I was really curious about how we could try to replicate your thought of a buffer protecting our garden.
I was considering establish banks on all three sides (against the conventional farmland) and plant trees and shrubs on the bank. My initial thought was to establish a lot of willow. We could then leave a strip of land inside of the bank as grass. Then again establish banks around smaller fields, as you.
Are you using the grass harvest from this “buffer area” as mulch/fertiliser in your food fields? It is a lot of productive land, and the grass growing here could theoretically provide a lot of mulch. Do you use it, or keep it in the buffer zone?
Ole Pedersen, Bourgogne, France
We do use the grass from our buffer fields as mulch, and make compost with it.
We are lucky in that we have banks (about 1 – 2m high) between us and our farming neighbours, with trees on top. This reduces the amount of spray that drifts onto our land.
If there was no barrier, I would probably be more worried.
In general, it is not possible to keep any land completely free of all industrial chemicals – they are in the air, in the ground water, and in the rain – but one can try to minimise the amount. Also, we are growing crops on soil that is depleted after many years of intensive farming activity, so it is essential that we bring in organic material from somewhere; our buffer fields seem like the best source: we know that they have not been directly treated with chemicals, and, being adjacent to the crop fields, they form part of the same ecosystem. In time, I hope that our crop-growing areas will become fertile enough to be almost autonomous and not need much added compost or mulch. We would then have to rethink our plans for the buffer fields. GL
Removing the Vegetation
Just wondering, when you are hoeing a new field, do you remove the vegetation as you go? I’m thinking that if I don’t it’s going to re-root and try to re-establish itself.
Kerry Brown, USA
Its best to cut the field, and remove the vegetation, before you start hoeing, but, if you can plan ahead, you don’t have to remove too much of the clumps of grass roots, etc.
For instance, you can hoe the field in the autumn, and then hoe it again in the New Year or early Spring, taking care to break up the clumps of grass; you can then hoe it again a couple of months later, by then; most of the vegetation will have disappeared. This works really well for potatoes. You can remove anyl large clumps of grass that have survived, before sowing.
The same system works for planting spring-sown cereals, beans, and buckwheat. If you have hoed the ground early in the year, and then go over it again in hot, dry weather, the weeds shrivel up.
If you are trying to start a vegetable garden, you might have to take more care to remove the vegetation – you can pile it up and make it into compost. If you have more time, you can stifle the vegetation with mulch, before the first hoe.
Generally, it is best to not be too ambitious. Start with a small area the first year, and cut the rest for mulch.
Hoe Farming poor soil
My uncle and I both just finished reading your hoe farming book. We noticed that you mentioned multiple times that you suggest starting with potatoes when trying to get a neglected and abused plot with poor soils into shape to start hoe farming. We were just wondering what growing potatoes does for the soil or for the plot. Thank you for your time and for the wonderful book.
Jason Loehr, South Carolina, United States
Our land was used to grow cereals for cattle food before we bought it. It is devoid of organic material, and is compacted, and now also has a range of grasses and weeds growing on it. Our method of planting potatoes involves cutting the grass with a scythe, and making trenches with a hoe or with a garden fork.
We then put compost or semi-rotted grass mulch in the trench, put the potatoes on top of the mulch, and cover them over by bashing the tussocks of grass with a hoe. Alternatively, the tussocks of grass can be lifted off and piled up beside the patch. They can be added back to the patch when they have rotted down. This makes it easier to cover the potatoes in the trenches with soil, working with a hoe.
As soon as the potatoes come up, we start earthing them up – once again hitting the grass and lumps of soil with the hoe.
If all goes well, the potato plants grow, shading out all the annual weeds, and the repeated earthing up kills the grass and perrenial weeds.
We dig up the potatoes when the tops die back, and have found the soil to be in much better condition than after other crops, particularly on new ground. The repeated working of the soil, combined with the action of the potato plants themselves helps to de-compact the soil, the weeds are smothered out, and the organic matter in the trenches is absorbed into the soil.
It sounds like a lot of work, but the work is self-regulating. If you are young and fit, you might hoe a large area, and plant a lot of potatoes, if you are older, you may restrict yourself to a smaller area. In either event, you should be able to weed, earth-up, and harvest the area that you plant.
I don’t know if it would work for you in your area, but here potatoes have proved to be a useful part of the rotation as we work to improve the quality of our soil. GL.
Animals
Why do you not keep animals on the farm (like chickens or ducks)?They can be very helpful additions, helping improve grass and soil quality, not to mention eggs.
Ieva Bivainiai, Lithuania
Part of the reason is that we do not have a reliable surplus of grain – and it would defeat the purpose if we had to buy food to feed animals. Also, animals are time consuming, and our aim is to be able to have a balance between the work we do in the garden, and the outside work that we do to earn a little money, and have a wider impact.
Hoe Farming vs no-dig
In our countrytry we had one small scale farmer Saulius Jasonius, who was the first one to popularize Natural Agriculture in Lithuania, as he called it. He (and many others) claim that any tillage, even as mild as hoeing, is inherently harmful to soil life and therefore unsustainable in the long term (the very very long term).
Ieva Bivainiai, Lithuania
I am not familiar with Saulius Jasonius, but the thing about natural farming is that you have to adapt to local conditions (perhaps even farming differently in different fields) so it could be that his advice is more relevant to you than my experiences here in Brittany.
I am not as extreme as some people about soil disturbance. I don’t like tractor-driven ploughs, or other petrol-driven machines, and am not convinced about animal traction, but think that when you do the work yourself, you are still in the bounds of what is natural. Also, my view is that people have to work out for themselves what constitutes a good diet for their own particular circumstances, and if they can supply themselves with that through the work that they do on their own land, then that is exemplary. GL.
Children and Hoe-Farming
I could not agree more that children on the farm should be as natural as birds. However, in the book there was little practical advice as for very small children, babies who need a lot of attention. Now, when most families live just father, mother and their children it is very hard. So if you have any practical tips with very small babies, I could really use them.
Our society does not value the transmission of knowlege, and does not understand the nature of caring. Parents get discouraged, and then tell new parents that it is not worth making the effort. And the world gets a little bit worse.
Ieva Bivainiai, Lithuania
In such dire circumstances, you have to go back to basics. You have to prioritise your children, even if that means that you don’t have time for other things that you consider to be important – such as the garden, or making money. You also have to treat your children with respect, right from the beginning, so if your baby is telling you that it needs to be carried, for example, you have to carry it. When they are older, you have to respect the decisions that your children make. The better the relationship they have with you, the more they will take your views into account, but your goal is to help them to get to a point in life where they can make good decisions for themselves. GL.
What is the average size of your fields?
The average size of our fields is about 500 square metres, some are bigger, some are smaller. The basic idea was that we could have a single crop in each field. For some crops, such as potatoes, one field would be enough, for others, such as rye, we might have two or three. In practice it doesn’t always work out so neatly. GL.
Is Hoe-Farming easy?
The one thing I truly don’t understand is how you can say that farming is easy. I find it quite challenging, which in a way, is also part of its appeal. Maybe because I’m rather new to it, while you have established routines that work for you.
Lies Wesseling, Netherlands
Perhaps I should not say that farming is easy, but that, for me at least, it is relatively easy when compared to having to earn money in order to get what one needs. GL.
Will cutting grass deplete my soil ?
I rent a parcel of land that has been cut for hay for many years. The hay was sold, and no manure was applied to the land. The soil is now so exhausted that it is no longer worth cutting it for hay. Since last year, the parcel has been used for pasture, and, as a result, its fertility seems to be getting better, little by little (the animals deposit their manure on the land, and thus return most of what they take out).
Have you noticed the same process on the fields that you scythe to supply your vegetable garden?
E. Paniez, France
This is a subject that is deserving of a lot more attention. You can take a certain amount off the land each year, and it will still maintain, or increase, its fertility – but how much? If you take too much, you enter into a downward spiral of declining fertility (which is the situation that global agriculture now finds itself in).
We have two different areas that we cut with a scythe.
One is a series of water meadows that have never been farmed very intensively. We have cut these once or twice a year for over twenty years, and the yield is always about the same. We are now experimenting with channeling the water, as in the old days, to see if we can encourage more Spring growth.
The other area was previously a cereal field, and the ground was completely exhausted. We have cut most of this area each year, for the past twelve years. So far, the yield has increased each year. Different grasses are becoming established, and a more healthy range of other plants (not just weeds that survived from the cereal days). We have made banks and planted them with trees, which, I think, has helped. We see more insects in the fields, and birds are starting to make nests in the trees, so I think that things are going in the right direction.
Having said all that, however, we let very, very little produce leave our land – so the overall fertility of the garden is bound to go up. People ask if this is a feasible model for feeding everyone in the world, but our civilisation has shown itself to be incapable of managing any sort of agricultural system that does not exhaust the soil’s fertility, so a return to subsistence gardening is the only viable option that I am aware of! GL.
Weed seeds in grass compost
Isn’t using hay as mulch/compost a problem regarding seeding weeds in your vegetable patch? Or do you hot compost / cut grass before seed develops?
F. Curti, Italy
I don’t aim to get my compost heaps hot enough to kill all the weed seeds. It might happen sometimes, but not consistently.
We cut mulch in our grass fields, and use it on our cereal fields. Generally, the weeds that are a problem in the cereal fields do not grow in the grass fields, and the plants that grow in the grass fields do not grow in the cereal fields – annuals grow in the cereal fields, and perennials in the grass fields.
In the vegetable garden, we try to pull up the weeds before they flower, and then we try to compost them as well as possible, turning the heap two or three times.
We have to do a lot of weeding in the vegetable garden, particularly when the seedlings first come up. (I don’t really know where all the weed seeds come from.) GL
How you manage soil fertility?
I’d like to know how you manage fertility in your fields. I’ve seen that you cover the fields with straw, use compost and hoe, but in which period you do these things?
F. Curti, Italy
In total, we have about 3 hectares of land; less than half a hectare is cultivated for crops. The rest is divided into small fields (700 square metres) surrounded by trees.
We cut these fields with a scythe in the Summer or in the Autumn.
So far, the yield of grass, etc. has been going up each year, so it does not seem that an annual cut is reducing fertility. The reverse appears to be true, different plants are becoming established, some with deeper roots, there are more insects, more worms, more voles and moles, and one senses that the lack of soil disturbance, and the absence of compaction due to heavy grazing animals (apart from deer), or machines, means that the soil in these fields is slowly regaining its structire.
Material cut in the Summer is dried and made into a haystack, to be used as mulch later on; material cut in the Autumn is used as mulch straightaway.
Before we sow a crop, we remove the mulch and make it into a compost heap.
It seems as though we are heading towards having too much mulch and compost, but we have not got there yet; our crop fields are still quite depleted of organic matter, in spite of the fact that we have been adding large amounts of composted organic material to them for over ten years. GL
Farming 500 sqm plot on a 13º slope.
My question is regarding the planting of crops in said field. How much space should I leave between rows of the different kinds of plants, potatoes, grain, vegetables. Should it be enough to walk around in or should it be quite dense where it’s just to be left alone until everything is ripe? It’s a concern of mine to leave too much space since due to the small size of the plot I’d like it to be as productive as possible.
The other question is whether the rows should be placed with the slope or across it? I find it not very ergonomic to work and walk perpendicular to the slope.
M. Viana, Pico Island, Azores
I think that the answer to both questions is that you have to experiment, and work out what is best for you and your land.
500sqm is quite a large area if you do not have a lot of gardening experience; so you could start by just working part of it. You could also start by leaving enough space for you to be able to walk around and weed the crops, at least when they are young. I don’t know what weeds you have in your area, but here there are weeds that can completely overrun a crop if they have a chance to get established, reducing the harvest to zero. So, overall, my advice would be not to plant things too close together at first. It is also important to feed the soil, otherwise it will not be able to support your crops. Home-made compost is the best.
On the second point, people usually advise that rows should be placed across the slope, but, on the other hand, you probably want the sun to shine down the rows. I’m not sure how that works for you – you are a lot further south than us. If it feels better to you to work up the slope, that is what you should do. The main thing is to get started, and to then learn from your experience. GL