Re: Organizing the Work on the Weed Project
To Tony, Gil, Steve D., Frank, Lloyd Allan (from past posts) and others, Thank you for all your help with conceptualizing for our road IPM project. I'm going to call Brad, the Weed Supervisor, today and have a talk about this year's work. The help you have given me is invaluable. I have gathered all the posts on my word processor and will print them out to have them together. Best, Merla Rambler Flowers LTD wrote: Tony - Nice integration of BD preps with a mulching technique to achieve vegetation control, worm action, soil biology and a clean bed to transplant into. also getting the muck and magic benefits of the BD preps all at the same time. Steve Diver Thanks Steve the worm activity is amazing. I have been thinking of developing this further as i have a particularly dirty block that i want to plant into in about 18 months. After a soil test I am going to sheet compost with grasses, sawdust, lime , animal manure , Steve Storchs sequential spray programme using Glens Potentised preps and what ever organic fertilisers i need to balance the soil according to Albrecht and Reams ie 60-70% Calcium, 12%Magesium 3-5% Potash, 1-2% sodium aiming to achieve a CEC level of 25% and a pH of between 6-7, and then cover with weed mat until worms have done their magic.I will follow with a quick green crop and repeat as above missing out the soil test this will take 12 months to next autumn. Before it becomes too wet final raised beds will be set up . Aftera further check of nutrient levels, the beds will be mulched with compost and covered with weed mat, every 6-8 weeks weed mat will be removed for 10 days to encourage weed seed germination weed mat is then replaced until spring planting I will also be monitering brix pH and erg levels and making any adjustments as i see fit. The aim is have well balanced soil that is pest, disease and weed free for a crop of gentians that will be planted for 5-6 years. Thanks Steve for your inspirational reply it triggered off the above idea siutable for intensive cropping . The area covered will be 50 by 7 metres and will be planted with 2000 plants. I will also do a similar area next door with out the weed mat to compare results .
Re: Organizing the Work on the Weed Project | Weed Barrier extravaganza
Tony - That's a nice system you have in mind. It is practical, it integrates, and it links the fundamental practices of Steiner, Albrecht, and Reams along with your own farm-ready insight. One of your ideas is worth repeating. Let the weeds come up, then put them back down under the weed mat. Worms like to feed on decaying organic matter, they stir the soil, and they excrete their castings, soil-binding glues, and growth-promoting enzymes, nutrients, and bioactive substances. Weeds function like a cover crop. The roots and leaves provide living biomass; the rhizosphere and phyllosphere serve as a brief home for microorganisms, the weeds further the cycle of life, and then they decompose and release their plant-available nutrients and provide food and shelter for soil microorganisms. Yet, you create a clean and weed-free bed to raise your vegetables, flowers, and herbs. One of the remarkable aspects of the weed barrier method, is the realization that you are spending time enjoying the garden. walking around, smelling fragrant flowers, observing Nature, hand-picking a few bugs, harvesting and tending to your plants instead of dealing with weeds, weeds, and more weeds on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Once you plant your transplants into the weed barrier, you more or less just walk away. The BD preps have their work and their influence. How do I find out the details on Steve Storch's recipe for sequential spraying? There is a grower who used the weed barrier method in market farming with permanent raised beds, tractors, spading equipment, composting, BD preps, and the works. It seems to me worth repeating, it serves as an example of the weed barrier in action. Paul Sansone, a biodynamic flower grower in Oregon, used the DeWitt Pro-5 Weed Barrier on 5-15 acres of raised bed production. His farm has been featured in Growing for Market and one of the greenhouse trade magazines, like Greenhouse Grower. As I recall from the Growing for Market article: *Permanent raised beds *Tractor straddles the bed *Cover crop established in the fall *Mow and incorporate cover crop in spring *Tractor with fertilizer buggy straddles bed and lays down compost + organic fertilizer blend *Drip irrigation tape set out on bed *DeWitt Pro-5 Weed Barrier laid down and tucked in *Weed barrier has pre-burned holes for 6 and 12 transplant spacings, other spacings as neeed *Hand transplant and water in *Turn on drip irrigation *Watch plants grow, tend to plants, irrigate plants -- *But no fuss over weeds, mechanical cultivation, wheel hoes, or hand hoeing -- I'm not sure how the BD preps were integrated into the Sansone system, but you get the idea from the summary above how the sequence works. OrganicBoquet.com is Paul Sansone's web page OrganicBoquet.com http://www.organicbouquet.com/sansone.shtml Of particular interest is the sub-section on biodynamics Secular Biodynamics - Agriculture Beyond the Organic By Paul Sansone http://www.organicbouquet.com/biodynamics.shtml And further within... The Seven Essential Elements of the Biodynamic Method By Paul Sansone http://www.organicbouquet.com/biodynamics4.shtml Interestingly, Paul Sansone and Susan Vosburg have this website, Here Now Garden Here Now Garden http://www.hereandnowgarden.com/ Especially see Grower's Corner: Grower's Corner http://www.hereandnowgarden.com/growerscorner.html It has useful notes on BD practices for fungus and botrytis control, fertilization, soil and cover crops, tillage. . Perennial plants should be top dressed each spring with 1/4 - 1/2 of ripened Biodynamic compost. An organic plant food is banded into the bed under where the cut flower plants will be planted when the bed is being shaped or it is worked into each planting hole for the plants as they are being planted. This balanced plant food is 4 parts seed meal, 1 part rock phosphate, 1/2 part kelp, and 1 part greensand. The Green Beam website is the online gateway for Branch-Smith Publishing. Branch-Smith publishes Greenhouse Manager-Pro (GM-Pro), as well as Nursery Manager-Pro (NM-Pro) and related trade magazines. The following online article features Paul Sansone. The Dynamics of Biodynamic Growing: Lean how Here Now Garden Uses Sustainable Agriculture to Produce Fresh Cut Flowers http://www.greenbeam.com/features/tour062899.stm Now, I switch to the work of the late Dan Wofford who influenced me in relation to weed barrier production methods. It is a long story to relay all the integrated approaches we took in our various plantings: weed barrier, hydrogels, organic fertilizers, composts, mycorrhizae, special plug trays, Booth tube plugs, Chapin bucket irrigation kits (gravity-flow) in remote sites, etc. Allow me to post the library where Dan Wofford's work resides. HydroSource @ Castle International Resources http://www.hydrosource.com/ Library on
Re: Organizing the Work on the Weed Project | Weed Barrier extravaganza
How do I find out the details on Steve Storch's recipe for sequential spraying? Hi Steve Diver The following are post i have kept from S Storch, the one i used i have lost due to a computer failure. I have it on hard copy it should be in BDNOW archives as SFW Compost Tea for Fertility dated Wed Jan 16 2002 I am not as advanced as SS in prep making so i have adjusted the ingredients a little to what is available to me . All the evening sprays I add worm pee [aka Worm leachate] The worm farms get alll the BD preps and organic fertilisers, molasses etc this gives me a smell free material that i can safly use on flowers , since we pick 6 days a week this is an important factor. I start my spraying the week of full moon and spray every 2 months Cheers Tony R North American Barrel Compost Recipe 1. 501 2. Barrel Compost 3. 508 4. 505 5. horn clay 6. 500 7. 501 / 508 This is my spray sequence that I feel is most suitable for the North American continent. I start it off with a silica based barrel compost, I then proceed through the sprays asap, any questions??? This is a freebee that took me years to develope, use it or lose it. Stephen Storch In a message dated 6/2/01 7:36:08 AM, SBruno75 writes: From mid April to the third week in May we had zero rain. Our new planting of strawberries looked fantastic with no irrigation. Cloudy weather and rainy the last two weeks, a few sunny days. Our strawberries have ripened and we are already picking a week. Fantastic color, luster, and flavour. So good the birds risk stealing them from the trays at the back of the store. I spoke to a chemical farmer yesterday, they won't have strawberries for two more weeks. Do you think they will catch on??? spray program 1. My silica barrel compost recipe (previously posted)...sprayed end of March, mid April 2. followed by 501 - basalt spray 3. 500 first week of May 4. Silica bc - basalt - clay second week of May 5. 501- basalt - clay 6. pickin' strawberries, boy I wish you guys were here!!! 7. raining today, 501 - basalt spray this morning Try it. SStorch
Organizing the Work on the Weed Project
If you are trying to establish wildflowers, then you should think twice and then three times about the DeWitt Sunbelt Weed Barrier. As I said, I can guarantee that you will have a successful planting. Hi Merla I have been using this method of weed control for about 5 years. It has been especially effective on couch and grasses. I spray 500 and barrel compost before placing weed mat and sit back and wait for all the worms to gobble up the decaying green matter. After removing the weed mat I cover the ground with sawdust and plant up using plugs. I have also used black plastic sheeeting It is cheaper but does not last as long. Cheers Tony
Re: Organizing the Work on the Weed Project
Tony - Nice integration of BD preps with a mulching technique to achieve vegetation control, worm action, soil biology and a clean bed to transplant into. also getting the muck and magic benefits of the BD preps all at the same time. Steve Diver Rambler Flowers LTD wrote: If you are trying to establish wildflowers, then you should think twice and then three times about the DeWitt Sunbelt Weed Barrier. As I said, I can guarantee that you will have a successful planting. Hi Merla I have been using this method of weed control for about 5 years. It has been especially effective on couch and grasses. I spray 500 and barrel compost before placing weed mat and sit back and wait for all the worms to gobble up the decaying green matter. After removing the weed mat I cover the ground with sawdust and plant up using plugs. I have also used black plastic sheeeting It is cheaper but does not last as long. Cheers Tony
Re: Ramial Wood Chips, Paramagnetic Rock and Organizing the Work on the Weed Project
Steve, you're so nice to spend the time to do this. I will ponder. I can't imagine finding enough ramial wood chips in this land of fir, larch, pine, cedar hemlock. They cut the softwood and leave the hardwood--birch, alder, cottonwood and others. I just wanted to establish the benefits of hardwood chips. What I was looking at wood chips for was for a special area which is parking for The Falls, a place where you climb down stepping stones from the road level to a very turbulent rapids-like falls that goes into a pool. People often stop there and look and also fish. The edge of the parking area is a rampant common tansy bed. The Weed Supervisor has made noises about having a dump truck load of cedar chips put there. What I actually wanted to do was divide the area into at least two parts--one cedar and one ramial wood chips and watch it long term for growing something instead of tansy. I thought that the cedar area wouldn't grow anything at all and that the ramial chips would also kill the tansy, but would encourage mycorrhizal fungi and eventually grow local native forest plants, etc. This comparison might be valuable. I'm trying to teach the Weed Committee and our world here to think in terms of a forest community--plants and soil biota rather than only in terms of the absence of 'noxious' weeds mentality that leaves bare disturbed soil that will be even more weedy. We are going to do a weed education project with 4-H with a cash prize for the group that hands in the best weed herbarium. I'm trying to get them to have an alternate project on the soil food web. I probably wouldn't buy plant starts. I like to grow starts myself and I'm always transplanting 'weeds' from our garden to the road right-of-way, a mile and a half down the hill from our place where they have become a small native ornamental garden around a 'NO SPRAY' sign. I have $923 left in the cost-share grant this year. I have gathered native grass seeds from our meadow and looked into buying some mixed native grass seed which I would probably germinate in flats and plant out, especially since Idaho fescue is a spotty, slow germinator. Clover is a great germinator and drought survivor. In thinking about a county-wide, cost-effective IPM weed control strategy, I'm thinking about the addition of clover, microorganisms, micronutrients (on a gross scale--you can't test the soil every mile), then a very thick stand of low growing grass that won't need mowing at all and maybe sow some yarrow and Rocky Mountain penstemon seeds (They came up wild on my private right-of-way patch when I pulled out the knapweed over a long period of time. Now I have a strong stand of penstemon.) Our original vision statement said wildflowers, but this is so hard that I'm willing to settle just for grass, but I still dream of having wildflowers that come up all season. We are testing 20% vinegar this year and had good luck with urea on hawkweed. In the fall we laid out a test plot in a thick solid knapweed stand and hand dug up all the knapweed except the little rosettes and sprayed Bruce Tainio's micronutrients from a soil test + his microorganisms (very expensive) + his enzymes, then sowed clover seeds in that. It was late, but it was warmer a much longer time than usual after that. We had some snow, then rain. I'm very interested in how this looks this spring. It should be very dramatic. Our flame weeding is done with our own weed torch which is just a metal tube with a butterfly valve at the handle hooked to a propane tank in a back pack. It set tansy back, but didn't kill it all. Your DeWitt Sunbelt Weed Barrier sounds too expensive. The newspaper under the hardwood chips sounds excellent. Steve, I'm not above digging weeds in rainy weather. We do have to get rid of the weeds. This road and the whole area is glacial till. We have wind blown laos coming off western grain fields in eastern Washington. This was a forest next to an agricultural area. There used to be a railroad in here to take logs out, long, long ago. There were only several pioneering families living here with a short road. Now it's an 8-mile road that gets more primitive the farther in you go with 300 families. At the beginning are four ranches, then a bridge over a river, a wonderful store with laundromat and showers, followed by houses close to and facing the road, then we have private roads off the feeder road and people mostly living off road, but still some on the road. One old family that owns a whole section of land on the road are pro-chemical and they sprayed 2,4-D on their right-of-way, so we are truly IPM. We have three miles where the county ditched several years ago but didn't reseed. It's just sand with a few weeds starting. It's mostly open to the sun, but the couple of miles has forest right up to the road and is shady--bare on one side and with various mixtures of moss, kinnickinnick (bearberry), native grass mixed with tansy, knapweed,
