On Sat, 07 Jul 2012 12:46:20 -0700, Billy wrote:
In article ,
Kay Lancaster wrote:

I'm going to suggest this book for you, also:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rodales-Chem...sful/dp/087857
9516

Why? It's not because I'm an organic gardener (I'm not, I garden on the
LISA model, low input sustainable agriculture),

Maybe you could explain this, or recommend a site for a fuller
explanation. The best I've been able to find so far is
"the concepts of LISA range from organic farming at one end of the
spectrum to maximum economic returns on the other."
http://www.soil.ncsu.edu/publications/Soilfacts/AG-439-07_Archived/

It's a squishy concept. When it started out, the idea was really low input,
meaning you used what you had locally available, supplementing only with things
that were really needed that were produced elsewhere -- for instance, LISA
does not reject out of hand the use of a "chemical fertilizer" if that's the
best way to sustain yields in an area, and using an organic fertilizer might
mean trucking seaweed to the center of the continent. Nor are you automaticallycondemned to perdition for using herbicides or other pesticides thoughtfully
and selectively when that's about the only economically feasible solution. But
you try to avoid using more than is needed (a painted application of glyphosate,for instance, not a wholesale spraying) and only when it appears to be the
best solution. LISA gardening can be very high return -- for instance,
look at the SVGs in Niger and Senegal, feeding a family of 10 from 60 square
meters: http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/home/su...ens-africa.htm
http://www.theworld.org/2012/06/eco-farming-senegal/

Like organic gardening, you need to really understand what's going on
in your own little artifical ecosystem, and the better you understand,
the less energy you have to put into the system to get rewards out.

You'll have to admit that's a fairly loose definition. Most of the older
definitions I found look a lot like "organic gardening".

I suppose you could be doing ornamental gardening, then you could
include, "Maximizing the use of locally available plants and tree
species".

It is comforting that even as you say you eschew organic gardening per
se, you recommend an organic gardening book for guidance.

I fear I'm becoming even more confused.

'sok, I am often a bit baffled myself. Basically, I don't find some
things that the organic purists bemoan to be intrinsically evil. On the
other hand, I think most people shouldn't be issued anything more lethal
than a fly swatter. I do think the organic contingent has some very valid
points about soil fertility, understanding soil/water/plant/environment
interactions, and trying to leave the place a little better than you found
it.

I happen to like that particular book because I think it does do a good
job of explaining soil structure, fertility, pH, etc, and water management,
and it's pretty hard to hurt yourself with organic gardening techniques
(unless you do the old triple-dig ;-) ) And then it relates the needs of
the plants it talks about back to what you've learned about soil structure,
soil fertility, water utilization, etc. And does so in pretty much plain
English (or plain American English!). It's a good foundation book for
new gardeners, imo.

I consider "high management", where you use lots of inputs to maintain
a crop that wouldn't grow well naturally in the area -- golf greens in
S. California, for instance, rather foolish. You can do high management
organic gardening and it's still high management, which ultimately is not
really sustainable.

So here I sit in the middle of the road urging folks to substitute
knowledge for complete kits of instructions, blessed by whatever group
is promulgating them.

The conditions I meet here in Oregon are far different from those in my
native Iowa, and equally different from the chapparal of S. California.
Prescriptive gardening is more likely to be unsuccessful when it's not
developed for the area and conditions and applied with knowledge. And
since I'm a lazy gardener who'd rather read a book or journal than run
out every day to chop back the new growth on some awful perennial weed,
I tend to use what I know to control a particular weed.


you've gotten rid of one plant and started 50 more growing.

The real secret to weed control is to keep the soil covered with plants
you do want -- "canopy closure" in farming terms. If there's bare soil,
light
and water, you're going to have weeds.
Seems this could be addressed by mulch as well in Tref's allotment
portion.

I think I did in #2, below.



So here are your choices that I see at this time:

1) Wait till the weeds are growing well and nuke them with a non-specific
herbicide like glyphosate (Roundup). Since you've got a mixed bunch of
species,you'll probably have to repeat it several times over the course of
months.

2) Use a light occlusive mulch to smother the weeds for several months.
The above is the method that I use for kitchen gardening, but I never
uncover the soil, unless I'm broadcasting seeds. Otherwise, I use a
dweeble to punch holes in the mulch to put my seedlings into.
^^^^^^^ dibble? Or something else?

My initial layer is news print. and I wait 6 weeks for the paper to
breakdown a bit, because it will initially direct water away from where
you want it.

Do that around here and you've lost half the growing season.
You can do the same thing with cardboard, cut to size, then bent in half
lengthwise.

Or just plain plant-based mulch, though I never have enough. Stuff rots
too fast in our climate.

Mow as close as possible, then cover the soil with corrugated cardboard,
old carpet, or 15-30 thicknesses of newspaper or 6" of wood chips. Wait a
few months. Pull the mulch off, add some water and sunlight for a
couple of weeks to get things that survived growing again, and either
dig, re-mulch or nuke with herbicide. (This would be my choice... and I
might consider using a painted-on glyphosate application for certain
very difficult to control weeds,
I don't want to be a pest myself, but could you mention what weeds might
be of a magnitude of heartiness to require glyphosate?

Johnsongrass, yellow nutsedge, Striga asiatica, Equisetum arvense can all get
so far out of control that the only economically feasible method might be
an herbicide. In the case of Striga, the seeds are so small and the impact
so potentially devastating, I'm of the shoot first and ask questions later
school.


but I don't like wholesale spraying
(commonly known as "spray and pray".) This approach takes several
months to work, bringing you to the fall, which is a good time to plant
cool season grasses like Kentucky bluegrass or most of the fescues.
If you've used cardboard or newspaper, you can till that into the soil.
If you used wool carpet or wood chips, you can compost it and apply it later.
Do you recommend an initial vegetable garden tilling, or an annual
garden tilling?

Depends on where you're gardening, how you're gardening and what you're growing.
And if you need the exercise. I'm not a particular adherent to any one
school of gardening.

But since he's in a total renovation setting, being able to work the
mulch into the soil instead of having to find a home
for the old stinky carpet is a whole lot easier. The usual enemy of first
time gardeners is biting off a huge project and running out of energy.
My mental image of this fellow's land, at the moment, is lots of lumps and
bumps he's going to want to smooth out before seeding or sodding the lawn,
and most urban soils are pretty well compacted, though abundant nettles would
tend to say this soil isn't too badly compacted. Still, I think I'd probably
be out with the rototiller if I were doing something like this.


3) Go ahead and till now, raking up all vegetation as it comes up. This is
the hot part of the summer, and a lot of work, but if you need to get
your frustrations out, it might be a viable choice.
Or to give your ticky ticker that final shove it needs to go over the
edge.

I dunno which is worse... exertion during hot weather or letting the
frustrations build. g Back when I had a back worth mentioning, I
dug many a hole for destressing.

You'll need to do some
major weed control later, most likely. Plant a cover crop of some sort,
like buckwheat, to help suppress weed growth until you're ready to plant
the entire garden and lawn.

When you've got the weeds under control, chosen the lawn grass you want,
gotten the soil tested and decided how you're going to amend it (if at all),
then you're ready to plant. It's the least work to plant seeds (or sod) when
the conditions are best for that species to grow, and you'll get a lot
fewer weeds poking through the plants you want.

The key to having a nice looking garden or lawn that doesn't drive you nuts
with work and expense is to choose species that will do well under your
conditions. For instance, if you have kids or dogs, you're going to want
a sports-type turfgrass, not something fit for a putting green or a dainty
little moss garden -- you'd be constantly trying to repair the last two.
The more effort you put into it before you plant, the less effort you're
going
to need to put into it in the long haul.
Vegetable gardens (allotments) can be easy. Lawns, no so much.

I'm not sure I'd agree with that statement, particularly British lawns.
In the US we strive for the perfect monoculture of Kentucky bluegrass or
similar Eurasian weed, and go crazy if a little clover or the odd dandelion
creep in.

British lawns, ime, tend to be more like a mowed (or besheeped)
version of Durer's Das Grosse Rasenstuck (please pardon the lack of umlauts):
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_gro...asenst%C3%BCck

Some of the tree plantations, on the other hand, are as precisely lined up as
headstones in a military cemetary.


Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture
by Toby Hemenway
http://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-S...culture/dp/160
3580298/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271266976&sr=1-1

p.26
Our love of tidy, but not very diverse yards is
imprinted on us by our culture. The immaculate
lawn, under siege from ecological writers every-
where, developed in the mild and evenly moist
climate of Great Britain. Its implications are deeply
woven into our psyche. A lawn in preindustrial
times trumpeted to all that the owner possessed
enough wealth to use some land for sheer orna-
ment, instead of planting all of it to food crops.
And close-mowed grass proclaimed affluence, too:
a herd of sheep large enough to crop the lawn
uniformly short. These indicators of status whis-
per to us down the centuries. By consciously recog-
nizing the influence of this history, we can free
ourselves of it and let go of the reflexive impulse to
roll sod over the entire landscape.

But when I've walked some of the old British lawns -- even
in places that "should" have been impeccably maintained, they
were far more diverse than the lawns we get shown in US ads.

And lawns can serve important purposes in human ecology also;
in areas prone to forest fires, a good sized firebreak can
stop, or at least slow, a wildfire.


Our addiction to impeccable lawns and soldier
rows of vegetables and flowers is counter to the
tendency of nature and guarantees us constant
WORK. But we don't need to wield trowel, and herbi-
cide with resentment in an eternal war against the
exuberant appetite of chicory and wild lettuce for
fresh-bared soil. Instead we can create conditions
that encourage the plants we want and let nature do
the work.


Yup, and that's pretty much the way I do "lawn". I have the
additional parameter that we've got a septic system, and lawn
is about all you want to plant over a septic drainfield.

But learning to "lawn" with minimal work for maximum effort requires you
to learn about how plants grow and why they grow, and why they grow where
they do. With spray and pray, you just need to know how to read the bottle
and the phone number for poison control.


In the US, we have an organization in most states called "Master Gardeners",
who are volunteers that are trained in a variety of gardening techniques
and knowledgeable about most common aspects of gardening (and sometimes some
really esoteric stuff, too.) These people are available for consultation on
a variety of gardening problems.

Or as "The Cook" keeps telling us
http://www.csrees.usda.gov/Extension/index.html

You might try to find out if there's a
similar network in the UK. Otherwise, hunt out the best garden centers
you can find and ask for advice and for help identifying your weeds. Or
hire someone knowledgeable on local conditions to help you figure out a plan
of attack that suits both the available energy and cash you can apply to this
set of problems.

Kay

Tref_30, you may want to give
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxsPfeSRIFo&feature=relmfu
a look as well. I think it would fit Kay's definition of LISA gardening,
if not, I expect I'll be hearing about it ;O)

Yeah, it's well within what I'd consider to be LISA.