Organic gardening 2025

akroberts · Dec 3, 2024

I have been gardening for a while now but it seems like not everything I do works so this year I am going to be doing organic gardening with the hugelkultre system. I already have 2 really nice metal raised beds and I have a lot of pallets to make more. My hope for this years garden is to stop buying the toxic chemicals that is put into almost everything we buy at the store. I also have a bunch of pots for some of the food I want to grow. I will post pictures as soon as I can get some help with making the pallet beds and getting the tilling done to be able to set up the garden.

ducks4you · Dec 3, 2024

Watch out for Deep tilling bc it brings up weed seeds that can survive buried for decades, sometimes over 100 years!

You will just have to keep up on the weeding.
Bravo on the "no chemicals"!
@heirloomgal and I were just discussing how we have forGOTTEN to spray, so we can virtue signal that we don't use any! :lol:

I think if you avoid using certain herbicides like Roundup, you can find some others and use them judiciously, like using a paintbrush on weeds growing in amongst your preferred plants.
I do not and WILL NOT use any pesticides beyond the wasp spray that I had to use last summer when a bunch of wasps decided to build a nest right at the bottom of my house siding and close to my water faucets.
It used to be that we would drive out in the country in the middle of the summer and have to scrape all of the insects off of our windshields. Doesn't happen anymore bc of Heavy farm pesticide use.
Insects are the bottom of our food chains.
And, of course YOU KNOW that weeds with roots will regrow in a compost pile, just like pumpkin seeds!
I don't throw much to feed the landfills, BUT, I do throw bindweed runners in the trash to try to control them.
I discovered that you smother bindweed for a season, too. I put an 8 ft x 18" board next to a small bed by the street that still has a bindweed problem, where I had inadvertently thrown pieces of bindweed and they took off in the lawn.
I killed those small bindweed off for a season.
I look forward to your 2025 gardening adventures!!! :hugs

R2elk · Dec 3, 2024

ducks4you said:
I do not and WILL NOT use any pesticides

I have bees so I avoid any chemical pesticides. My pesticide of choice is to set out praying mantis egg cases every spring.

akroberts · Dec 3, 2024

R2elk said:
I have bees so I avoid any chemical pesticides. My pesticide of choice is to set out praying mantis egg cases every spring.

We have a bunch of spiders, bees, praying mantis and lady bugs. I didn't use any chemicals in this years garden but nothing really produced very good so I need to get some serious work done to make next year be prolific and pretty. I'm also wanting to can a bunch of food for my kids to have. It would definitely be a money saver for everyone.

flowerbug · Dec 3, 2024

i have been able to mostly avoid sprays of any kind here for the past 20 years or so. if it comes down to bugs ruining crops or spraying i'll just plant other things as there are a lot of other garden plants that you can try out.

unfortunately Mom will still use sprays but i've told her that she better not be using them on or near the vegetable gardens.

and also unfortunately the farmers around us spray and it can drift in on the wind.

the good news is that the field to the south of us is no longer going to be farmed and so it is currently being replanted, but there is a good chance it will still have a lot of thistles in it and the only way to manage those is to spray selectively (i have been mowing one bad patch of thistles close to the ground for the past few years and that has done a good job in knocking those back but since this is a conservation easement the neighbor won't be able to mow it that often) we'll see how it goes. it can't be much worse than what we've been through...

hugelculture can work ok, but for deeper rooted plants you won't enjoy it at all. when i had extra organic materials i would bury them deep so they could rot in place and eventually if i needed something i could go back out and dig it up again and then mix it in. most of the time it just looked like well decomposed leaves. under clay it was sealed in so well that it would store the methane from the decomposition.

for pathways between raised beds i would use a few layers of cardboard and then put wood chips on top of that thick enough to keep it all covered and held down. also because of how various animals can dig into raised beds i'd use hardware cloth under them. it's a lot easier to do this before you fill the raised beds...

akroberts · Dec 3, 2024

flowerbug said:
i have been able to mostly avoid sprays of any kind here for the past 20 years or so. if it comes down to bugs ruining crops or spraying i'll just plant other things as there are a lot of other garden plants that you can try out.

unfortunately Mom will still use sprays but i've told her that she better not be using them on or near the vegetable gardens.

and also unfortunately the farmers around us spray and it can drift in on the wind.

the good news is that the field to the south of us is no longer going to be farmed and so it is currently being replanted, but there is a good chance it will still have a lot of thistles in it and the only way to manage those is to spray selectively (i have been mowing one bad patch of thistles close to the ground for the past few years and that has done a good job in knocking those back but since this is a conservation easement the neighbor won't be able to mow it that often) we'll see how it goes. it can't be much worse than what we've been through...

hugelculture can work ok, but for deeper rooted plants you won't enjoy it at all. when i had extra organic materials i would bury them deep so they could rot in place and eventually if i needed something i could go back out and dig it up again and then mix it in. most of the time it just looked like well decomposed leaves. under clay it was sealed in so well that it would store the methane from the decomposition.

for pathways between raised beds i would use a few layers of cardboard and then put wood chips on top of that thick enough to keep it all covered and held down. also because of how various animals can dig into raised beds i'd use hardware cloth under them. it's a lot easier to do this before you fill the raised beds...

I plan to put some hardware cloth or the extremely tough metal fence panels I found at The Home Depot. I have to use beds because my soil is almost like cement, rocky and it's been so over planted for I don't know how many years but it was a part of the Sacramento River at one time. Our house was built in 1948 so it's been pretty much neglected but I am going to stay positive for the garden working out next year because there's a lot of new things that I plan to implement for the garden. The chickens definitely will be able to access the garden area before planting just to get some good compost for it. I have a bunch of shredded paper, rabbit poop and bedding plus I will be using the kitchen scraps to build up the soil. I'm also going to go to a neighbors house and raid the eucalyptus debris because where I lived in the 90's my garden was put in the horse corral and the corn was so outrageous.

R2elk · Dec 3, 2024

akroberts said:
We have a bunch of spiders, bees, praying mantis and lady bugs. I didn't use any chemicals in this years garden but nothing really produced very good so I need to get some serious work done to make next year be prolific and pretty. I'm also wanting to can a bunch of food for my kids to have. It would definitely be a money saver for everyone.

The early part of the growing season did not go well here because of too cool of weather. Nothing I did or didn't do worked. Had far too much cloud cover too. Once the weather finally warmed up the garden did much better.

akroberts · Dec 3, 2024

R2elk said:
The early part of the growing season did not go well here because of too cool of weather. Nothing I did or didn't do worked. Had far too much cloud cover too. Once the weather finally warmed up the garden did much better.

The heatwave that went for about 3 weeks or more took a toll on the garden this year and it sucked but next year will be better.

baymule · Dec 3, 2024

Chickens make great compost! Put leaves in the coop and they will turn it into garden ready compost!

akroberts · Dec 3, 2024

baymule said:
Chickens make great compost! Put leaves in the coop and they will turn it into garden ready compost!

Yes but my husband has one mindset when it comes to yard work. Put it all on the burn pile. He's got a lot of intelligence but when it comes to recycling it's out the window. He's going to be gone till Thursday so I might go out and get most of the leaves off the pile and put it in the run for the girls to make compost for the garden

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