Interesting Practice Of Using Square Beds

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Natural farming reduces labor costs and makes plant maintenance easier

I again decided to take part in the competition, although the past summer was really not easy, and for me personally, not only due to weather conditions - in early August, as they say, "out of the blue" I had a heart attack, for a month and a half my dacha was without mistress (or am I without her?); at the first moment I generally thought that I would have to say goodbye to all this.

But together with the return of health, my thoughts began to change, I began to think how to get out of this situation with the least losses. And then I realized that my dacha "survived" in these conditions largely because I also have my secrets, I try to test everything new and interesting on my site and follow the principles of natural farming.

Firstly, I have not been digging my garden for a long time, either in spring or in autumn, and I am convinced that there are less and less weeds. An irreplaceable tool, my friend and helper, is the Fokin plane cutter. And, of course, in order for the earth to be loose in spring, it is imperative to cover it in autumn with any plant residues, you can even use some materials like cardboard. In the spring you only wonder how easily the flat cutter copes with loosening.

Secondly, everything grows on the ridges, including potatoes. In our rainy summer, it was very handy - the neighbors complained that they had a lot of rotten tubers, and I had a good harvest, almost no waste, and this despite the fact that it had to be harvested in early October, by the way, and it is stored well too …

I also have my own approach to potatoes: when it just starts to sprout, I fall asleep the shoots that have appeared "headlong" and no longer spud it (I once read it from Mittlider and checked experimentally that there are almost no small tubers), then, when flowering begins, I cut off the buds so that he does not waste his energy on it. When landing on ridges, it is convenient to do this, and there is also a constant opportunity to change plantings in places, maybe because the Colorado potato beetle does not visit us. Of course, I follow the seed material: I lay the tubers for planting from the most productive nests, I try to update the varieties, before planting I process the tubers in nutrient and disinfectant solutions.

I would like the garden not only to yield crops, but to look beautiful. I gave up the dull long ridges when I read an article in one of the magazines "This extraordinary square", where, on the advice of M. Bartholomew, an American scientist and practitioner, it is proposed to plant vegetables in combined species on square ridges (approximately 120x120 cm). It is assumed that the seeds are used more economically, the lighting of the plants is better, and it is more convenient and easier to care for them.

For objective reasons, I have not yet been able to fully verify everything, but I liked the idea itself, it is really convenient and beautiful, and if you add calendula and marigolds here and there, their smell will scare off pests. Sometimes plants help each other, for example, onions and carrots planted together.

The photographs that I am attaching as an illustration of my story about square beds, I took at the beginning of summer, then I poured sawdust into the furrows - weeds do not grow, and by next spring they will turn over, they can be mixed with the soil on the ridges. In general, I still have a lot of work to do with the land, it is not yet loose and fertile enough.

Pensioners are economical people, maybe that's why we try not to miss reasonable advice. Some of the summer residents complained that we throw a lot of useful things into the trash cans at home. I tried drying vegetables, fruits, and tea brewing on batteries and was very surprised how much we even use tea a year, not to mention the rest. Now all this goes to my dacha in a dry form - it's not burdensome, but the benefits are obvious. I put the dried waste in the holes when planting tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and use the tea leaves as one of the components of the soil for seedlings. I put layers of forest soil, sawdust treated with urea, sand, dried tea leaves; I sprinkle everything with ash and leave it to perek until autumn, then sift it through a large sieve and keep it in small bags on the veranda, it freezes, then I bring it home a little.

The tomato harvest in the greenhouse was good, despite the fact that in the spring they endured stress during the prolonged cold and frost and for a long time "came to their senses", only there was no one to take them off. And when the children brought me literally for an hour to the dacha between the hospital and the sanatorium, I saw that the branches broke under the weight of large fruits, I had to urgently remove and distribute the harvest, I had no time for harvesting. I was glad that, despite the excess moisture, they did not turn black. They say that the neighbors, seeing this neglect, worried that my harvest would be lost.

The black-fruited raspberry endured the rainy weather well, I love it not only for its peculiar taste, but also for the fact that it looks very picturesque during the ripening of berries: they are both red and black. And she also does not have overgrowth, she reproduces with the help of the ends of the branches lowered to the ground, and the berries do not turn limp and worm even in the rain.

In the fall, of course, I did almost nothing at the dacha, but I covered roses and other heat-loving plants, I also threw tops of tops on the beds. Now I'm waiting for the start of the season, strengthening my health and hope that the summer will be good for us, gardeners and summer residents.