Working With The Ground, Creating The Perfect Site

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

An oasis in a swamp land, part 1

Our club "Usadebka", in addition to lectures on gardening, fruit growing and floriculture, every season organizes trips to such country and garden plots, where there is something to learn. In August last year, club members went to visit the famous Romanov family in St. Petersburg.

Those who are seriously engaged in gardening know Boris Petrovich and Galina Prokopyevna well from their publications in St. Petersburg magazines, including the Flora Price magazine. They also visited our club: they gave a lecture on the cultivation of watermelons and melons near St. Petersburg.

The site of the Romanov family is located near Kolpino, in an old vegetable gardening. On the way from the stop on the highway to their acres, I noticed that it was a swampy lowland, there was water almost everywhere, reeds and cattails grew on abandoned areas. And this is even before the seasonal rains!

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And therefore, our great surprise was understandable at all that we saw in the garden of this family. I want to say right away to those who are engaged in original design solutions - they are not there! There are no fashionable crushed stone dumps, boulders, collection conifers, rare ornamental plants. However, a large film pool for bathing, made by the owner with his own hand, greatly adorns the site and, apparently, saves in the heat.

The Romanovs don't even have electricity. And as it turned out later, the land, which had been cultivated for so long and diligently by the owners, did not even belong to them. Moreover, at the end of the lease they are going to take it away from them. The 27-year-old labor of people who turned this piece of swampy land into a piece of paradise where organic vegetables are grown in the literal sense, the variety of which is amazing, as well as huge - up to 20 kg or more watermelons, melons - all this can go under the knife of a bulldozer! Do we really care again ?!

The experience of the Romanov family is unique. Although they do not have a special agricultural education, the results they have achieved are worthy of the most careful study and application. Boris Petrovich is a philosopher (he says so about himself). And his reflections on life and work on earth are really worthy of attention. It is noteworthy that he and his wife began to develop the site late, when he was already about forty years old. There was no experience, I read a lot, experimented a lot.

For 27 years, more than thirty greenhouses on the site have been tried in different versions. And the search, he said, is not yet complete. The most important task that he set for himself is the creation of soil. Let me remind you that they actually got the plot in a swampy area. For him, soil is the basis of everything. Soil with a high humus content to obtain record yields, and finally, a soil that has not been fertilized for the past five years.

Boris Petrovich successfully solved this problem. Since the site was very damp, in the beginning the water and cold coming from the ground made farming impossible. I had to lift and build up the soil. Wood chips were laid in tons. Boxes of boards were placed on it, into which weeds, hay, and manure were stacked in layers. We started with six acres. Now there are 18 of them. The number of boxes has been increasing every year.

New high ridges appeared for heat-loving pumpkin crops, which provided plants with warmth from the beginning of May until the end of the season in September-October. The agricultural technology of each crop in the garden, be it cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, pumpkin, potatoes, was worked out carefully, without haste, brought to perfection, until record harvests were obtained.

So, Boris Petrovich proved that in the open field from two cucumber plants on a warm ridge, you can get a yield of more than a centner. The same technology was applied to melon crops (watermelon, melon). The results exceeded all expectations.

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In the course of the development of the site, its own soil rotation system was developed. Since the presence of large greenhouses implies the release of "extra land" at the end of the season and taking it out to the garden, then the existence of this garden is completely justified, moreover, it is simply necessary.

The land obtained as a result of rotting weeds, hay, manure, i.e. high-quality humus, has been used more than once in the general soil rotation system. Now a layer of loose, fertile, self-sufficient soil has formed on the site with a layer of two shovel bayonets. But as before, maintaining and replenishing the fertility of this soil on the site is the main task of the owners, and record yields are a consequence of this approach. The Romanovs do not seek to plant many plants. Large yields are obtained from a small area, and this is especially valuable. Why develop a lot of land, when from one box measuring 1x1x1 m you can get up to 40 pieces of beautiful melons!

The plot of this family made a huge impression on all of us. At the entrance was a bean arch. Around the house there is a myriad of flowers and ornamental plants: lilies, astilbe, daylilies, annuals, carefully grown by Galina Prokopyevna from seedlings. I was amazed at the variety of their assortment, I heard many names for the first time. The garden was full of colors - bright, cheerful.

On the south side of the house there are clematis and grapes (a new hobby of the owners). Then we walked around the garden for a long time, gasped and groaned, seeing pumpkins of unprecedented size, shape and beauty, wonderful leeks, corn, celery, a huge number of melons and watermelons, which were everywhere: on the street, in greenhouses, in a gazebo near the house … Large fruits lay on the shelves and waited in the wings.

All of us were amazed by the greenhouses that were not thoroughly made (they often change their place in the garden): with holes in the sides, but in them, in spite of all the winds, ripe tomatoes, many tomatoes, a wide variety - large, small (cherry), red, yellow, orange - in huge tassels and with clean beautiful tops. And also peppers, eggplants, physalis.

Such a result, in our opinion, could only be achieved by a true master! Then we all sat at a table in a gazebo, which Boris Petrovich specially built after there were a lot of guests in his garden. We ate juicy peppers and sweet sugary tomatoes, discussed varieties. Boris Petrovich brought a large watermelon and cut it open. The fruit turned out to be so sweet that it seemed to us all tastier than all those sold in the city of Astrakhan.

We said goodbye. The owner went to see him off to the bus stop. We talked about sad things. The enormous labor invested in the land, and, most importantly, the unique 27-year experience is not very interesting for our officials. There is no response to Boris Petrovich's proposal to organize an experimental mechanized farm, where ecologically clean, beautiful and tasty vegetables would be grown. Although there is a response! The earth would be left to these hardworking people - and thanks for that! A grandson is growing up who could continue the work of the Romanov family. After all, only this approach brings up a real owner, and, therefore, a respectful attitude to the land.

We, all listeners of our Usadebka club, wish Boris Petrovich and Galina Prokopyevna good health, new creative successes and, most importantly, a successful resolution of all those sore problems that are of concern today not only to our hospitable hosts, but to all of us.

Read the next part. Creation of soil with a high humus content →