occultation vs solarization

It was fun to use, yet, obviously just a temporary fix. A $3/month subscription. When everything is planted you fill the bottom pocket with water through the tube stickiing out of the top. For example, when studying Astronomy, when we experience an eclipse and the moon is blocked from the sun that is occultation. You can work the seeds into the layer of compost without disturbing the soil, though in our experience this may result in uneven germination. Hey GGHD, they definitely kill the leaves and stems but many of them will grow back from the roots because the heat doesnt penetrate the soil much. It has given me some ideas to try and some to try another way than what Ive been doing. Thank you so much for this article! Solarize 4 weeks before planting, heavily mulch with compost, aggressively hand pull while the food is growing, and then plant clover on top. Soil Solarization. (I grew potatoes in homemade bags along the driveway fence. Keep layering nitrogen and carbon until you have at least 2 of material. Commercial zero turns are the worst, keep them away from your garden. I still cant believe that works but our friends and Back to Eden are much better farmers than I am. It also increases the workload overall. The process involves covering the ground with a transparent polyethylene cover to trap solar energy. On the surface, one might imagine that this is a good problem to have and in many ways it is. On the question and answer segment this week, the guys answer questions about what they learned from this growing season that they wouldnt like to do again and squash bug pressures during the Fall. If you hadnt mentioned both it would not have occurred to me. Solarization is better suited for quick turn arounds on individual beds between plantings. He lived in a subdivision and continued living there after many neighbors moved away which decreased his op-sec. Lambs Quarter was our main weed next to thistle. Ever since I was a child, I have loved to weed. I wont kid anyone, it is TIME INTENSIVE, LABOR INTENSIVE, and can be EXPENSIVE (relative to ones choice of bed materials). And they are higher, easier to reach. Back in the early 80s I was able to more than feed 10 people for 6 months with fresh vegetables from less than 400 square feet using a modified version of the Square Foot Gardening System. There is certainly a lot to find out about this subject. Mow with a bagger, do not throw the clippings into the beds. It was a successful experiment of possibilities. James Wesley, Rawles (JWR) is Founder and Senior Editor of SurvivalBlog, the original prepping /survival blog for when the Schumer Hits The Fan (SHTF). the location of our garden is in full view of the road and in years past weve had people stop and ask about the garden and what we did with all the garden produce, when we would tel them what we did with it , more than one would accuse us of hoarding, that we should give it to people who need it. In addition, there is a risk that during subsequent years of sheet composting you will develop intractable perennial weeds. I worked for a nursery for 3 months that year, and the owner let me use the farm pick-up truck to transport three FULL bed loads (springs bottomed out) of broken bags of peat moss, fertilizer, potting soil, etc that had accumulated over the course of a year that were just laying around. I ordered extra covers (the burlap is also your mulch) and I ordered a few that are organic. I do not use any other fertilizer than the compost that I make in my beds and the mulching which is must be constantly replaced as it becomes fertilizer. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Comparing Solarization and Occultation. My garden was 30 rows in a 40X50 plot. The information about using the heat from the Sun for killing the scourge of Nematodes is worth saving (at least in the memory bank). Reblogged this on The Conservation Connection and commented: Ads are what helps us bring you premium content. They are not cheap but they work great. Row by Row Episode 203: What You Need To Be Doing In The Garden Now, Row by Row Episode 202: Best Gardening Tips To Grow Lots Of Tomatoes, Row by Row Episode 201: The DOs and DONTs of Growing Corn, Row by Row Episode 200: How To Grow Sweet Potatoes, Row by Row Episode 199: Should You Be Using Drip Irrigation. To get the garden started, we scraped the surface grasses and weeds off and leveled the area using the loader and the tractor, then laid down the composted paper and the soil from the keyhole garden, layered cardboard on top of that, then covered it all with old hay a good foot deep. Please support this website by adding us to your whitelist in your ad blocker. I love all of the points youve made. ), As a note: SurvivalBlog does have a few articles about using Garden Grow Bags for plants. The sun heats the soil to temperatures that kill bacteria, fungi, insects, nematodes, mites, weeds, and weed seeds" (Masabni and Franco, 2016). As before, we rototilled, irrigated, and applied plastic. This time we included seven treatments: solarization for two, four, and six weeks; occultation for two, four, and six weeks; and a control. Organic matter in this field was 3.7%, which is more typical than in our first experiment. We measured weed emergence two weeks after plastic removal for each treatment, and found that solarization created a better (less weedy) stale seedbed than occultation for all treatment durations. Ultimately this project seeks to produce the information necessary regarding a crucial step in the Cover Crop-Based, Tarped, No-Till Management System (CCTNT) for farmers to fully evaluate the costs, benefits, and risks of making a transition to no-till and to hopefully advance the case that this management system can be both environmentally responsible and economically profitable.. . growfood.com and ldsprepper . I dont use herbicides in the garden but my neighbor does this for his grape field and it creates a moat where the rhizomes have a hard time crossing. Its also possible to poke a ~bunch of holes in plastic trash bags. The lazy demanding we give them everything! And dont hiss at me organic gardeners, but we are going to try spraying round-up at the fence line in a 2-3 ft band. If you grow it or raise it, they will come to take it. As to yields they are typically pretty good, but we have up and down years like we did when we used other methods. Our last frost date is 1April, so I am getting things started now. At the end of the season, I found huge colonies of worms, and worm tunnels created by the very large worms that were road ways for worms of all sizes, and likely full of worn castings and a healthy biosphere of bacteria. (the lake lots we have are an old dump) That cut down the amount of weeding, but all the seed that was on/in the soil still sprouted. Not having to bend over at age 29 was a convience. They sound like a good option for a person with limited space. Free Targets and Target Tracker Shooting Logs! Our mail forwarding address is: James Wesley, Rawles With an infestation of nematodes, much of the garden can be lost for a season or two. The guys also show off the different color Hoss Hats that we carry in Charcoal, Red, and Camo. Thanks again for your work/ article. Typically these techniques are used for smaller plots but have applicability in larger areas as well. My largest beds are also in view of the road, and I wish I had had your insight before making that choice. Of course, if they pay attention, I am sure they will notice the gates and walk right under them. The most popular of these no-till methods enrich the soil while providing weed suppression by blocking sunlight. By continuously mulching the weeds do not seem to get much of a start. In the first experiment, we rototilled, irrigated the soil, and applied solarization and occultation (securing plastic edges tightly by clipping them to metal pipe) for seven weeks starting in April of 2016. Two weeks after plastic removal in early June, we counted emerged weeds. There was significant weed emergence in control plots, but zero weed emergence following both solarization and occultation. COntainer gardening. Cardboard is very easy to source from appliance or grocery stores. They mostly use hardwoods which compost more quickly than pine, spruce, cedar, etc. I had my own copy of, He is also a retreat consultant specializing in off-grid living, rural relocation, and survival preparedness. With an infestation of nematodes, much of the garden can be lost for a season or two., There are parasitic wasps that address this: https://organiccontrol.com/beneficial-wasps/, https://extension.umd.edu/hgic/topics/parasitoid-wasps-hymenoptera, Then there is this: https://humagro.com/promax2020/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI08_auqPj7gIVCaGGCh3rRwjAEAMYAiAAEgJ1kvD_BwE, Parasitoid Wasps (Hymenoptera) Row by Row Episode 204: What Are Field Peas? https://earthbox.com/earthbox-container-gardening-system When I go into town in the fall, I pick up more than enough bags of leaves on the curb. Hi, Im curious what your treatment was for the control, besides tilling and irrigating. This project seeks to examine these strategies for their effects on the soil health and produce information that we can use to maximize the rehabilitation of the soils at Cedar Circle Farm. For plants like watermelons that grow best in a mound, Im not shy about pushing the dirt around, but I then place sheets of newspaper to cover the mound except where the seed was placed. Ive torched the thistles just as the seeds are opening up. Um, except for the 3:30am part. If sheet composting, I would still recommend periodic solarization after the organic matter has completely broken down to reduce the weed bed. As a religious comment: Something in people enjoy a 'Garden of Eden' type of greenery. The bucket is covered with a black plastic. The holes were large enough for my index finger to fit through. There are two forms of silage tarps that are used for solarization and occultation in the garden. Three 24s screwed down the center of the long side across the ends of the bed, and the cross braces; provided a 1 wide walkway to access the center of the bed. After listening to David Dubyne on Adapt 2030, Iceagefarmer and others, it is imperative we all start keeping every kind of food production as secret as possible. The main big/deep one, and several other smaller/shallower ones. It is the only method that has worked for me. I use a digging fork to get the roots of Bermuda grass and put them in the fire pit, never in the compost bin. Projects, This SARE Farmer Grant project proposal seeks funding to investigate the effects of different tarping techniques on soil health and the soil ecosystem. Since it is darker and colder now, I am going to keep it down until I am ready to plant in 3 months. Layer more carbon materials onto this layer. Surprisingly, more weeds emerged after four weeks of occultation than two weeks. We think this was because overall 2015 was a very dry summer, but there was abundant rainfall during the two weeks between removing plastic and counting weeds in the four week treatments, which likely encouraged weed germination. The fact that the solarization plots did NOT respond the same way to rain suggests that solarization may have impacted weed seeds in the seedbank more dramatically than occultation, likely through a combination of direct seed death, fatal germination, and forcing seeds into dormancy. There are people out there who make it a point to pay attention to what you are doing. I had templates made up from Masonite with the Square Foot spacings-per-square-foot. A One-Time Donation (You choose the amount): A $5 Dollar bill, a 5 Euro bill, a few Pre-1965 silver dimes, or a booklet of Forever U.S. postage stamps sent in the mail also works! Solarization and occultation have provided a means of effective cover crop termination when paired with roller crimping, which has enabled no-till production at Cedar Circle Farm where we are in the process of transitioning to a no-till management system. If anyones tried it Id love to hear their results. And for the elderly or ill, these techniques do not require much physical labor besides bending over. Like many commenters here, my parents give away tons of produce to friends and family, and the rest they give to the local food bank.

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occultation vs solarization