To Dig Or Not To Dig - Tiny Farm Large Life
March -2020
It's been a while since I posted my updates. A lot has been on, on the farm but progress has been slow.
We were also trying to get our container house up, which went through its own cycle of ups and downs. I'll cover that in another post
I have been reading and learning a lot about #notill beds and #nodig beds and so I wanted to try it out. Our land hasn't been tilled for years and while it's fertile it has a rocky touch to it. So as a first timer we had to dig the major part of the land. I still retained a part of it since inquisitive me wanted to try out raised beds to grow some of the vegetables.
I got some good organic compost and started on with two beds two begin with. The progress can be seen through the images shared below.
My red lady papaya plants seem to have grown a bit and are happy with the sunshine.
To start with I dug a tiny bit into the hard ground which I think was of no use finally, then laid out a layer of cardboard. Wetted the cardboard a bit before laying out a layer of compost. This was followed by a layer of dry leaves and then a layer of soil.
I still haven't been able to get the edges of the raised bed done as I have hardly been able to come to the farm in the last couple of months.
I just managed to get it done for one small bed in which I planted some spinach seedlings.
For the rest of the farm, we did a regular tractor tilling, leveling and smoothing before we laid out the pipes for drip irrigation.
To help improve the soil quality we got in a cartload of chicken poop manure, along with neem cakes and bone meal. With the first phase of nourishing the land done, we will not get on to making the beds before laying out the mulching sheets.
More coming up in my next post.
March -2020
It's been a while since I posted my updates. A lot has been on, on the farm but progress has been slow.
We were also trying to get our container house up, which went through its own cycle of ups and downs. I'll cover that in another post
I have been reading and learning a lot about #notill beds and #nodig beds and so I wanted to try it out. Our land hasn't been tilled for years and while it's fertile it has a rocky touch to it. So as a first timer we had to dig the major part of the land. I still retained a part of it since inquisitive me wanted to try out raised beds to grow some of the vegetables.
I got some good organic compost and started on with two beds two begin with. The progress can be seen through the images shared below.
My red lady papaya plants seem to have grown a bit and are happy with the sunshine.
To start with I dug a tiny bit into the hard ground which I think was of no use finally, then laid out a layer of cardboard. Wetted the cardboard a bit before laying out a layer of compost. This was followed by a layer of dry leaves and then a layer of soil.
I still haven't been able to get the edges of the raised bed done as I have hardly been able to come to the farm in the last couple of months.
I just managed to get it done for one small bed in which I planted some spinach seedlings.
For the rest of the farm, we did a regular tractor tilling, leveling and smoothing before we laid out the pipes for drip irrigation.
To help improve the soil quality we got in a cartload of chicken poop manure, along with neem cakes and bone meal. With the first phase of nourishing the land done, we will not get on to making the beds before laying out the mulching sheets.
More coming up in my next post.
