Understanding Plants
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Fertility
Most edible annual vegetables are heavy feeders and need a nutrient dense soil with a lot of organic matter to grow well and confer the benefits of that nutrient dense soil to you. This requires making compost to supplement the fertility of you garden beds. Other practices such as using the action of chickens to prepare a garden bed, remove pests and weeds and fertilise it with their manure are also highly beneficial. But if possible this should still be supplemented through addition of compost.
Time and availability of compost materials may mean that applications of compost are few and far between. In which case a small amount of compost can be made to go further through creating compost teas and using this to multiply the beneficial microbes in addition to creating a means of application to allow it to be spread more thinly.
Time and availability of compost materials may mean that applications of compost are few and far between. In which case a small amount of compost can be made to go further through creating compost teas and using this to multiply the beneficial microbes in addition to creating a means of application to allow it to be spread more thinly.
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Insect Pests
When a high concentration of vegetables are amassed in a monoculture environment in mineral depleted soil - these poor malnourished plants are not only a beacon to ravenous hoards of local insects - but have low resistance to their attacks.
The best defences against pest insects is habitat diversity, acceptance, planting guilds, soil fertility and attracting beneficial insects. The benefit of these approaches is as follows:
The best defences against pest insects is habitat diversity, acceptance, planting guilds, soil fertility and attracting beneficial insects. The benefit of these approaches is as follows:
- Habitat diversity: Through adding rock stacks, compost piles, ponds, shrubs and pollinating plants food sources and refuges for beneficial insects are provided that will feed upon pest insects and prevent them from having excessive harm on your crops. Monoculture barren environments do not provide the range of food resources and refuges required by these beneficial insects to sustain viable populations that would keep the faster breeding pest insects in balance.
- Acceptance: Pests insects are a natural part of any ecosystem and need to be accepted. The unrealistic expectation of commercial producers for 'perfect produce' necessitates the heavy application of pesticides in case any mark or blemish from them impacts their crop.
- Soil fertility: Plants have naturally evolved to fight off the attack by pest insects through loading their leaves with toxic chemicals which deter feeding. The production of these chemicals, however, requires a healthy soil for the plants to produce them. This healthy soil provides the wide range of micro nutrients and chemical building blocks required to produce these chemicals.
- Attracting beneficial insects: Some beneficial insects (mainly predatory mites) feed on pollen in addition to other insects and planting a range of flowering plant will provide them an alternative food source to maintain populations at densities where they can provide an effective control against outbreaks of pest insects. Adult hover flies also feed upon pollen from flowers and their larvae are voracious predators of pests insects. Other beneficial insects that are common (spiders, lacewings and ladybirds) benefit more from habitat diversity and refuges to maintain their populations.
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Commercial production of crops often necessitates use of chemicals to combat insect pests (due to low plant and habitat variety, poor soil quality and expectation of producers and the market) and Integrated Pest Management has evolved as a method of aiming at practices that aim to reduces the use of these chemicals by improving conditions for beneficial insects to assist in control of pest insects. Beneficial insects are often released in large quantities by practioners of IPM to suppress populations explosions of pest insects at key times of the year. Without sufficient food sources and appropriate habitat most of these releases will die - but it is a step up from pesticides.
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Weeds
When we create a disturbed environment for cultivation of annual vegetables we are taking (in most places this is tried) an environmental context which favours the development of a forest and taking that right back to stage 1 successional plant community stage. This phase is rapidly colonised by pioneer plants (aka weeds) which stabilise and enrich the soil, start accumulating minerals in the soil through establishment of beneficial connections with soil microbiology - that result in latter successional stages emerging or shrubs, pioneer trees and eventually back to a stable forest ecosystem again.
I find this is a useful reference when establishing a garden - that we are creating an intensive production system that weeds will always be better suited to and without our constant vigilance will always prevail in the transition of plant communities towards a forested state.
With that reference point in mind we can do the following:
Whatever method (or combination of methods) is used it will require a lot of work to maintain a productive garden. With this in mind it is best to locate these areas in close proximity to a house site where resources are accumulated and you are more likely (through frequent visit) to see changes in the system and make appropriate adjustments in your management approaches.
I find this is a useful reference when establishing a garden - that we are creating an intensive production system that weeds will always be better suited to and without our constant vigilance will always prevail in the transition of plant communities towards a forested state.
With that reference point in mind we can do the following:
- Use weeds to create a forested system.
- Select favourable weeds and remove unfavourable ones (so they become more abundant and out compete them) and try to utilsie the benefit of these weeds alongside our own garden production (clover and dandelion are good for this).
- Add compost to stimulate growth of vegetables so they grow more vigorously and out compete weeds (make sure it is from a hot compost where the weed seeds have been cooked).
- Plant vegetables closely together to out compete weeds and cover all ground space efficiently.
- Use heavy animals grazing (such as with a chicken tractor) to clear out weeds between crop harvests.
- Select for vigorously growing and pest resistant vegetables by collecting their seeds and using them the following year.
- Avoid disturbance of soil.
- Cover dormant garden beds with thick black plastic sheet in summer to burn off weeds before replanting.
- Or probably best to utilise as many of the above strategies as possible.
Whatever method (or combination of methods) is used it will require a lot of work to maintain a productive garden. With this in mind it is best to locate these areas in close proximity to a house site where resources are accumulated and you are more likely (through frequent visit) to see changes in the system and make appropriate adjustments in your management approaches.