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Finally... => Creative Projects => Topic started by: MarcAFK on September 24, 2013, 02:44:48 am

Title: Let's get dirty: Adventures in backyard farming
Post by: MarcAFK on September 24, 2013, 02:44:48 am
Spring has arrived and with it the first crop of bananas which has sadly already been claimed by bats, however after giving it's delicious yellow bounty each tree will begin to decay and eventually fall over; ready to rot and feed the next generation. It is at this time of year that the empty space once filled by each decaying tree finally reminds me of my long delayed yearning for rich agricultural rewards. I have decided therefore to log my success and failure in these illustrious forums, this first post will contain a brief introduction as well as a table of contents linking to weekly updates, as well as a general roadmap of what has or will be planted,  and finally photos of the current state of plant growth

For now I shall give a brief hint at the general state of affairs, a few weeks ago some space was cleared in an abandoned bed colonised by stray bananas, and some crops have been planted, said plants are now just over a week old and when i finally get around to the update we shall see the current state of affairs.

To do list:
Establish worm farm
Plant herbs in protected area
More tomatos!
Plant rainforest pot plants
Weed, and thin out crops.

2013 vegetable plan
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Currently planted:
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Title: Re: Let's get dirty: Adventures in backyard farming
Post by: MarcAFK on September 25, 2013, 12:47:23 am
Week 0 : Bed preparation and wtf shall i plant?

As mentioned earlier I already have an area of slightly raised garden separated by pine sleepers and partially fenced off, this bed was 1/3 planted august-september of last year, however over crowded planting combined with extreme heat followed by incessant rainfall near the beginning of summer caused lackluster performance, last years attempt was abandoned around january and left to rot.
In the meantime small quantities of lawn clippings, branches and partially digested compost was thrown onto the entire bed over the remaining year, over this time the bananas remaining in the 2/3 of the bed left alone last year have matured significantly and 2 are already fruiting, 2 are flowering, at least 2 more may give fruit this year, however any serious attempt to plant will require the entire bed to be cleared of banana trees and tilled over.
It should be noted that the entire bed is approximately 3x2 meters, behind one of the 3 meter sides is a 3 meter by 1.3 meter fully fenced off area containing 3 banana trees and the remains of one banana tree, which were planted there last year in an attempt at relocating the entire colony, these trees may be ready to harvest next year, this bed is the only place i wish to have bananas growing in.
Analysis of the soon-to-be vegetable bed shows 8 significantly sized banana trees, 2 large trees which are flowering, 2 slightly smaller trees which may fruit this year and 4 smaller trees which should require another year of growth.
At least half of these trees are growing near the very top of the vegetable bed, so it was decided to merely move the rest to that side of the bed, leaving a decent 3 meter by 1.6 meter bed for vegetables, one smaller tree was moved to the dedicated banana patch to replace the one that had died since last year.
After moving the trees including one which was already flowering, which I was apprehensive about it's survival chances, the entire bed was ploughed to approximately 6 inches with a mattock, large roots and pruned banana leaves were used as mulch for the recently moved banana trees, also the 2 trees with fruit were harvested and cut down, they had already started rotting and after some light abuse with the axe end of the mattock the shredded banana trunk was deposited as mulch for all banana trees.
After ploughing i was disappointed at the volume of soil left in the bed, after removal of trees and roots there was barely 3 inches more soil in the bed than in the surrounding yard. A quick forage about the yard found over a dozen plant pots with varying levels of decayed houseplant, and varying quantities of soil or potting mix, also one and a half 25 litre bags of potting mix purchased last year, and lastly some of the finest grade of compost was dug out of my plastic compost bin. This didn't really make a difference to the soil level but it did increase the quantity of organic matter in the soil, as well as get rid of some soil that was too poor to grow any more potted plants.
At this point i was satisfied at the soil quality, the previous year of composting had left this dirt rather rich, moist and loose at least compared to the surrounding soil of my lawn which was in this current heat dry cracked and lightly coloured in certain areas.
Next on the agenda is deciding what to plant, which plants, what season, and where. It was decided to use crop rotation and to divide the bed into 3 parts. Next update will cover what decisions I made in this regard .
Title: Re: Let's get dirty: Adventures in backyard farming
Post by: Nospherat on September 25, 2013, 10:40:04 am
The amount of things I don't understand is staggering. I mean, sure, I know all the words in there, but the concepts are incredibly alien.
I'm a true city slicker, born and raised on hot concrete and feet fungus aside, I've never grown anything in my life.
The prospect of being able to feed yourself in case of an emergency (zombie invasion or not) is nothing short of amazing, and now thanks to your post, the act of growing crops has gained mystical properities.

I mean, I always thought it to be something akin to sticking seeds in the mud and checking them somewhat later, with not much else involved.

*sigh*... the more you know...

Title: Re: Let's get dirty: Adventures in backyard farming
Post by: Anvilfolk on September 25, 2013, 08:34:46 pm
PTW!

We are thinking of starting a little wee veggie garden in the front yard of our building if the landlord lets us. This is great inspiration!
Title: Re: Let's get dirty: Adventures in backyard farming
Post by: Doomblade187 on September 25, 2013, 08:54:04 pm
Can we have a picture of the bananas dancing?

But seriously, PTW. The most I've ever done gardening-wise is the 'plant seeds, wait' method, so this is very intriguing.
Title: Re: Let's get dirty: Adventures in backyard farming
Post by: wierd on September 25, 2013, 09:25:44 pm
The only glaring thing I see is that corn isn't really nitrogen fixating. Though putting a shade loving sub-crop underneath that is soil shading and fixating for use as a green manure between plantings can fix that. Clover is a good favorite, but it really prefers full sun.

What's your timetable and plan for your winter compost? A trick my mom uses is to collect all the leaves from all around in autumn, crush them up and layer them with raw manure in the bed and then cover. The nitrogen in the manure gets pulled into the carbon mass of the leaves, making a more balanced humus in the spring when tilled up.

Also, how are you managing your phosphate levels? Pumpkin and other squash LOVES them some phosphate when they bloom and set fruit, same with beans.

Re-reading, it sounds like you have soil moisture issues. Make sure your corn plantings have moist, but not waterlogged soil. They like it "just right", or they get black fungus all over, or die horribly. If you discover any issues with nematodes, plant some ornamental hot peppers (or if you prefer, edible ones) and or, some marigolds in the center of the rows. They produce compounds that are discouraging to such pests.

Check your tomato plants regularly for potato bugs, and your beans and squash for black blister beetles and squash bugs.  Hot pepper juice (from said ornamental hot pepper plants) can discourage them, but I don't know of a pesticide free method of control other than mechanical removal. WEAR GLOVES. Blister beetles have the name for a reason. The will also make your pumpkin plants turn into slimy juice in the field before producing a crop, because they inject nasty enzymes into the plant to make it easier for them to eat, so be on it 24/7.
Title: Re: Let's get dirty: Adventures in backyard farming
Post by: MarcAFK on September 26, 2013, 11:52:27 am
Firstly i should apologise for the wall of text, I barely noticed how much i was rambling without really saying much.
About the corn field, the idea is to follow the south American technique of companion planting corn, squash and beans together, corn and squash obviously need decent amounts of nitrogen which require a good amount of manure or well composted mulch, I have a chicken which should supply enough manure to get the plants started, and as the season progresses the bean plants will provide nitrogen fixation for the corn and squash, the pumpkins will probably require the greatest amount of added manure/ compost. The squash and some of the beans can be climbed up the corn stalks, in theory anyway, the timing of planting may need to be modified for this to work though. The beans around the edge of the fields can be climbed up the surrounding chicken wire fence, except for the center of the field which will need some additional support instead.
By Autumn/winter the fields will be mostly empty which will allow replenishment of nutrients with manure/compost, and also this is when the peas will be growing as the main green manure.

My composting plan is rather complicated, at the moment i have a small plastic compost bin which receives all my food scraps as well as whatever leafy tree trimmings, weeds, lawn clippings, etc that will fit in it, however there is always more branches than it will fit, as i have several large palm trees, a large paperbark, several medium sized trees i can't identify, some lilipillys etc.
These excess branches I cannot fit generally get thrown under the trees to compost by themself, which doesn't really seem to do much, I've recently learned that decaying wood generally releases acids which can serve to further remove soil nutrients.
Some of the branches get ran through a mulcher and put under the trees with the rest of branches, also last year I used some of the wood mulch straight on the garden bed, which may have been a bad idea.
My plan for this year is to raise a worm farm to provide high nitrogen compost for supporting plant growth, as well as using composting to provide more humus which allows soil to hold more moisture and nutrients.  I'm still reading about these subjects but what I have learned is that more nutritious food waste such as leaves and fruit should be used to feed the bacteria that worms eat which produces high nitrogen compost, while woody waste products should be composted which produces a high carbon humus which allows better quality soil. A combination of these methods would work best.
Phosphorus I'm not sure about, I know bone meal is the best source of phosphorus, I should mention that I generally add chicken bones to my compost, generally not recommended due to the possibility of attracting pests, however since i generally boil off the meat as stock the bones shouldn't attract much, at least i haven't had problems, anyway small quantities of bone in the soil may provide the necessicary phosphate levels (bone is half calcium phosphate) as well as providing calcium and lastly as woody waste decays and releases acids the bone dissolves and neutralises it, which should prevent nutrients being lost in the compost.

Black fungus was definately implicated in the death of my corn and beans last year, however i take the view that what killed them was stress from drought, and overcrowding, the fungus merely took advantage of the rain and finished them off. I've not noticed nematodes or potato bugs, blister beatles of squash bugs, BUT, i've seen a lot of lady bugs which might indicate aphids which I haven't actually seen many of, caterpillers and grasshoppers are generally seen taking significant areas of leaf out of my tomatos, but what i truely fear are the fruit flies which rendered last years tomato crop completely inedible. However my chicken loves baby tomatos, especially crawling with maggots.

You mentioned clovers, the local white clovers have started flowering, and i have started taking the flowers just after they start to droop, this i believe means they are fertilized, reading about the plant it seems the seeds need to be throughly dried and scuffed in order to get high germination, perhaps a can with sand in it could be tumbled with the seeds to get them in the right condition, I haven't decided which field to put the clovers into. Also i have planted nasturtiums which attract/ repel some bugs, we'll see how effective it is, and lastly i finished making my worm farm and seem to have found the right kind of worms, more details will be in my next update.

Title: Re: Let's get dirty: Adventures in backyard farming
Post by: wierd on September 26, 2013, 12:41:26 pm
I am quite serious about the squash bugs and blister beetles in regard to squash. (Pumpkin is just a large squash, afterall)

Those little shits will turn a healthy squash into THIS in about 2 days.
Spoiler: Poor poor plant... (click to show/hide)

I dont live in a subtropical/tropical setting like you do, but here, those little whores ruin gardens in DAYS, and attack in huge numbers.  It could be my environment is more friendly for their lifecycle than yours. Here, we dont have any real issues with fruitflies on tomatoes, and can just let them be. Biggest pests on tomatoes here are hornworm catterpillars and potato bugs, along with your usual grasshopper pests.

Spoiler: Little shits movin' in (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Let's get dirty: Adventures in backyard farming
Post by: MarcAFK on September 26, 2013, 11:54:15 pm
Those yellowed drooping pumpkins look sadly familiar, It seems nasturtiums will either repel or attract Squash bugs, so i guess it's good that i planted them with the squashes, the blister beetles are attracted to horseradish, and mustard.
I'm hoping they will be attracted to regular radish more than my other crops since google tells me they do in fact destroy radishes, so i'll use them for distraction, also nasturtiums exude mustard oil so i guess they will work as well as mustard?
We'll see how it goes.
For fruit fly it seems herbs in the mint family repel them, basil is ideal but I have a bad history growing it, mint also works great and may be my easiest option, but it grows like a weed and will need constant control, but at least that makes it a good cover crop too.
Oregano might be even easier, as I have a massive patch of it already growing somewhere, and it isn't quite as invasive as mint.
Title: Re: Let's get dirty: Adventures in backyard farming
Post by: MarcAFK on September 30, 2013, 11:08:32 pm
Week 0: Part 2, A retrospective on decisions made on what to plant and where.

Although my planning spreadsheet has been completed and spring's crops are already in the ground (It's now week 2, more photos to be posted) I earlier promised to provide more details on the planning process.
Searching online for details about crop rotation yielded many different theories and types, varying between the common 4 year rotation systems , up to complex 8 or more year rotation plans designed for large farming systems.
Crop rotation serves 3 important purposes, firstly ensuring that plants are grown in the most suitable soil, soil condition changes as plants take out nutrients, or conversely as decay products add nutrients back in. Secondly rotation serves to separate plants from disease causing organisms which may build up in the soil after several years of growing the same crop. Lastly, by dividing available space into smaller areas of different plant types allows for more diversity, reducing the risk of catastrophic crop failure affecting one species.
Space restriction made me wary of going for anything more than a 4 bed system, also I doubted I would have the attention span to continue for so many years, and lastly it seemed like there was a simpler method i could use. Most rotation plans included the following phases,

Fallow: where the land is left by itself for a year, to be colonised by whatever happens to grow there by itself, the idea is that whatever weeds pop up will compete for nutrients, they will bring nutrients up from deeper in the soil, if there is a nitrogen deficiency clover or other nitrogen fixing plants may thrive, overall there should be a balancing effect on soil nutrients and PH, also it helps to re-establishing soil biota which may be stressed by monoculture crops, and lastly it can help break pest and disease cycles by hosting other benificial organisms like insects which may prey on pests of your other crops.Finally the fallow land is ploughed under allowing all that grey there to decay into the soil providing rich fertiliser for the next crop.

Nitrogen hungry  crops :Cereals like corn and wheat, leafy plants and brassicas,  have high nitrogen requirements, they grow best in the richest soil and as the nitrogen is concentrated in the leaves or in cereals where the main concentration is in the grain, it means that after harvest whatever waste ploughed back into the soil is generally low in nitrogen

Neutral Restricted crops: these crops need nitrogen to grow, but excessivly high nitrogen levels result in too much leaf growth and not enough harvestable vegetable material, includes root vegetables, fruit crops like tomatos, curcurbits, etc.

Acid lovers: these plants prefer the slightly acidic soil that is left over from a year of growing nitrogen hungry crops, examples usually include tomatos, Radishs and other root vegetables, brassicas, etc.( more research shows most plants to be rather tolerant of a fairly low ph level, ranging from moderately acidic to neutral)

Legumes: Grown for their nitrogen fixation abilities, all kinds of peas and beans can host the correct type of bacteria in their roots, also includes clover, alfalfa and other nitrogen fixation plants include certain larger shrubs and trees such as acacia . In fact i may have some of these growing as weeds in my own backyard.

Compost: not exactly a planting type, but most rotations provide for some time spent between crops composting waste from previous seasons, a common variation being fields left bare in winter but covered in all the waste stored from everything grown that year. Less common would be a rotation scheme which includes one plot left to compost for an entire year, with most waste produced by all other plots added to it over the year. This field is usually rotated to be as far as possible from the legume field in order to provide 2 high nitrogen periods over the rotation plan.

Other rotation plans include dividing plants by type, such as onion, brassica, fruiting types like tomato and capsicum, and then planting in companion planting groups, avoiding combinations which detriment plant growth etc. examples include not planting onion and beans together or brassicas and capsicum. Also planting speces which deter or distract pests of crop species.

I eventually settled on a 3 bed rotation as it seems nitrogen levels are the main limiting factor in plant growth, divided into 3 allows a year spent building nitrogen levels, 1 year for plants which heavily draw nitrogen away then 1 year growing plants which are satisfied using the poorest soil. Interspersed throughout will be various strategies intended to maintain nitrogen levels, nitrogen fixing cover crops, composting, application of manure etc. The legume field will host corn and cucurbits early in the season, which will be fed by fertilizer at the start of the season, then mulch during the season, changing to at least an entire season of nothing but legumes, the nitrogen hungry field will need to receive applications of fertilizer between seasons, and the low nitrogen field should benefit from a cover crop of clover, especially due to the slow growth time of the tomato and capsicum plants. All crops will get slight benefit from some mulch added around the base of the larger plants, also nitrogen from weeds pulled and dumped back into the field.
Now that the rotation is determined, I needed to Select where to place the available plants, and in which order and season.
Another update should be necessary.

Title: Re: Let's get dirty: Adventures in backyard farming
Post by: MarcAFK on September 30, 2013, 11:54:51 pm
Week 2 : Healthy growth, but what are those empty spaces?

Current progress:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
We see very healthy growth of the mesclun lettuce, and celery which need thinning out, the bok choi germinated sparingly, but theres enough to fill the field, cauliflower and broccoli still have to make an appearence, but they take upto 3 weeks to germinate, so my fingers are still crossed.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Radish is very thick and need thinning immediately, baby carrot has germinated along the whole bottom edge and spring onion has started sprouting at the in both lines planted (some are barely visible around the lone tomato seedling at bottom right. Tomatos are visible everywhere in fields A and B, but there doesn't seem to be any clear clusters in the areas where i actually planted them, capsicum is also absent, but as it looks like tomato it's possible there is already some germinated, i shall plant some more to be certain, also because i need some for a second tomato and capsicum patch i will put alongside the edge of my house. Lastly the big carrots haven't germinated, but they take 3 weeks too and there's still hope.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
We see a lot of growth here dominated by beans and squash, there is definately corn growing in each of the 6 placed intended, plus 2 spares, these will be left in a little longer to provide redundency while the plants get stronger, beans are a little irregular, some more need planting along the top edge, and lastly the pumpkins seem to have germinated, 2 in each hold near teh center,they shall be thinned out when they get a bit stronger and then a lot more mulch will be added. I am thinking of thinning the squash out somewhat to allow more room for growth of the beans.
Title: Re: Let's get dirty: Adventures in backyard farming
Post by: MarcAFK on October 14, 2013, 01:40:51 am
It's been a while since I've posted, and some strong growth has occurred here's a belated update from mid last week
Week 3.5 :

Very dry and hot weather lately, but the extra sunlight seems to be causing very healthy growth especially for the weeds,  so these photos will be a little hard to decipher through them, however the next update will be made after weeding.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Here sadly we still have no signs of the cauliflouwer and broccoli, these will be replanted in greater numbers next week, the 3-4 seeds per hole i used seems to be insufficient, perhaps they were planted too deep? The broccolini stems however are doing allright, at least 2 have leaf growth and also some traces of roots (I dug one up to check for roots). bok choi are dooing great and should be thinned out, the celery seem to have slowed their growth, they might need more water, and the lettuce look fine, but seem slow growing also. I also notice some clover sprouting all over the beds, they will be kept during weeding as they make a nice cover crop.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Radishes are doing awesome, and i have been lightly thinning them each day and giving the leaves to my chicken, who absolutely loves them, soon I'll thin them down to the 16 recommended by my planting plan.
The reseeded batch of capsicum have sprouted (not quite visible in this photo) and there are enough scattered tomatos to allow 2 strong specimen to be moved to the correct place in the bed. Baby carrots are doing very well but i'll wait untill they get bigger before thinning, the other carrots on the top haven't sprouted at all, but i'll just leave that strip bare. Lastly the spring onions are going poorly, I suspect that the edge of the bed doesn't get enough sunlight, and possibly they need much richer and more moist soil to sprout sucessfully, perhaps I'll plant more along the top carrot area, apply some manure and a little fine mulch to ensure richer more moist soil.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Lastly the 'three sisters' bed, of corn, squash and beans, is doing well, the bottom middle corn plant I accidentally stood on last week has recovered well, as have the beans and squash I moved which were a little wilted, nasturtiums have sprouted randomly which is nice. The bean plants don't seem to need support yet, but I'll need to do it soon.

(apologies, i have mixed up the image names)