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October 20, 2007

Straw Everywhere!

So, I was checking out the weather forecast yesterday evening and noticed that we were going to have a fairly cold overnight temperature and was a bit concerned that there would be a frost (it's been freaky cold enough!). After having lost my last lot of beans a month ago and now that the new beans have sprouted and the old ones have new growth I didn't really want to risk it again - not to mention my huge potato plants and corn all coming along nicely (the other greenery seems to be pretty hardy against the cold and survived before...). I decided to bring down the straw bale that I have for the chickens nesting box and started to spread it all around. What a peaceful, still night it was. WELL - of course today it's all windy and blowing it all around! What a mess. So this morning I went down (no frost afterall) and pulled away the straw and tucked it around the plants as a mulch. I suppose it follows that I have an organic-looking no-work yard with things all over the place. I'm now claiming to follow the Fukuoka method LOL (I was doing my homework last night for my course and we were covering the history of organic horticulture) who advocates "no tillage, no fertilizer, no pesticides, no weeding, and no pruning"

2 comments:

Chile said...

I got a straw bale for mulch the first winter in this house. Then I had a brainstorm the next year - if I left the leaves under the trees when they fell, I wouldn't need to buy mulch! Now, I rake the parts of the yard that need raking and dump it all under the trees. However...we are probably going to buy hay for our first attempt growing potatoes. :)

Bridget said...

We had a huge frost...luckily we are lazy bums and our new seedlings were still in the shed because we hadn't dug any compost in yet.