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| Our horse boarding facility is on an old farm last planted the 1880's.......I want to take the tons of manure/compost and put it in the old weed and grass infested field to create a good sized garlic plantation.......should I just till the land every 10 days or so from now until October planting time and try to grow the weeds out of the land or should I try one the "natural " weed and grass killers on the market....I know I have to deal with the grass and weeds before I introduce the composted manure and I would appreciate everyone's experience on how to reclaim a field .......thanks from St. Margarets Bay |
Follow-Up Postings:
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| Save your money and don't buy herbicides. Not that I'm "organic", I am just frugal. Weed seed will germinate once the land is tilled. Are you planning on using a rototiller? If so, do it only once since the excessive tilling will negatively affect the soil structure. Instead of open and permeable, the soil will become dusty and impermeable. If there is a lot of quack grass and dandelion roots and thisel roots, these will have to be removed by hand. I favour a potato fork to turn the soil. The tines on a potato fork are flat and the fork is lighter than the garden fork. I would think that you would only have to do this hand digging two or three times before planting. As for the manure. Add it at the start. The manure will be more thoroughly incorporated the earlier it is added. Also from experience there are lots of hard dry pieces that will benefit from the extra attention provided by the digging. This may sound like a lot of work and it porbably is but you will be happy with the end result. |
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| How large of a field is this? |
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| I am with pt03, how large is the field? How many trees, strubs & rocks are in the field? Is it sloping,hilly, flat or bottom soil? What did the soil test find? What equipment do you have? If you have a 20-30 hp tractor, a disk & a turn plow. I would say disk it up left to right, then top to bottom. Then turn it with the turn plow & disk up & down. Then spread the coMpost, manure & any leaves you can gather. Then disk it from left to right to work the Organic Matter into the soil. If you do all of this in one week it will be as one tilling, but much deeper then just disking. I would broad cast a green manure to surpress the weeds & build the land. This I would cut under with any compost in the Fall about a month before I planted the crop. I would make up the beds at that time( you have all summer to design the beds & check with the Extension office to see what grows well in you area). Aparagus live over 20 years, raspberries take up little room & they are harvested at different times then Garlic. Horse Radish & bunch onions can make a good turn around too. |
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| Garlics are mulched heavy and that will help a lot if you plant a rye cover crop supposedly the rotting straw after plow down will prevent small seeds from growing Research some other cover crops and you can add to your soil while backing the weeds down Good luck to you and if its going to be a commercial organic venture talk to your organic certifier before you even start |
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| I think that a good mowing to chop up the residue would be a first step. If the grass turf is thick and heavy, a plowing to turn this under might help. If the grass is not heavy, perhaps you could spread the manure compost out soon and till the stuff lightly. If weeds persist, you just may have to cover with mulch. |
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- Posted by Banjonique (My Page) on Sat, Mar 12, 11 at 20:56
| The field is 200 ft. x 200ft. and faces east sloping down to the east at about 20 degrees........it is clear of trees and rocks and gets full sun all day but has a thick low growing grass on it........I have a Deere 2305 24 hp tractor with a 7 tine tiller........I wonder if I mulched 24"thick with manure/hay/peatmoss/straw from the stalls if that mass of material might kill the grass while it composts in place and then I could till it all together in late summer........after October planting (15,000 garlics I hope) I will mulch very heavy with straw which will stay down until harvest next July |
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| Save your money and don't buy herbicides. Not that I'm "organic", I am just frugal. Weed seed will germinate once the land is tilled. Are you planning on using a rototiller? If so, do it only once since the excessive tilling will negatively affect the soil structure. Instead of open and permeable, the soil will become dusty and impermeable. If there is a lot of quack grass and dandelion roots and thisel roots, these will have to be removed by hand. I favour a potato fork to turn the soil. The tines on a potato fork are flat and the fork is lighter than the garden fork. I would think that you would only have to do this hand digging two or three times before planting. As for the manure. Add it at the start. The manure will be more thoroughly incorporated the earlier it is added. Also from experience there are lots of hard dry pieces that will benefit from the extra attention provided by the digging. This may sound like a lot of work and it porbably is but you will be happy with the end result. |
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| Planting Rye would be a good idea except that Rye is a winter crop, however planting some Oats following tilling then tilling the Oats in and planting Buckwheat would be better this spring and summer. A 2 foot thick mulch of most anyu material would likely kill all but the most aggressive plants growing there. |
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- Posted by beeman_gardener 5 (My Page) on Sun, Mar 13, 11 at 11:09
| Stay away from Roundup. We didn't, and now in the light of the following are suffering for the indiscriminate use over a number of years. Have a read if you have come in contact or have imported top soils from another source. It's scary. I've come to the conclusion the old fashioned way of weed removal is the best. |
Here is a link that might be useful: Scary Roundup
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| kimmer is right, but we have a summer rye, here in the South. Here we can keep rye going 11 months out of the year. This may not be best for your garden. Rye is invasive until the weather kills it off. It is that if you are not careful when sowing then it will end up in your beds. This should not be a problem the first summer. Buckwheat, clover are good & draws pollinator also. |
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| If it was my 1 acre and I wasn't concerned with being designated "organic", I'd use a glyphosate to kill everything, till all the dead plants and sod into the soil and then mulch with the manure/compost etc. Let that sit for a month or so, till again and then apply a thinner mulch layer (preferably compost) until just prior to planting. If any weeds came back up after the first tilling, spot spray with a glyphosate to control. I am not familiar with growing garlic so maybe a soil test to check for nutrient requirements for that crop would not be a bad idea. Lloyd |
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- Posted by beeman_gardener 5 (My Page) on Sun, Mar 13, 11 at 22:36
| "LLoyd" Glyphosate is another name for 'Roundup'. You obviously didn't read the article I posted the link to. Otherwise I would doubt you wouldn't want touch it with the proverbial 10 foot pole.The lasting long term damage to you, the soil and plants you would grow isn't worth the supposed convenience of a weed free area. We tried it over a period of 3 years, now we reap the damage results in crops we're now trying to grow. I would really suggest you have a read. |
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| beeman, glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup and Roundup is but one herbicide with glyphosate in it. I did read your article (why is it that people state that something is obvious when obviously it isn't). I've used glyphosate for nigh onto sixteen years now and will continue to use it for the recommended situations at recommended application rates. I have had no crop issues with using glyophosate but then again I have not used it indiscriminately as you said you had. I have no intention of getting into a debate over glyphosate. I stated to the OP what I would do, you have stated your opinion. Lloyd |
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- Posted by beeman_gardener 5 (My Page) on Mon, Mar 14, 11 at 8:54
| "Lloyd" Nuff said, on your head be it. |
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| If it were my 1 acre I'd die before putting glyphosate on it. I have ten acres in florida and one in mass and I don't intend to spread any poisons around there either. The reason for using herbicides and pesticides is so that one person can try to manage far too large an area. The result is badness in every way, not least that most people end up knowing nothing about crops. If you actually have enough bio-mass to cover an acre one or two feet thick, is that an effective use of it? What is the soil type - sandy, loamy, clayey? Do you use the pine shavings for bedding in the stalls? If so I wouldn't put that on the land in large quantities unless it were very heavy soil. I think keeping it closely mowed over the summer is a good idea, and then maybe tilling it up in strips for the garlic leaving sod in between to control erosion and maintain diversity. If you've got some good rotted manure put down in the tilled areas in late summer when the rains start to provide N to rot out the sod before planting garlic. |
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| I have put horse bedding /manure in my fields for years & all I get is humus & richer fields. When I say years I mean, over 40 years. First as a boy on my fathers farm, then on the same land, when it became mine. I say go for it. Lloyd, I have seen your beautiful fields, rich & black with humus. You really used glyphosate for 16 years, WOW. According to some post on this & other forums, your fields should be dead & hard as concrete. You truly are the compost King. |
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| Just to be clear, I've been using various glyphosate products since we moved back to the farm in '94. An individual field might get sprayed once in three, maybe four years and not on a glyphosate tolerant crop (I don't grow RR or similar crops). I utilize glyphosate as a non-selective herbicide. Lloyd |
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