Post your country pictures!

Finding land, working a small plot or anything else countryside related
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Zasso Nouka
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Re: Post your country pictures!

Post by Zasso Nouka »

donguri wrote:I hope so too! We don't actually live there (yet) and judging by the way things are progressing, we probably won't...

Full disclosure: this place was not designed or intended for winter use.
Possibly an oversized maki stove would make it more bearable while you insulate the exterior walls and the benefits of having a much larger firebox than you need really come into their own when you burn the thing overnight and it is still going the next morning and your house is hot when you wake up. Or if you are out for the whole day and leave it going on a low air intake and the house is toasty and warm when you arrive back home.

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Re: Post your country pictures!

Post by donguri »

In our dream scene, a maki stove would rule! On a more practical level, the cabin is so small that even the kerosene heater and it's surrounding safety zone really gobbles space. The way the Mister has been feeling lately, he'd probably just like to turn the whole place into a big bonfire.

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Re: Post your country pictures!

Post by Zasso Nouka »

Even if you can't easily live there in the winter it's still nice to have as a retreat for the rest of the year and winter isn't that long over here really. Mind you there are some fairly small maki stoves that take up little more space than a kerosene heater and if you got something like Ian's one you could fit it in the kitchen area and cook off it as well as keep the house warm.

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Re: Post your country pictures!

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Quick shot of my garlic coming up from earlier today. I went rogue and planted these without any string or guides at all, I thought nobody would ever notice...woops them rows ain't exactly straight are they. Oh well :lol:

Am now preparing to get the rest of the field ready for spring planting :)

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Re: Post your country pictures!

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That's a seriously clean veggie patch, here's one of my shallot beds

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And here it is after I've 'tidied' it up a bit with the tractor :lol:

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Actually I pulled up all the shallots first and replanted them in another clean bed before running the tractor over the old weed infested one. All those weeds make really good green manure and have protected the bed over the winter, another pass with the tractor in a few days time will chop up any surviving weeds and then I can plant a quick growing crop that will finish before the spring weeds can flower and set seed. This way we slowly reduce the weed seed bank in the soil.

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Re: Post your country pictures!

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Did you use some kind of tractor extension to pull the shallots up i.e. undercut the soil below them or did you do it by hand?

Interesting about using weeds as green manure. Don't you worry about the roots re-setting and starting to regrow?

When I do weeding I usually pull them up by hand or with the spade and set them root side up so they dry out in the sun, then burn 'em off. Even then though, some of the really established dandelions have roots so vigorous that they keep growing even when pulled out of the ground, I had to chop a few of them last autumn because they started growing again after being pulled!

I sure wish I had a motorized tiller, it would make the work of tilling and putting manure in a lot easier! At the moment I do everything with a rake, spade, hoe and trowel. Sure keeps me in shape but man is it ever hard work. My soil is very heavy in clay and it has been veeeery wet this winter.

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Re: Post your country pictures!

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Went around and pulled up the shallots by hand as we don't have anything to do it with machinery.

As for the weeds it's mostly shallow rooted chickweed so I just set the rotary attachment to a very shallow depth (around 30 - 40mm) and high speed so it mostly chops the plants up and they aren't buried deep in the soil but left laying on the surface or just under it. Then make another pass a few days later to lift and chop up any parts that are starting to re-root. So long as both passes are done on a sunny day most of the weeds are killed, by incorporating the weeds into the soil while they are green rather than burning them off it returns the nitrogen to the soil rather than the atmosphere. Any plant material can be used as a green manure or cover crop, the key is just not letting it set seed, which the chickweed was on the verge of starting.

We try and keep most of our tilling as shallow as possible now, generally only tilling the first few centimetres of the soil or if if we have to go deeper only doing that during winter when soil organisms are general living at greater depth.

Have a read of anything by Charles Dowding for some top ideas on 'No Dig' gardening, he recommends only tilling for the first year or so while you initially feed the soil and then completely stopping tilling or digging after that. Momigara is great for breaking up clay soils, either as it is or turned into biochar.

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Re: Post your country pictures!

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We finally had some snow :dance: so we're not feeling like we've missed all the winter fun. I'd be the first to admit it wasn't much and had all melted within a few hours but for Chiba this is fairly heavy.

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Sadly didn't need the snow chains :cry:

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Re: Post your country pictures!

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Here's a picture of the overgrown shallot patch shown above after a second pass with the tractor and a few days strong sunshine.

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And here are the shallots in their new home.

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e4: Correction, "the overgrown shallot patch shown above"

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Re: Post your country pictures!

Post by paradoxbox »

How well do onion/allium type plants grow without the black plastic?

My garlic seems to be doing alright so far, but I weeded the hell out of the patch shortly after planting and have done one additional weeding since. It's still a little too early for other plants to go to seed so hopefully I've gotten whatever fell last year, but...

Maybe putting down some straw mulch is in order, or perhaps just sow some clover seed randomly to keep the weeds down a bit?

I've got about half my entire land hoed now, plan to hoe the rest of it whenever I get a couple days of dry weather. Some parts of the soil are just too full of clay and haven't been tilled in years, when they get wet the soil sticks to your shoes it's so clay-ey.

Gonna go ahead and plant almost everything at the end of this month or beginning of this month as long as no more freezing snaps are expected. We got down to -2 last night so I'm sure glad I didn't plant everything during last week's very warm weather.

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