Zero-Carbon Farming and Living via the Acorn Path

[Bruce Steele]

https://imgur.com/a/b4bdba0
Winter garden and cover crop being mowed.
Two years of above average rainfall. Warm winter with no hard freezes.
Jet ( black) barley, spring spelt, carrots, onions , garlic and onion sets.

[etienne]

I can only see one picture on the link, is it normal ?

[Bruce Steele]

Just one picture. The rows behind the artichokes are about 100ft long. Barley on left ,spelt on right and a row of carrots in between. There is a row with garlic, onions and beets you cant’t see in the photo. I also have 100ft row of potatoes I have been mounding up with oak leaf mold . There are field peas in the cover crop so I will leave some to dry and then try to thresh them on a tarp.
 Summer garden planting to start April 1, a tradition for me. Thinking of ten pound to fifty pound sacks of corn, grain, beans and dry stores. Still trying to prove up on how many calories of food crops I can produce with a small solar charged electric tractor. I know that’s repetitive . No fuel , add hand labor.
 I need to try and make sense to myself . And try to rationalize why I want to sack up 50 lb. sacks of spit peas. You can see the peas in the background . They will be in sacks but there is only so much split pea and ham hock soup any one person can eat. So at this point in time the solar and battery system works flawlessly, the tractor works well enough to produce thousands of pounds of vegetables and staples. The value of the crops isn’t much and nowhere near worth the labor invested because I still compete against ten calories of fossil fuel for every food calorie the competition produces.
 
 
 

[etienne]

Hello Bruce,

The hydrated lime seems to work against slugs, but my soil is already neutral regarding acidity, so I shouldn't use too much of it.

Do you know if the problem with rain is that it looses its efficiency, or that it is not regularly sprayed anymore ? You should use gloves when working with hydrated lime even if it is wet, so I wonder if wet hydrated lime would still help.

My aim is to reduce the slug pressure. I just planted some rocket salad and green peas in a non protected area, and it was completely eaten overnight. So I was thinking at spraying a regular thin layer of hydrated lime all over the vegetable garden just to reduce the pressure. I wonder if it could work.

I have given up putting seeds directly in the soil because I never see any germination, but I am always more convinced that plants are eaten by the slugs before I can see them.

What I wonder is that it seems to get worse every year. The theory is that after a while, predators should come over and help.

Regards,

Etienne

[Bruce Steele]

Etienne, Hydrated lime is very soluble so rain tends to wash it into the soil. I used it to protect strawberries from snails and slugs in a limited area that I could put a perimeter around using the split PVC pipe to hold it. I have also used hydrated lime when using a low pH input to a compost heap like pine needles. So , speculating here, you might be able to add both pine needles and hydrated lime to your soil surface and have them counteract the pH change either would produce by itself.
 I think the lime should work wet as long as it doesn’t wash away. What you want is a line the snail and slugs can’t cross. Maybe you could engineer some sort of small tent over the half pipe of lime so the rain doesn’t get to it?
 Are you sure it is just slugs killing your baby plants? Are you familiar with cutworms? They live in the soil and come up and cut the stem on newly germinated plants. Kinda hard to protect against other than growing starts up to a size that the cutworms can’t effectively cut off.

[etienne]

Hello Bruce,
Thanks for the Info.
Don't know about the cutworms, but the peas and the rocket salad were already over 1 inch tall. But it must be the slugs, they were everywhere.
Etienne

[etienne]

I have used wood for the hydrated lime, but I am also feeding something bigger.