Experimenting at home

To fully appreciate what farmers and graziers are facing I like to walk the talk.

Sunhemp in my back yard

I love planting but it is soul destroying after spending a day in the garden to have it all dug up over night.

Bush Turkeys, bilbies and bandicoots plus of course my chickens. I have tried multiple ways to grow food with only a small margin of success.

As soon as I sow seeds they get eaten, if they survive and manage to germinate they get nibbled on and scratched at. Having learnt by my mistakes I have used metal wire with star pickets to surround an area, wire mesh to cover the soil around the base of plants and the plastic Geohex that was designed to keep driveways in place. All have worked to some degree and all have had their faults.

In my last ditch attempt to cover the ground to prevent the animals from digging I planted a MS mix.

As you can imagine growing a MS mix is far easier than growing vegetables. I absolutely love the ease of broadcasting and letting Mother Nature do her thing. However, the downside is; left unchecked the MS mix takes over but to be honest by the time I got to this stage (deciding to plant a ms mix) I was at my wits’ end with trying to grow food and failing! The positive thing about just letting things happen is that you simply cannot lose with a MS mix.

My intention was to cover the ground and I had finally succeeded. The blueberries and comfrey I had planted were alive underneath, all was going well. Going into summer on the Eastern Seaboard means a lot of rain and huge amounts of plant growth and this is where I came unstuck. As you can see from the photo I could no longer see my other plants and I was torn between cutting the MS and just letting them go to seed to feed the birds and my chickens.

Did I want to give to the soil or take from it?

In hindsight I should have brought a couple of horses up from the paddock to graze the sorghum and sunflowers, before the plants had reached reproductive point. The sun hemp was still in a vegetative state so the knock down would have boosted the other plants into flowering again and probably increased root and biomass.

What I did instead was to observe and WOW have I learnt a lot!

Before the MS mix was planted

After the MS mix was planted.

This is the difference between Dec and June (Southern Hemisphere so from mid Summer to mid winter). I thought most of the seeds germinated at the same time but from my observations there was a 3 tier process.

The sorghum and sunflowers leapt out of the ground with the sun hemp. The former 2 sprung into reproduction phase considerably quicker than the sun hemp. As those went to seed the sun hemp flowered followed by the cowpea which loved climbing up the sorghum and sunflower stalks.

There was a phase when the beautiful deep yellow sun hemp flowers contrasted with the purple of the cowpea. I barely noticed the growth of the lablab as it camouflaged itself amoungst the vine of the cowpea.

Then as if over night the huge amount of biomass flowered white flowers that have hung around for months. These have gone to seed and pea pods are hanging all over the dense hedge.

Spectacular display of green and gold. Phase 1.

Pre phase 2. The sun hemp was starting to bud and the cowpea was getting established.

The hedge of lablab with its white flower. Phase 3.

This brings us up-to-date. What are my plans?

I have brought my horses up and they’ve enjoyed browsing but haven’t really made any head way into knocking back the “hedge”. I need to spend a day to pull as much of the pea away and find the mesh wire underneath. I’m not holding much hope that my original plants are still alive as they have been robbed of any sunlight but stranger things have happened. What I do know is that my soil will be ready to have some veggies sown into it and I’ll start the process again.

This time I’ll have some experience under my belt and hopefully some regeneratively grown vegetables too.

Happy growing everyone.