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Hello Charles. I can get trays 50 × 28 × 3,8 cm. These are A4 size but only in in width. Did you mean A4 size in both ways (21 x 29 cm)?
Thanks a lot! There are blackbirds here, we call them kos. But there is no pressure, they have wild nature all over. Lots of forest edge, mulch, meadows etc. Of course, they occasionally go through mulch and compost, but it doesn’t do much damage. In suburbs and in urban setting they have problems with dogs, blackbirds and such animals. Also red slugs are a big problem! They are so aggressive, we fortunately don’t have them but there are others and there is not much damage. Again, plenty of nature. But yes, compost is still the best to use on a garden and since i tried it last year i recommend it to everyone, especially in urban setting. Most of garden beds are covered in compost. 🙂 For lasagna gardening, for me autumn leafs are the best for first layer and on paths, i find them extremely useful at weeding from autumn till early summer!
Are you still here?
I have some experiences in sub-mediterranean climate, which is a bit arid in certain time of the year.
We can discuss more about sunken beds, water management, shade and wind protection.
It is important that you create holistic ecology in the garden and outside of it.Direct sowing in deep mulch lasagna works best in rows or in patches of compost (see pics below).
Cardboard beneath lasagna material breaks down fast enough for plants to grow, especially if it’s wet when laid down.
Don’t forget about microbiology in compost, old manure. There is plenty in there and it’s one of the most important aspects of mulching with it, protecting soil and making it alive.
I can sow squash and pumpkins directly outside in April. This April was not warm until three days ago – now it really feels like spring even in nights and i’m thinking to go about it with some fleece help.
Direct sowing works if we don’t have slug situation.
Last year it was successful for dif types of pumpkins, including Hokaido.
In mid April I will sow in air pots and root trainers for planting out in May.I was in England couple of times, and i missed forsests. They were the fertility of the land, coming down from hills, than sheeps and goats ate everything (“well human cut it down for pasture”).
I hope some day, you will have so much forest as you once did! Forests are great neighboiurs on top of the hills. 🙂 Ancient people always said – “these are for the gods”.You are composting with worms already. 🙂
SFG is about promotion of the method itself, a guy and other people are living of this “product”. Book is quite good. It helped me in the beginning of my gardening journey.
Don, as i understand, spacing for SFG is also about each square being planted by it’s own veg and that makes a difference (difference in foliage, root space, take-up of nutrients etc).
It mostly designed to have different crops in small space.
If i would sow parsnips this way, i should sow/thin 10cm apart each way. I wonder what the harvest would be like. Just one example with same doubts as yours.I think we are mostly planting one veg in bigger quantity here (2m long bed of fava beans for example) and with a bit of companion planting here and there.
And i never thought i would use rows so much, i was so against it! I started with wild sowings/plantings 🙂 , then using close spacing and so on.
Now it’s a combination of everything that works and it’s a continious learning process. 🙂I’m so happy to be a gardener, it’s alive and it’s fun, dinamic, did i mentioned fun? 🙂 And food…
Btw, Charles has good tips on spacing for a lot of veg in his books. With many it’s also explained why.
This is what SFG recommends :
.. look on the back of the seed packet–ignore the row spacing, just look at the plant spacing.
There are four spacing guidelines:
Extra Large – one per square for 12 inch spacing
Large – 4 per square for 6 inch spacing
Medium – 9 per square for 4 inch spacing
Small – 16 per square for 3 inch spacing.Use the seed packet to find out what spacing your plant needs. A tomato or green pepper plant needs one per square. While radishes and carrots need 16 per square.
I use equidistant spacing a lot and i’ve seen good harvests, but i also find it difficult for succession planting… garlic -> kale for example.
off: Sometimes it’s ease of harvesting, weeding… row spacing is quite amazing, especially when the soil inbetween is mulched and planted with early crops. For now i only sowed fava beans and parsinps in a garden and i used rows 30cm apart as i will try with early crop of salads, spinach and radishes inbetween. Later on late brocoli, cabbage etc will be planted inbetween maturing fava beans… parsnips are much easier to weed/mulch in rows.
Anyway, i’m a big fan of equidistant. Planted beetroots were amazing last year, also peppers, salads, chicory, celeriac, garlic and many others.
To go from rows/plants to equidistant, i just keep the ratio, i give from row to plant and i come to eq. For example 30cm for rows and 10cm for plants = equidistant is 20x20cm.
Yes! 🙂
We took an old bath, put a mesh inside on a drainage, place the bath a bit off level so excess liquid goes into drainage and fill it half full with half year old cow manure. This was in late spring last year.
Then we added kitchen scraps on top.
It’s quite full now, everything looks like regular compost now, but it’s not yet finished, worms are turning this into even better black gold (worm castings) – we will wait now for them to process the whole thing.
At the same time we will start the new bath.
This is really good article – http://permaculturenews.org/2015/01/21/updated-worm-farming-at-zaytuna-farm/