CSA baskets are being distributed. It would be good to improve the diversity of produce in them, so we need to get fast yielding annual vegetables in the ground straight away. One of the current issues facing small seedlings and vegetables on the Fair Earth Farm is the damage caused by ducks and chickens. For this reason the obvious place for an immediate start was the fenced area already used for vegetables. This site is not ideal because it is shaded for much of the day by adjacent trees to the south, but it should be OK. The soil was pretty thick with weeds which had already seeded, so a paper mulch garden seemed the best option.
Paper Mulch Gardens:
I first came across this method through a lovely old lady called Esther Deans. She wrote a book called ‘Growing without digging,’ and was one of the first people in Australia to promote this type of garden. Her simple method enabled anyone to quickly create a super productive garden over any soil, even directly over weeds or lawn.
A light sprinkle of organic fertiliser is applied to the ground. Overlapping layers of newspaper or cardboard are placed on top. This prevents weeds or grass growing, and they eventually become food for worms and other micro-organisms. The paper is followed by a thick layer of lucerne hay, which is a rich source of nitrogen (the deluxe version uses mushroom compost as well). This is then topped off with a thick layer of straw.
I later came across this method again at Bill Mollison’s Permaculture Institute. Big areas of tough and mostly useless bladey grass was covered with cardboard and lightly mulched with straw. Cuttings of sweet potato (Ipomea batatas) were pushed under the cardboard. In the rich soils of northern NSW these areas became covered with rampant sweet potato, enough to feed an army. Sometimes food trees were planted at the same time, which though unable to survive bladey grass, thrived with sweet potato ground cover.
The best way to improve any sort of soil is to incorporate organic matter. Paper mulch gardens quickly provide bulk organic matter and create an instant humus rich layer on top of the soil. The soil is never exposed to sun or the impact of rain and so develops excellent structure in the top layer where the feeder roots are. The paper and mulch create a microclimate conducive to worms and a rich variety of soil organisms. These convert the straw, lucerne and paper to humus and colloids and readily available plant foods.
I have been making paper and mulch gardens for more than twenty years; I have made them in suburbia, deserts, rainforests, swamps, sandy soils and clay soils. I have made them over thick lawn, weeds, even rock. Various materials can be used, applying the same principle. I have used woodchips, lawn clippings, seaweed, autumn leaves, peanut shells and sugar cane waste, just to name a few. This method has been successful in establishing trees, perennial gardens, groundcovers and vegetable gardens.
Masanobu Fukuoka states that he ‘knows nothing at all,’ and I think I know what he means. Every time I make one of these gardens it is an experiment. The results vary according to an unknowable amount of variations. Sometimes the straw will be full of weed seeds, sometimes termites will take the place of worms, sometimes there will be a short-term deficiency of nitrogen. The only thing I can confidently say about this method is that soil fertility and structure will always benefit.
One of the key factors in sustainability is to use on-site resources wherever possible, so I substituted the straw with water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) which is an abundant on-site aquatic weed. I think this will work reasonably well, but perhaps it is so coarse that it will not be as effective as straw in providing a weed barrier when the paper breaks down. I also greatly underestimated the effort involved in hauling it out of the canal and carrying it to the garden, especially in the heat of the tropical sun. Poor Ai Seud, helping me, must have thought this new farang crazier than the others.
Part of the beauty of using straw is that it is very easy to handle and quick to lay down (one of Esther Deans goals was to encourage gardening amongst the elderly and infirmed). Anyway, we’ll see how it goes. We flattened the weeds, applied rotted cow manure and a little compost and covered with newspaper. We then covered the paper with water hyacinth (it would have been good to have covered that with some straw, but none was on hand).
We then sowed seeds of cucumber, beans, corn, tomatoes, cayenne peppers, a few random sprinkles of bok choy and some cosmos flowers to encourage beneficial insects. Seeds were direct sown into a few handfuls of compost placed amongst the water hyacinth, a small rip in the paper underneath allowing the roots easy access to the improved soil underneath. Far more seeds than were necessary were used, they are cheap and it allows for attrition (they can be thinned later if needed). The area was well watered and should be ready to grow.
