Equipment for large-scale agriculture is too big or too expensive, and many home gardening tools don’t work efficiently on larger jobs or break easily. Tiny farming on plots up to two or three acres requires its own special gear…
Much of veggie farming is playing garden defense. Yesterday’s garlic surprise attack was handled as an immediate emergency action, by hand-picking larvae before they could really tunnel in. The other no-chemicals approach is row cover, which seems to be laid … Read the rest
It doesn’t sound like a fair contest, the wheel hoe going up against the tiny tractor, but that’s the experiment underway this season. With all the rain recently, weeds are primed to surge. So far, it’s mostly thistle and clumps … Read the rest
A tool in its element! Wheel hoes are great, and this particular one* is fantastic. Unchecked, you can see what weeds get up to given a week or two. This stretch of dirt was protected under the edge of the … Read the rest
Transplanted butternut squash seem to be doing fine in the great outdoors. The row cover will protect them from the fairly cucumber beetles, until they’re big enough not to be bothered. The beetles eat the plants and can also pass … Read the rest
Mixing a small batch of green onion seed, half fresh from this year, half from years ago and no longer viable. Why? The mix of dead and alive seed makes it easy to spread quickly, getting good coverage and not … Read the rest
Two lines of electric fence rope, one for deer, one for groundhogs, running through the so-very-healthy grass, perfectly illustrates the nature of the war on weeds. Maybe I should use less militaristic terms, but that’s what comes naturally—guess it’s my … Read the rest
Big Agriculture has its genetic engineering and laserbeam weeding; on the tiny farm, sharpened wooden stakes and startling but harmless electric shocks are about as high tech as it gets. Today I laid out the groundhog electric fence line—poly rope … Read the rest