F-san throws me a bone here...
Straw as compost. Hai, sensei...There is no need to prepare compost. I will not say that you do not need compost-- only that there is no need to work hard at making it.
HG
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The Helpful Gardener
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Farming With Straw
Now lots of folks I know have done this (sort of) for years and years. My neighbor Richard has used salt marsh hay on his garden for decades; I have certainly seen this done in strawberry rows since forever. But F-san moves it to a whole new place, that place that Ruth Stout discovered (in a bizarre parallel track at the same time a planet apart). Straw as pretty much it. Fertilizer, mulch, soil amendment; straw is a multi-purpose tool.
F-san throws me a bone here...
HG
F-san throws me a bone here...
HG
Last edited by The Helpful Gardener on Sun Aug 29, 2010 10:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
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rainbowgardener
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Yes, some of his issue also got more clear with this:
"To make compost by the usual method, the farmer works like crazy in the hot sun, chopping up the straw, adding water and lime, turning the pile..."
I prepare compost, but I don't work very hard at it. Throw stuff on the pile as it comes along (but I do always cover greens with browns so there's a balance) and let it sit there. I water the pile when I water my garden, which is easy since I'm standing there anyway. I don't turn it, except 3 times a year, when I turn it over to get to the finished stuff at the bottom.
I'm never standing out in the hot sun, doing anything to my compost and I never add lime or anything else that didn't come from my plants or my kitchen.
Perhaps Fukuoka-san wouldn't mind my "no-work" composting as much?
I did buy a bale of straw to use in my garden this year, but in general I'm trying to not import things, to have my garden be a self-sustaining closed loop. So for me the compost is better than buying straw from somewhere else.
Again a lot of the difference is between a small city back yard and having rice fields. He didn't buy his straw, it was the left overs of the grain he was growing.
So we all have to adapt the methods to our own situation and I am convinced that Fukuoka would agree with that. He wouldn't want his method to become a set of rigid rules, but rather principles to work with about how to be gardening with nature instead of interfering with it.
"To make compost by the usual method, the farmer works like crazy in the hot sun, chopping up the straw, adding water and lime, turning the pile..."
I prepare compost, but I don't work very hard at it. Throw stuff on the pile as it comes along (but I do always cover greens with browns so there's a balance) and let it sit there. I water the pile when I water my garden, which is easy since I'm standing there anyway. I don't turn it, except 3 times a year, when I turn it over to get to the finished stuff at the bottom.
I'm never standing out in the hot sun, doing anything to my compost and I never add lime or anything else that didn't come from my plants or my kitchen.
Perhaps Fukuoka-san wouldn't mind my "no-work" composting as much?
I did buy a bale of straw to use in my garden this year, but in general I'm trying to not import things, to have my garden be a self-sustaining closed loop. So for me the compost is better than buying straw from somewhere else.
Again a lot of the difference is between a small city back yard and having rice fields. He didn't buy his straw, it was the left overs of the grain he was growing.
So we all have to adapt the methods to our own situation and I am convinced that Fukuoka would agree with that. He wouldn't want his method to become a set of rigid rules, but rather principles to work with about how to be gardening with nature instead of interfering with it.
hey now, wait a minute!
Later in the book, we hear about his vegetable garden, and doesn't he admit to making and using compost for the veggies? Yes, using daikon radish is the foundation, and he does stress the topsoil that appeared over a 10 year span, but I'm pretty sure he admits to preparing and using compost for the veggies.
He also transplants tomatoes like the rest of us, because he says they don't produce otherwise in his neck of the woods.
Can somebody check? I don't have access to my books at the moment, but I'm pretty sure he was out there spreading compost and digging holes to plant tomatoes.
When he talks about his veggies, that's the part most of us do. None or very few of us is growing 1/4 acre or more of rice.
Later in the book, we hear about his vegetable garden, and doesn't he admit to making and using compost for the veggies? Yes, using daikon radish is the foundation, and he does stress the topsoil that appeared over a 10 year span, but I'm pretty sure he admits to preparing and using compost for the veggies.
He also transplants tomatoes like the rest of us, because he says they don't produce otherwise in his neck of the woods.
Can somebody check? I don't have access to my books at the moment, but I'm pretty sure he was out there spreading compost and digging holes to plant tomatoes.
When he talks about his veggies, that's the part most of us do. None or very few of us is growing 1/4 acre or more of rice.
Hi, again, Toil. As far as I can remember he doesn't use compost to fertilize the veggies at all. Maybe he uses it in nursery mixes when he starts seeds. And, yes, he does transplant certain vegetables like tomatoes, eggplant and peppers. He says that these vegetables are weak to begin with because of the way they have been bred for many generations...more so than other vegetables. They are also more sensitive to disease and insect problems than other vegetables, grow slowly and have a hard time out-competing the weeds when they are young. He doesn't stake these plants but lets the tomatoes and eggplants run along the ground or over small branches he leaves around for that purpose. Many plants appear the next season, of course, as vonunteers.
Let's see...he recommends fall vegetables like daikon, turnip, Chinese mustard and other crucifers partly because they are helpful at holding off winter and spring weeds. They easily volunteer after that. Legumes do better if they are put in clay pellets to protect them from slugs and birds until conditions allow them to germinate. Same with spinach, carrots and burdock. He lets squash and gourds run all over the place including up into the trees. Melons and cucumbers need to be protected from getting overgrown with weeds when they are young so the weeds around them are cut back for a month or so when the young plants are growing out.
I'm only mentioning these things to show that growing vegetables like wild plants is more than just tossing out the seeds and hoping for the best. But it is mostly that, at least where Fukuoka lives. It seems all right to me to be pragmatic about things like starting certain vegetables from seed and later transplanting them into a small hole. If one were a purist, I suppose he or she could either grow tomatoes that need transplanting in a regular organic garden situation like the one his wife, Ayako, maintained near their house in the village, or just not grow them at all.
Let's see...he recommends fall vegetables like daikon, turnip, Chinese mustard and other crucifers partly because they are helpful at holding off winter and spring weeds. They easily volunteer after that. Legumes do better if they are put in clay pellets to protect them from slugs and birds until conditions allow them to germinate. Same with spinach, carrots and burdock. He lets squash and gourds run all over the place including up into the trees. Melons and cucumbers need to be protected from getting overgrown with weeds when they are young so the weeds around them are cut back for a month or so when the young plants are growing out.
I'm only mentioning these things to show that growing vegetables like wild plants is more than just tossing out the seeds and hoping for the best. But it is mostly that, at least where Fukuoka lives. It seems all right to me to be pragmatic about things like starting certain vegetables from seed and later transplanting them into a small hole. If one were a purist, I suppose he or she could either grow tomatoes that need transplanting in a regular organic garden situation like the one his wife, Ayako, maintained near their house in the village, or just not grow them at all.
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Thanks Larry! Those are the kinds of details that are missing in the book. I was thinking about asking, for example, which specific seeds needed to be put in seedballs (but I think I was in the wrong chapter at the time... ) 
I had an interesting and fortuitous experiment this year. Early in April, I had set out several transplants of tomatoes, still in their pots, to harden off and acclimate extra-early in a newly (over the winter) sheet mulched tomato bed that I dug into Ruth Stout/Emilia Hazelip style raised bed -- dig out the topsoil from the path to subsoil tossing the good soil onto the bed, then mulch heavily with hay. I used Wall-o-Waters and homemade WoW's to protect them as it was something like 3 weeks too early. However, I wasn't able to get to planting them for another week to 10 days. To my surprise, when I removed the WoW's to dig the planting holes, there was a volunteer potato leafed tomato that had sprouted right NEXT to one of the pots.
Since in my garden, a potato-leaf was likely to be a Brandywine, I let this volunteer have the WoW protected spot and planted the intended transplant elsewhere. This volunteer has matched the transplants which were started indoors back in February and carefully tended through the late winter months and started producing delicious fruits at basically the same time as other Brandywines and large fruited tomatoes.
I'm going to try to intentionally replicate this "direct seed tomato growing method" next spring.
By the way, I chose this area last fall to be this year's tomato bed because while it was still a wild blackberry patch, a huge Solanum nigram -- 6 feet tall -- had grown through the blackberries, overwhelming them. I thought if this member of the Solanacea grows so well here, then so should tomatoes... and they are indeed doing very well here this year. I made a hot pepper bed just beyond the drip line of an apple tree for the same reason. I'm really becoming convinced that Solanacea and Rosaceae maybe good guild members.
I had an interesting and fortuitous experiment this year. Early in April, I had set out several transplants of tomatoes, still in their pots, to harden off and acclimate extra-early in a newly (over the winter) sheet mulched tomato bed that I dug into Ruth Stout/Emilia Hazelip style raised bed -- dig out the topsoil from the path to subsoil tossing the good soil onto the bed, then mulch heavily with hay. I used Wall-o-Waters and homemade WoW's to protect them as it was something like 3 weeks too early. However, I wasn't able to get to planting them for another week to 10 days. To my surprise, when I removed the WoW's to dig the planting holes, there was a volunteer potato leafed tomato that had sprouted right NEXT to one of the pots.
Since in my garden, a potato-leaf was likely to be a Brandywine, I let this volunteer have the WoW protected spot and planted the intended transplant elsewhere. This volunteer has matched the transplants which were started indoors back in February and carefully tended through the late winter months and started producing delicious fruits at basically the same time as other Brandywines and large fruited tomatoes.
I'm going to try to intentionally replicate this "direct seed tomato growing method" next spring.
By the way, I chose this area last fall to be this year's tomato bed because while it was still a wild blackberry patch, a huge Solanum nigram -- 6 feet tall -- had grown through the blackberries, overwhelming them. I thought if this member of the Solanacea grows so well here, then so should tomatoes... and they are indeed doing very well here this year. I made a hot pepper bed just beyond the drip line of an apple tree for the same reason. I'm really becoming convinced that Solanacea and Rosaceae maybe good guild members.
my mind rebelled 
so I checked out the google books version of one-straw. Check the footnote on page 28.
I think the reason I remembered that one so hard, is that I decided that I am no farmer, just a gardener with no garden. My non-garden seems more like Fukuoka's kitchen garden than like his grain fields.
so I checked out the google books version of one-straw. Check the footnote on page 28.
"Mr Fukuoka makes compost of his wood ashes and other organic household wastes. He applies this to his kitchen garden.
I think the reason I remembered that one so hard, is that I decided that I am no farmer, just a gardener with no garden. My non-garden seems more like Fukuoka's kitchen garden than like his grain fields.
??? No garden? No community garden? These are portentous words. Together with "drifting, unmoored," it sounds like your summer was very painful.Toil wrote:... I am no farmer, just a gardener with no garden. My non-garden seems more like Fukuoka's kitchen garden than like his grain fields.
I'm sorry.
Cynthia
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The Helpful Gardener
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Toil, I never doubt for a second that if AS suddenly comes across a half acre, she might try rice. 
I hope you come across some land yourself. Still it seems you are keeping in the realm with the 'scope, and learning time has great values as well...
Daikon has become a darling of the permaculture movement not simply because they reseed easily, but because large root vegetables have a mechanical effect on soil as well as the chemical soil building we talk about often... these crops wedge down into the soil, breaking it up and moving towards sub soil, wherer minerals often depleted in upper layers are more abundant. This is Nature building soil friability; think of it as slow motion plowing (without the work or the soil damage).
There is a level of intervention in cutting back those weeds around the melons or planting out sets, there is a level of intervention in composting, there is a level of intervention in weeding, there is a level of intervention in using herbicides. I think the important thing here is to match a level of intervention you feel comfortable with to a level of intervention that does the least amount of harm to the environment, as that is what is best for the plant in the long term.
I think how we treat weeds usually is less beneficial than F-san's kama to soil biologies, and therefore is deletorious to plant health in the long run. I am switching up strategies and I do not expect this year to be what I get in the long run; I think every year will bring increasing returns. There is a slightly delayed gratification to organics, or gardening naturally, that puts many off of this approach. But the successes come more easily with time; the tomatoes this year are more prolific, disesase free and, most importantly, tastier than ever. My soil is sweetening and strengthening, the worms are getting more prolific and vigourous. The garden ran on auto-pilot this year due to mass distractions, and for the most part it has been successes. Natural gardening is not only possible, it is sustainable, and with less effort. It only takes a change of mind to make the change in the garden...
I hope you come across some land yourself. Still it seems you are keeping in the realm with the 'scope, and learning time has great values as well...Daikon has become a darling of the permaculture movement not simply because they reseed easily, but because large root vegetables have a mechanical effect on soil as well as the chemical soil building we talk about often... these crops wedge down into the soil, breaking it up and moving towards sub soil, wherer minerals often depleted in upper layers are more abundant. This is Nature building soil friability; think of it as slow motion plowing (without the work or the soil damage).
There is a level of intervention in cutting back those weeds around the melons or planting out sets, there is a level of intervention in composting, there is a level of intervention in weeding, there is a level of intervention in using herbicides. I think the important thing here is to match a level of intervention you feel comfortable with to a level of intervention that does the least amount of harm to the environment, as that is what is best for the plant in the long term.
I think how we treat weeds usually is less beneficial than F-san's kama to soil biologies, and therefore is deletorious to plant health in the long run. I am switching up strategies and I do not expect this year to be what I get in the long run; I think every year will bring increasing returns. There is a slightly delayed gratification to organics, or gardening naturally, that puts many off of this approach. But the successes come more easily with time; the tomatoes this year are more prolific, disesase free and, most importantly, tastier than ever. My soil is sweetening and strengthening, the worms are getting more prolific and vigourous. The garden ran on auto-pilot this year due to mass distractions, and for the most part it has been successes. Natural gardening is not only possible, it is sustainable, and with less effort. It only takes a change of mind to make the change in the garden...