renewablejohn
Member
- Location
- lancs
Continuation of the self sufficient market garden discussion on techniques we use on our farm to substantially reduce the number of production hours.
Having spent many years running a commercial nursery and selling at farmers markets we where hit hard by the recession in 2008 and changed tack with a diversification into biomass. As we had spent so long building up the nursery and growing areas we did not want to lose the facility so converted it into 15 family sized Landshare plots plus as part of the Landshare rules we had to maintain a plot ourselves but with my time taken up doing biomass the only way it would work was by using my experience and make the whole growing process as efficient as possible.
The basic solution I came up with was sow, transplant, harvest. The wasted time I identified was watering,weeding and pest protection. The watering was solved using our commercial growing techniques of flood tables and automatic watering. The weeding by heat treated soil/compost, carpet underlay and mulch. The pest protection by flood tables, windbreak netting and copper banding.
Having spent many years running a commercial nursery and selling at farmers markets we where hit hard by the recession in 2008 and changed tack with a diversification into biomass. As we had spent so long building up the nursery and growing areas we did not want to lose the facility so converted it into 15 family sized Landshare plots plus as part of the Landshare rules we had to maintain a plot ourselves but with my time taken up doing biomass the only way it would work was by using my experience and make the whole growing process as efficient as possible.
The basic solution I came up with was sow, transplant, harvest. The wasted time I identified was watering,weeding and pest protection. The watering was solved using our commercial growing techniques of flood tables and automatic watering. The weeding by heat treated soil/compost, carpet underlay and mulch. The pest protection by flood tables, windbreak netting and copper banding.