Wojciech G
I have solved entirely slugs problem in my garden using two methods together. First one was to place some objects on the ground where slugs hide for a day (like an old wooden planks). Every morning I was checking under them and collecting slugs. Second one involves an UV flash light. I was going for a walk when it’s been dark, slugs (and caterpillars, like tomato hornworms by the way) are glowing in the UV light, so it has been very easy to pick them up from plants. After systematic use of these two from the start of the season, I no longer have a slug problem. I know that this is not possible for large areas, but for small gardens like mine it works wonders.
hugo m
Love your winter cover crop Thomas!
So to pût it simply, you feed them. But the rotting plants feed your soils, which feed your plants.
And the snails prefer the decaying plants.
It dépends on the years whether i expérience problems.
It can change within two weeks as well!
The snails became slow and dissolved this year i noticed. Disease… They did no more damage after.
I work at a farmer who had loads of covercrops. Sée if hé can give me some seeds.
I harvested quite some alfalfa seeds today. Which is rare on the granity soils where i live. It s some old variety.
If you or someone is keen?
I’ll post a picture later
Justin .
I really love that idea of the cover crop to deal with the slugs! When should we plant it? I have now been given permission to plant in a large garden, so I am hoping to learn what I should do to the grass lawn (take up the turf and turn it upside down then distribute the cover crop seeds? Or…) and when (maybe too late for Winter cover crop already?), to prepare for lots of TPS potatoes and tomatoes and a few other things. I’m in South West UK and on clay soil, the grass seems healthy. Any advice on this would be much appreciated!
Thomas P
Sorry for the mistake: I don’t use rye and barley but rye and oats in my cover crop
Ji @Justin . , it’s the best time to saw cover here in south west France, so I think you can still saw it in south Uk. My deadline here is prior to the 15th of november. I will have to create a specific post on this topic, because it is quite technical. It is all inspired by Fukuoka but adapted to our climates and a lot more precise than all he said.
To put it in few fords: and for “winter” cover crop:
- Till once and for all
- saw manually a mix of cereals (oats, rye) and leguminous plants (peas, vetch, faba beans), and you can add a few others that will flower at the same time
- consider dosages like this: on a fragile/poor soil a 50/50 mix : 1 unit of cereals and 1 unit of leguminous plants. For example my “recipe” for this year :
- cereals: 1 unit, share between 60% of rye and 40% of oats: as the rye I am using should be sawn at 50kg/ha when pure that means my dosage is 60%x50kg/ha=30kg/ha. oats should be sawn at 100kg/ha when pure so 40%x100kg/ha=40kg/ha.
- leguminous plants, same logic, at 33% each (for me, and for this year): winter peas 80kg/haX33%=26,5kg/kg/ha, vetch 50kg/haX33%=16,5kg/ha, faba beans (special variety, not the one we eat) 150kg/hax33%=50kg/ha
-recover slightly with straw or some organic material and… let it rain! - by the end of may all these species are flowering together, you get the maximum of biomass and it is time these plants are the most fragile: you pull them down with a special tool very easy to fabricate, and then you can start transplanting.
So you go from perennial to annuals: then the thing is to not let the annuals come back too strongly, so it may be a good idea to cover crop multiple times (winter AND summer cover crops) prior to cultivate vegetables: the more dense AND high the cover crop is the more fertile and “ready” your soil is.
As years goes by, the cover crop grows denser and higher,AND it’s “diggested” faster by all the biology (fungi, bacterias, slugs, etc), so you add more cereals (straws and roots dense in carbon) to your mix in order to not let the soil “naked” by the end of the season, which will lead automatically to the come back of the perennials, which you have to weed manually, or using a temporary plastic tarp… something that nobody likes.
So you see: may sound a bit esoteric at first, but then very logical process, and progresses.
@Julia D : I will try to do small patches for reproduction next year. By mid november I will have implanted a field test with about 50 to 80 varieties of different cereals I am getting from laboratories, farmers and french ngos. They are nearly all landraces: wheat, rye, oats, barley, and also spelt, emmer and einkorn.
I will saw from 100 to 200seeds of each varieties on places of about 1square meter, and will be looking for:
- soil cover (how fast and how dense it grows prior to the winter)
- how early it flowers (the sooner the better to implant cultures)
- how high, and how heavy straws are, and how strong the root system is (the bigger the better)
Then next year multiply the best and then little by little a more diversity-rich miw of cereals.
@Justin . :as it is be a bit late in season to bring all those species together, you may try to find one cereal and one leguminous plant, for example one rye and one vetch: use the dosage as indicated as if they were sawn and see what happens. It is quite a soild and land dependant approach, you may or may bot find it convenient for where you live.
As my friend Yann says: don’t start too big, a few square meters may be good to start seeing by your own eyes what happens, then if you like it, amplify. As a reminder and to see how good cover crops looks like at flowering time when the soil start getting rich enough I repost this adress: Photos - Site de lesjardinssauvages !
These photos are a few years old, cover crops now are higher (winter : 6 to 7 feet, summer: 8 to 12 feet) and denser
these were mine by the end of may this year. As you see rye is high: I am 6,5 feet tall. It would need to be a little bit denser to properly cultivate without having to weed too much throughout the summer season
and this is the tool I am using, it could be much shorter, and lighter. A patch of one hundred square meter was done in a quarter of an hour using that tool
Justin .
@Thomas P thanks for all the info! Wow I really have to hurry then! I’m also wondering, is end of May not a bit late for planting out potato and tomato seedlings? And, if I wanted to plant them earlier, can I just pull the cover crop down earlier?
And, regarding tilling, as I have no equipment, do you have recommendations of how to do that? And, is just turning the grass upside down (cutting the top layer, ‘turf’, and turning it so the grass is pointing downwards into the ground) a bad idea or is that a good substitute for tilling? Many thanks!
Oh and if anyone in the UK has suggestions as to where to get seeds for such cover crops in a hurry, I would be grateful to hear about it!
Debbie A
Hello, Thomas! Do you sow the next crop before flattening the cereal so that the seed will be covered? Do you have a video showing how to use the tool? Thank you for sharing your knowledge, especially the ratios of cereal to legumes.
Thomas P
@Justin . for your tomatoes and potatoes seedlings I think- but I am not absolutely sure in your place - it is not too late : for tomatoes it is ok, potatoes I don’t know. the thing is more to get big transplants, not small transplants, because the cover crop on the ground is quite thick.
Then: regarding tilling, I don’t know exactly what you will get doing that, personnaly I would ask neighbour for an appropriate engine, or, on a very small place, do it manually, with a traditionnal tool.
@Debbie A : yes the ratio is the most essential part most of us don’t know, or don’t get. I should add that - of course - you can add other vegetables (for example crucifers), but be careful with the flowering time: when a plant flowers it’s the moment it is the more fragile and the less likely to grow again, from the ground (bad bad scenario!!!), so it is better not to flatten it prior to flowering time.
I will find a video using the plank, but not shure I can upload it. Actually: with the tool you flatten AND HURT the cover crop: that helps bringing it to decay. See this rolofaca video: it is not cutting but hurting the plants
Rolofaca 4m - GREGOIRE AGRI - YouTube
Otherwise some plants grow again from the ground
@Debbie A :
I sow a summer cover crop prior to flatten the winter cover crop. From this year we know we can do it with corn. And actually (that will sound crazy but that is true 
) my friend throw potatoes at the appropriate density and then and flatten the cover crop. He has been doing it for 6 years, yields are OK. For the rest of it, we will do tests, from next year on. I think landracing will help selecting for vegetables that will germinate, go through the cover and then thrive. i think that will do with big seeds, and don’t have to much hope for little ones such as carrots
Debbie A
Thanks for the video and explaining the process. Have you tried broadcast sowing of seed into the stand of cover crop before flattening it? If I recall correctly from Fukuoka’s One Straw Revolution, he would sow seeds for the next crop just before cutting down the current crop’s stems which would act as mulch protecting the seed.
Debbie A
I would like to try alternating a winter cover crop with a summer crop of squash, hoping to also suppress some weeds in the process. Thank you for starting this discussion. Good stuff.
Justin .
Thanks again Thomas. And that sounds cool about throwing potatoes like that! Do they still end up growing underground or does he get a lot that are becoming green because near the surface? Also I would love to hear how you deal with that, like do you bury them then dig the soil to heap it up on the potatoes?
I look forward to that post you will post about this, your work sounds so interesting.
Thomas P
Potatoes just fall on the ground and then grow from this point, so you get some green ones, but you can reuse them next year as seedlings.
And actually, potato done like this is the only vegetable dependant on bringing some more straw or hay, at about 250g/square meter. Which we do not like. Because otherwise, the cover crop is digested too fast: you get too much weeds and too much green potatoes.
By the way, we have loads of colorado beetles in France, which we have to find and kill manually… For all those reasons, and because potato is so cheap (yet!) we do not like too much cultivating potatoes: too labor and input (hay) intensive…
@Debbie A if you want to do cucurbits first year without having a dense and high enough cover crop, or if you want or need to start directly from a meadow without tilling it you can consider reusing a plastic tarp around mid march and then plant around the 15th of may (that is my timing here in south west France nearby the Central Massif). By mid septembre you get your cucurbits, and can sow your winter cover crop. This is what I am doing reusing plastic tarps from farmers around my place: they use them for silage just one year, then have to recycle it: that is when I come… See the picture here (my patch of moschatas), shoot on mid June, by the end of June you cannot see the plastic anymore, soil is entirely covered by vegetation. So no watering, I just added a handful of manure per plant and holes were implanted at one meter in every direction.
Another alternative: if you do cover crop this winter and your cover crop is not dense and high enough by the end of may you will have to bring some hay, from 500g/m2 to 1kg maybe. Otherwise it will get too weedy.