Viewing post #240211 by SongofJoy

Oberon46 said:We turn the sod to discourage growth of grass. It is a bit of a project, but having grass coming up in your garden particularly among plants that are rather grassy looking themselves is pretty discouraging. I like the idea of the cardboard though. I read the article (and a few others as well) and will give that a go. One of the things that is different here is that the ground/soil is really cold. Anything that prohibits the sun from warming the soil is not good. The author observed this same thing and attributed it to the straw covering. I will mostly be planting things I have started in my garage, but there are a few things like carrots that just don't lend themselves to that so part will be sown with seeds. I was also thinking about running perforated pvc pipe down valleys between rows or hills and using the water from the downspouts to feed them. But isn't that a no-no --- using the pvc pipe? I figured this would get the water down to the roots and I can use liquid fish fertilizer in the barrel to evenly distribute food to the plants.

I compost tea okay? I would like to also set up a barrel to make that which I can easily do.

I've done that with the perforated pipe ... sort of like a French drain system ... and it worked well. I will be interested to see how you do with this and how it works for you. Even if you change your mind and don't use the PVC pipe.