NO DIG/NO TILL: KEEP THE EDGES CLEAN!

Welcome back to another episode, folks. We've just had an epic rapid downpour, which is much welcome, much needed. It was getting very muggy and it's really been so dry this spring. I think a lot of people in Europe have been having that problem and it's really helpful for the gardeners to have an epic rainfall. You can see we've got beautiful crops and a lot of people asking how we keep the garden squeaky clean. And also something I really want to talk about is how we keep the edges clean, because that's something that's not talked about enough. The pros and cons of different ways of doing that. Midsummer. We're just getting ready for the feast. Eggs and salad from the garden. Beer from our village breweries. Bread from the Rico ring. Smoked chicken from the farm. Salad. Oh, and this is the fish seal. It's traditional here. And potatoes, cheeses. I mean, it brings in perspectives. I'm here at the bottom of top field. Look how tall this grass is. We're coming through here at the top of the field with the cows and sheep now and the eggmobiles. But this is rampant grass growth from the power of ch. Well, we deserve it. It's been oh, so dry. Every bit of rain counts at this point. Now, we've always prided ourselves on a super tidy market garden. And there's multiple reasons for doing that. One, it's the first thing you see when you come into the farm. And so it's a marketing piece too. If customers come into the farm, see it's highly ordered, super clean, then that traits translates to quality and care, which then translates to all of our other products as well. Another thing is it's just a clean working environment with these wood chip pathways. You never get muddy boots. Even after this epic rainfall event. There's no standing water. And these fields, the old and new north, were compacted clay pastures. And we had a lot of standing water whenever it rained here. And so clean working environment that's aesthetically beautiful is really good for motivation. It's nothing worse than coming to a super messy, untidy garden full of weeds. And so we pride ourselves on keeping it squeaky clean. One thing, however, that's not talked about so much is keeping the edges clean. And there's different ways to do that. I want to talk today about the pros and cons of that because I like the method that we have. And we've just done a big job now going through cutting the roots because as you can see, we're surrounded by big spruce Trees and they have very thirsty roots that reach out well beyond the beds. And they come up into the beds and start sucking water out of the beds, taking it from the crops. So what we've done twice now in six years is chopped with a spade vertically, about 20cm deep, especially on these back edges where we're bordering the forest. And what we found is a bunch of spruce roots that are maybe 5 to 8 millimeters in diameter. So quite big roots. And they certainly extend out into the beds, certainly the first beds here. And so it's a quick job to do that. Most years what we're doing is coming along and just using a Korean hoe. You can see some of these roots here that we've cut. So quite significant roots that by the time you go along here they will suck out quite a lot of water from the bed. Most other years what we'll do is use a Korean hoe, a sharp, pointed, triangular hoe, and just tease out the roots of couch grass or any horsetail, anything creeping that's coming in from the edge. And that's a quick, easy process because those things are growing into wood chip. What you find is when you do have grasses growing into wood chip, it's really no big deal to get rid of them. They're very superficially rooted. And so our annual maintenance is very slim. And so I found that this is the quickest way to maintain a really good clean edge. Now something I have seen that concerns me is people using plastic on the edges of their beds, typically the woven landscape fabric. That could be a major cause of concern. If I was to put plastic down on top of the grass here and keep it totally clean, that could work certainly as a short term solution. But more often than not, what I've seen is people putting down plastic and then with messy working practices where you've got wood chips or compost getting spilled on top of that, and then before you know it, you've got couch grass and other grasses rooting through that. And then if you don't take care of that, you're going to have plastic buried under grasses and you'll never get it out again. Also, it's worth pointing out that if you put black plastic on the ground, things like couch grass can just point up through it and before you know it you'll be lost. So I think we've got to reduce the amount of plastic in gardens. Overall. We use a lot of not very permanent plastic in vegetable production anyway. Typically our fleeces will last for three or four seasons, but then they need to be replaced. So I. I don't like it. I like aesthetic beauty and I like functionality. And I think it's even quicker to maintain the edge like this. You can see where we've actually cut here. We've got a little lip, and that lip is really useful to us because when this gets dried up by the sun, it'll help knock back the grasses on the edge, because anything with its roots getting dried up is going to die back. It's very easy to cut the grass here. We've designed it around the width of the mowers, but I think a functional edge like this is very quick to maintain. As I said, we've just been around twice now with a deep edging, and then every year it's a quick weed through with a Korean hoe. There's a lot to be said for using wood chip as a pathway. Not only is it retaining a lot of moisture, but any creeping grasses that do come in are so superficial that they're super easy to weed out. It's a beautiful way to edge your garden, and I think potentially quicker than using plastics or anything else. The only other option I could see that's practical is putting a vertical barrier, something that's, you know, put down 30cm in the ground and is actually blocking roots coming through. The only reason I wouldn't consider that is that these trees will root under whatever you put in. Not only is that a massive amount of work to put in a vertical barrier, but these trees will root right under that and then they'll pop back up in your beds. So we found no issues at all with just cutting with a spade 20, 25 centimeters deep. It's taken a couple of hours to go around the whole garden and as you can see, it's squeaky clean. Now, another thing to say is it's worth keeping these edges well maintained. Part of managing a garden, maintaining the space around the garden. I'm just going to make the view a bit wider angle because if I keep this land close cut that A, breaks up the vigour of these grasses, that they're not so aggressive in their creeping action, but B, it means I'll get far less slugs or voles coming into the garden. Now, most growers in Sweden are plagued by the Spanish murder slug, and it's pretty big problem over here, but we don't have that problem. We have a very small snail and slug population that's typically taken out by birds. I see some hunting just right now, but we never had a big problem. And I think that's because they don't crawl in because they've got to get over short grass and then they've got to get over wood chips which are quite hard surface for them. The other thing is voles. Now we don't have vole problems in our garden. We never have. We actually only ever had signs of voles in the new north and this other block over there and just in one bed right next to the forest and they quickly disappeared again. And it's worth pointing out that we've had really episodic problem with voles in the fields. In our silver pasture lanes, we lost a lot of trees to voles over the years. We've had three winters now that were perfect conditions for voles. The ground wasn't frozen, they could just run around munching trees. But interesting that we've not seen it in the garden. And I think having these clear mown grass ways around and wood chip really helps with that. So that's my take on it. You do have other options, but I've seen too many disadvantages and personally I don't want a garden surrounded by plastic like we come out in here and it's just a joyful experience to work in this space. I mean who wouldn't want a garden as beautiful as this? So I hope you found that interesting in some way. That's my thoughts on that for now. I'll be doing a big farm tour this week to keep you up to date with what's going on. We got grasses growing up to my shoulder height already and this was the time two years ago we were in the most severe drought. It's been drought like conditions this year, but we've just had some nice heavy rain in the last few days and again today. And that's always a joyful time to get out and explore the land and look at things. Always worth exploring and looking at your land at the time when something unusual is going on. It only rains about 5 or 6% of the time here. So whilst most people run inside to get dry, that's a perfect time to go looking at water flows, look at how water channels off roads and tracks, look at if there's any erosion going on in beds or whatever. Always good to observe your land in unusual times. So that's something I highly recommend for others to do too. So that's it for today folks. Hope you get something out of that. 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