With my hands itching to start experimenting with all the wonderful Permaculture techniques learnt at the PDC in bali, I decided to start with 'No-dig' beds for a fresh source of veggies for our dining table. With not enough biomass available at Chaitraban yet, we nevertheless decided to proceed with the experiment, with whatever we had....
We had,
- Rolls of cardboard,without ink (Unfortunately, India still has leaded ink for printing. If it wasn't so, newspaper would have been the cheapest option)
- Patches of the leftover of some veggies like dill, spinach and fenugreek. We followed the 'chop-n-drop' technique and dropped them on place. At that time, we did not have enough green biomass, but had to make do with what we had.
- Dry cut hay. We had let the grass grow tall on unused patches of land after the last monsoon. In the absense of helping hands, we made a deal with the villagers. They cut the grass for us and in return got half of the hay for their cattle. This worked wonderfully w.ell and we had a big pile of dried hay. This was not really ideal as there were always some leftover seedheads in the bales, but most had fallen off on land and we did the best we could, afterall!
- Manure. Having a cow at Chaitraban was still a dream, and we had to import a truck load of cow manure to fertilise the young trees and veggies for the time being
- Some topsoil.
We layered the same in the order- Greens, Cardboard, Manure, Dry biomass, manure, dry biomass, manure, soil, mulch of the dry biomass. After each layer, we moistened it just a bit.
The plan is to grow the greens and follow chop-n-drop for the nitrogen.
Now, our job was to keep the bed moist and to see what happens...and...
After a week...
Voila!!! I picked up some mulch and explored underneath and what a treasure I found! The bed was teeming with tiny creatures of all shapes and sizes :-) And I could already see earthworms! It was the most wonderful and satisfying moments at Chaitraban for me! Now, the beds waited to be planted with some nice veggies for our dining table...
We had,
- Rolls of cardboard,without ink (Unfortunately, India still has leaded ink for printing. If it wasn't so, newspaper would have been the cheapest option)
- Patches of the leftover of some veggies like dill, spinach and fenugreek. We followed the 'chop-n-drop' technique and dropped them on place. At that time, we did not have enough green biomass, but had to make do with what we had.
- Dry cut hay. We had let the grass grow tall on unused patches of land after the last monsoon. In the absense of helping hands, we made a deal with the villagers. They cut the grass for us and in return got half of the hay for their cattle. This worked wonderfully w.ell and we had a big pile of dried hay. This was not really ideal as there were always some leftover seedheads in the bales, but most had fallen off on land and we did the best we could, afterall!
- Manure. Having a cow at Chaitraban was still a dream, and we had to import a truck load of cow manure to fertilise the young trees and veggies for the time being
- Some topsoil.
We layered the same in the order- Greens, Cardboard, Manure, Dry biomass, manure, dry biomass, manure, soil, mulch of the dry biomass. After each layer, we moistened it just a bit.
The plan is to grow the greens and follow chop-n-drop for the nitrogen.
Now, our job was to keep the bed moist and to see what happens...and...
After a week...
Voila!!! I picked up some mulch and explored underneath and what a treasure I found! The bed was teeming with tiny creatures of all shapes and sizes :-) And I could already see earthworms! It was the most wonderful and satisfying moments at Chaitraban for me! Now, the beds waited to be planted with some nice veggies for our dining table...
