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cab
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tahir
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tahir
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Bugs
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tahir
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tahir
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cab
Joined: 01 Nov 2004
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 Posted: Wed Jan 04, 06 12:09 pm Post subject: |
 
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| Bugs wrote: |
| I once read about a system called lazy beds in the Kitchen Garden magazine, which was I think part of a rotation, involving potatoes (maybe root veg too) as the first crop, to break up the soil without requiring too much manpower. Obviously this would mean getting to play with less machinery, but I am sure that it was supposed to be used in Ireland for just the purpose Tahir is after, ie new vegetable gardens (only on a cottage scale). Has anyone tried this? I thought maybe I have read about it here too. |
The lazy bed system used up in the Hebrides and in Ireland wasn't quite the same as what Kitchen Garden published, but it was nonetheless a fascinating way of getting the most out of a very poor and very thin soil.
The concept is that you put the soil around the outside of the beds onto the beds, typically turning any grass over on top of it as I described in the last post, and that establishes the basis of the lazy bed. You fertilise that with plenty of muck (your typical croft had sheep and a cow or two, so no shortage of that!), and if your croft was close to the sea you also mulched with seaweed. You plant your spuds in there (in the first year, of course, there's more weeding) and then dress it with straw, if you have any, or reeds, or yellow flag. Back in the days of thatshed roofs, hebridean farmers would use last years thatch as a mulch, said thatch being full of tar from burning peat fires in the house all winter, and this went a long way to reducing insect and fungal pests. After growing potatoes, you grow wheat; that's your crop rotation!
You still see the outlines of these beds in hebridean crofts; many of the crofts still have sheep grazing them, but most don't cultivate spuds and wheat any more. The old lazy beds have coarser, thicker grass on them. Up in county Donegal in Ireland you can still see where people abandoned the land in some places during the potato famine, their old farms picked out by the lazy beds. Even in many of the upland areas of England you see their old furrow patters on land that is now considered too steep and thin soiled for crops, but on which sheep still graze.
Talking to real old timers in Donegal, I never encountered the practice of using old thatch as a mulch for the potato crop. I wonder whether this is anything to do with why potato blight hit much harder in Ireland than in the Hebrides?
Last edited by cab on Wed Jan 04, 06 12:12 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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cab
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Behemoth
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judith
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cab
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Bugs
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cab
Joined: 01 Nov 2004
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| Posted: Wed Jan 04, 06 12:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Bugs wrote: |
I'd forgotten about the muck though! That's what didn't seem right and why I thought root crops would work. I wonder if you could use anything else in the first year..what about Jerusalem artichokes  . Would it be too compacted/fresh for beans etc, since there's the idea of planting them in to trenches of very new composting material?
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I'm sure that Jerusalem artichokes would be fine in there, once the muck has rotted down a little. Beans might do okay, but they don't so much shade out their competition as spuds do, so they'll take more weeding. Then the whole concept of the bed being 'lazy' starts to fall down a little  Crops that did best in lazy beds were those that outcompeted their neighbours, so cereals and spuds are the way to go, really.
We were really lucky to have stayed with Ellies great aunt on the Isle of Lewis this summer, this tough old octagenarian who still grows her own spuds wouldn't have it that we could stay on the island anywhere but in her house. And she would blather on for hours about life in the black houses, on the crofts. Fascinating stuff.
[/quote]
Do you want to mention to Tahir what a good article it would make, or shall I?[/quote]
Be my guest. |
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