Living Mulch Sustainable Farming near Missoula

http://www.permies.com

Helen Atthowe, Missoula County Horticulturist (1995-2010) http://www.veganicpermaculture.com speaks about a variety of experiments with living mulch. She covers minimum till, no till and full till.

Helen talks about creating beneficial insect habitats: bees, parasitic wasps, (in april she was experiencing a 1-to-1 ratio of parasitized aphids to non parasitized aphids), spiders, ground beetles ...

Broccoli, brussel sprouts and cabbage yields are explored. Using three foot wide raised beds.

The minimum till was done with a single shank chisel plow followed by a light tilling with a tiller/rotovator.

Living mulches experimented with include clover which contributes nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, but also competes with the production crop. The trick is to find the balance and get the best of all worlds.

Music by Jimmy Pardo

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• living
• mulch
• sustainability
• farming
• eco
• green
• organic
• permaculture
• missoula
• montana
• garden
• wildlife
• howto
• garderning
• diy

[ThunderPreacher]

Thank you for showing a vegan example.

[paulwheaton12]

@ThunderPreacher I plan to have lots of samples of vegan stuff as well as omni stuff.

[jitakyoeiJL]

Best videos, thanks Paul. Any videos documenting the transformation of an urban/ suburban front and back yard into a permaculture food forest?

[paulwheaton12]

@jitakyoeiJL Not yet. Although I do still have some footage of Norris's place in Portland - an urban lot loaded to the gills with permaculture stuff.

[burramaluca]

Hahaha - you met your match this time Paul! Love the new ending ;-)

[paulwheaton12]

@burramaluca Maybe next time I'll do the editing when Helen isn't sitting right there!

[evantspurrell]

Try sheet mulching and using a more diverse living mulch. i'm really not surprised the clover overwhelmed the Brussels sprouts with the methodology you used

[astrialkil]

@Wildwesty roots bring up minerals like potasium from the sub soil !

[Teddybearcop48]

Very very interesting. !!!

[Wildwesty]

can someone explain how clover adds potasium and phosphorus? i know it uses rysobium to fix atmosrpheric nitrogen but you cant get the other nutrients from no where

[polyaussie]

@jitakyoeiJL This video is an example of one of the best permaculture backyards in the world. It is in Melbourne Australia which is a meditteranean climate

[sukitmang]

i love this video.... I think that with the right polyculture of plants with a better partitioning of resources would be helpful. maybe a white clover paired with roman chamomile as an insectary... they both stay short and run to a nice groundcover.

also... I know that all plants have a die off period at some point in the year... it may only be a matter of seeding the right crops in at the right time..with a seed drill this could be quick work and it may eliminate much of the need for machines

[mikebrowni]

Thanks for the video.

Gave me a lot to investigate before planting this springs garden.

[hatthowe]

@evantspurrell Yes, a less aggressive clover is a better choice; the red clover was great for weed suppression/insect control. I just returned from a roller-crimper demo for setting back cover crops. It works great on grains and grass covercrops, but not on legumes, except crimson clover. We tried sheet mulching 2009 (unrolling a large round bale of hay over asparagus). It was not economical at our scale - we used more hay to get the mulch deep enough and hay is an off-farm purchase.

[christhamrin]

i loved the closeups of the bugs & the before and after. this must have been a big video project. not sure who won till or no till. i guess, in a way, we all won.

[hatthowe]

@LakeCountryFireworks

You are right! For the first 10 years we only used white clover - it's time to go back to a short stature white clover or maybe a hardy subterrean clover.

Helen