So it is the second week for this DTube series, where at the start of every week I will upload one of my favorite homesteading/permaculture videos from my YouTube channel. This week is all about using hay and grass in the vegetable garden, and I think it will be a good introduction to my video next week which is about scything - something I have certainly fallen in love with over the past few years.
Growing food using hay as a mulch sparks a lot of debate. Often people recommend straw instead of hay because of 'weed seeds' but it all comes down to where you source everything from. We cut our hay in our haymeadows after the flowers and grass have seeded, meaning that there are less seeds to potentially germinate. And should any germinate then they are very easy to remove, or simply apply a thicker layer of mulch.
In many places, grass is so abundant, therefore it makes complete sense to make the most of this fantastic resource. One great thing is that you can use it as a compost material, green or brown. Something I want to experiment with this year in the garden is to see if it is possible to make compost just with grass. By mixing green fresh lawn clippings with hay. It might fail, or even be completely pointless because of efficiency, but I look forward to the experiment.
Here is an image of my dad putting fresh hay into the cart after we had scythed the orchard. The challenge of scything is the work hours needed, but in a day with two of us going at it we could cut the whole orchard. I love scything because of the relaxing sound you get from every cut, it is almost like cutting through tiny splinters of glass.
For our potatoes we either grow them by placing on the soil and piling up a lot of hay, or we will mulch around the plants with fresh grass clippings from the lawn. For around 4 years of using grass and hay in the garden we are extremely impressed with the results. Particularly with how little weed problems we have had. Perhaps this is a half myth, and people who haven't tried it for themselves believe what others say?
Above is a photograph of our broad beans last year. We applied hay as a mulch twice, adding about 3inches (7cm) both times and it was so simple. Virtually no weeding was needed, and pulling out weeds from mulched beds almost always seem a million times easier.
I hope you enjoy this video and that it gives you some confidence to start using grass and hay a bit more in your vegetable garden.
Last week's post in this series: A Permaculture Apple Day of Skill and Produce Sharing at our Homestead
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