More good solarization results
The photo above shows the results of two different solarization experiments. On the right, two-week-old soybeans are happily growing in ground that used to be a mass of ground ivy prior to solarization
(begun two weeks before planting). The weeds have nearly completely
decayed into the soil and the soybeans appear to be thriving. There are a
few smartweeds coming up from seeds, but none of the perennial weeds
have regrown at all.
On the left, you can see a
newly solarized area, the ground-ivy debris still lying dead on the
soil surface. I could have ripped up those weeds by hand, but the bed
would have lost all of that organic matter and my fingers would have
been exhausted afterwards. Instead, five minutes of work results in
richer soil ready for a round of cover crops.
I've been pretty
tentative with my solarization experiments so far because I initially
didn't buy into the technique. But with so many successes under my belt,
I asked Mark to buy me another roll of clear plastic and am preparing
half of our brussels sprouts beds using the lazy-gardener method. The
photo above shows a bed that used to be weedy lettuce (full of red
clover), which I scythed, then topdressed with soiled goat bedding, and
(after the photo was taken) covered with a sheet of clear plastic. I'm
excited to see what the soil will look like in three weeks when the
brussels sprouts are ready to go into the ground. Maybe solarization
will become my fast-and-easy soil prep step in future garden years?
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I"m interested in this project too! I have only tried solarization for a longer term, like two or three months. Looks like we were reading some of the same sources from the University of California Ag and Natural Resources folks. I was under the impression that the best results would come from almost NO vegetation left underneath the plastic, ground scraped clean and then watered down, with the clear plastic sealed carefully around the edges. Looks like you are trying a different and easier to pull off approach. I am going to have to give your way a try! --Heather
Heather in CA --- In my head, I'd replied to this interesting comment...but apparently I didn't actually type my answer on the blog.
I suspect that the folks who scrape the ground clean are aiming for solarization that kills all weed seeds. Because my method definitely doesn't go that far. There are weeds coming up as usual in my solarizaed beds. On the other hand, just killing existing plants is pretty good by my standards since I can then plant cover crops to beat out the emerging weeds. Perhaps the ultimate low-work method would be to solarize the way I'm doing, then using ocultation (which I haven't tried yet) to sprout the weed seeds and kill them.