freemotion
Food Guru
You can also plant the clover right up around your taller plants like tomatoes to keep the weeds down and use a living mulch. Harvey Ussery writes about this on his website. I think it is www.themodernhomestead.us
SS Garden thread 2010, post your pics here!!
- Thread starter modern_pioneer
- Start date
Farmfresh
City Biddy
Another great thing about the clover is that it can make a superb animal feed!
Fresh cuttings are wonderful fed to chickens, and other poultry as well as rabbits. Dairy animals would also benefit.
Clover hay typically contains 14 to 16 percent protein as well as lots of calcium, vitamins and other minerals. Compare it to high quality alfalfa at 18 to 19 percent protein. It would be quite easy to mow the pathways of your garden with a bagger on the mower and then spread the clover out over a tarp or concrete to dry as hay. Some paper type lawn "refuse" bags could then be packed tightly with your hay for winter storage! Talk about cheap high quality animal feed!!
Plus PEOPLE often use clover as sprouts, pot herb and juice. The entire plant is an edible treasure house of nutrition. Eating Clover. I used to have a neighbor VERY into health foods that (with permission) used to often come harvest the clover out of my front yard to juice and eat!
Some people are experimenting with planting corn and other cereal crops directly into beds of standing white clover. Since the clover stands shade pretty well, well spaced rows of corn or swaths of grains should do nicely in a bed of clover. Like Bee is planning to do.
Can you tell I LOVE clover?
Fresh cuttings are wonderful fed to chickens, and other poultry as well as rabbits. Dairy animals would also benefit.
Clover hay typically contains 14 to 16 percent protein as well as lots of calcium, vitamins and other minerals. Compare it to high quality alfalfa at 18 to 19 percent protein. It would be quite easy to mow the pathways of your garden with a bagger on the mower and then spread the clover out over a tarp or concrete to dry as hay. Some paper type lawn "refuse" bags could then be packed tightly with your hay for winter storage! Talk about cheap high quality animal feed!!
Plus PEOPLE often use clover as sprouts, pot herb and juice. The entire plant is an edible treasure house of nutrition. Eating Clover. I used to have a neighbor VERY into health foods that (with permission) used to often come harvest the clover out of my front yard to juice and eat!
Some people are experimenting with planting corn and other cereal crops directly into beds of standing white clover. Since the clover stands shade pretty well, well spaced rows of corn or swaths of grains should do nicely in a bed of clover. Like Bee is planning to do.
Can you tell I LOVE clover?
DrakeMaiden
Sourdough Slave
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Kcsunshine, your garden looks wonderful! 
kcsunshine
Almost Self-Reliant
Thanks, Hubby works hard in it. So much so that after our last lab work, the Dr.'s office called to tell him he was dehydrated and to drink more water. He perspires so much, he has to change shirts a couple times a day.
Wow! we just scored about 14 round bales of rotted hay - yea! compost pile!
Oops! there goes my short attention span again.
Wow! we just scored about 14 round bales of rotted hay - yea! compost pile!
Oops! there goes my short attention span again.
Things are looking great here at the homestead. In fact, i am a little but dumbstruck. It has to be God's work, because there is no way that on my own I could be doing this.
The corn is as high as an elephant's eye, if by elephant's eye you mean two feet above my fence.
And the sunflowers are running a close second.
Front to back: Beans, pattypan, watermelon and gourds.
Tomatoes on the chain link, corn in the back, leeks almost done, sugar pumpkins just coming up, sweet potatoes, yellow straight neck and jalapenos on the right.
Foreground beans as above. Back right, crook neck, delicata, butternut, A-Frame cukes. Right fence, sunflowers. Strip of peppers, watermelon along the borders of the bed. Ran out of mulch today.
Tomatillos in buckets, onions in tubs, berries lower right, tomatoes growing through the fence.
The corn is as high as an elephant's eye, if by elephant's eye you mean two feet above my fence.
And the sunflowers are running a close second.
Front to back: Beans, pattypan, watermelon and gourds.
Tomatoes on the chain link, corn in the back, leeks almost done, sugar pumpkins just coming up, sweet potatoes, yellow straight neck and jalapenos on the right.
Foreground beans as above. Back right, crook neck, delicata, butternut, A-Frame cukes. Right fence, sunflowers. Strip of peppers, watermelon along the borders of the bed. Ran out of mulch today.
Tomatillos in buckets, onions in tubs, berries lower right, tomatoes growing through the fence.
kcsunshine
Almost Self-Reliant
All I can say is WOW! You've been blessed.
35 x 65 planted, horizontal pathway at the half way mark, with a 5x3 empty spot on the other side of the watermelon bed for the upcoming giant pumpkins. I have to take most of the pictures in pairs because there is nowhere to stand where I can get it all in one !
For better perspective, the beds are made of 6' fence boards, so they are 6x24.
For better perspective, the beds are made of 6' fence boards, so they are 6x24.
I am ever so slightly overwhelmed by my garden. But in a good way, I guess. I think the worst part is that I obsess over weeds and I can' get to them.
Next year I will have ten more raised beds and can spread out a little.
Does anyone think 75 butternut squash is excessive? Not plants...only 8 plants. And I thinned them heavily. I love my canner.
Next year I will have ten more raised beds and can spread out a little.
Does anyone think 75 butternut squash is excessive? Not plants...only 8 plants. And I thinned them heavily. I love my canner.
