Holy shit!
It worked. It worked fairly well. It worked so much better than it ought to! It was a dumb idea but it worked… so it’s not entirely dumb.
I went into the pig pen of weedy chaos and came back with 3 ears of perfect corn. I had no idea if they were ripe and wanted a simple test run. They were delicious!
The next day I went back and came back with 6 ears. Equally delicious. Yum!
I’ve already picked more for a third meal!
It looks like 2 ears per stalk and I know I had 23 before the weeds got deep enough to hide gorillas. I will probably get 40+/- ears from silly experiment. If I’d gotten full germination of all my seeds it would be a homesteading lottery win. I’d be firing up my canning equipment right now! But I’m not complaining, even if it’s just a half dozen meals that’s something.
It’s definitely not a conventional garden. For one thing it looks like shit. Then again I got to eat the results and they were delicious. As an experiment it’s a success. Call it proof of concept!
My pig fence is still shot but now my attitude has changed. I’ve an inkling what could be done. I lack money or time but now I have ideas and dreams!
I’d like to upgrade the fence and going to a “two pen” system. Put pigs in side A while corn and stuff grows in side B. Alternate the every year. Maybe that’ll help the “too rich to germinate” thing?
I’ve always wanted two pens for a bunch of other reasons. For example, backup in case the fence on one goes to shit or one of the pigs gets injured and has to be isolated. (That can happen.) Ha ha ha! Can you imagine the irony of an injured pig that’s put in a small corn patch to recover? My critters have great lives!
I’d like to set up the fence or gates or something so I can use my tractor without performing ballet level maneuvers. If I could take a straight shot at it without tight turns I could do miracles. I could run a disk back and forth in the pig nuked soil. Then plant TWICE as many seeds! Then run a 6’ brush-hog on the east and west boundary of the planted strip. Leave a 6 or eight foot wide strip in the middle that’s whatever corn can germinate and a bunch of mulch and of course… the damn weeds.
Or maybe I could have room to really try the sisters companion planting method. I need room to build hills with the bucket and I did learn that mulch works very well. Plus, I’m pretty sure whatever bean runners, corn stalks, and squash roots I don’t eat would be a tasty treat the next spring for the incoming piglets.
Don’t blame me for “thinking outside the box”. I’ve grown corn in the weirdest way possible but it shows signs of being viable.
A.C.
P.S. I’d also note that I used no fertilizer, no pesticides, and no watering. This was nothing like the roundup laden perfect rows you’ll see on a farm. But I did plant hybrids. For an annual like corn I don’t see why I shouldn’t go with the hybrid seed.
Cheap pig fence – pallets, usually free, and steel t-posts.
Hog manure is really high in nitrogen, which corn tends to love. The three sisters should do well in it, and your idea of rotating is excellent. Here’s a thought: come fall run your disk then run a plow or the loader and pile those rows, and take everything Amazon sells you in a cardboard box and stake those alongside the rows. Cover the ground in cardboard. Next spring wet cardboard blocks light to the weeds, is easy to mow through, and recycles like a dead branch into mulch. Rake up grass clippings and place around the plants once they start to grow, and you’ll make a wet lump of water-storage and weed-suffocation around them. Which also turns into mulch. If you do have to mow, throw the clippings towards the plants for the same reason. It works, according to my wife. Who gardens. I farm — anything not in a row is a weed and it gets killed by 24d, Roundup, or Stihl.
Cardboard? I never thought of that. It sounds very clever! I imagine wet soppy gunk getting stuck in my equipment but I suppose after one winter being submerged in snow it’s more or less dissolved?
It’s wet soppy gunk in the spring, but since it’s on top of the weeds and, you know, heavy, you could run a lawn mower over it without a problem but you won’t need to. A disk will cut right through as well. A field cultivator might snarl a few bits but wet cardboard has the tensile strength of a boiled noodle and clears itself pretty quickly. You can also wet it down while watering, should you like, and it will help retain moisture near the topsoil so good for the plants. Do take the tape off the boxes before splitting and arranging however.
That’s good to know.
If the empty pen is too rich to germinate, try three pens. One with the pig in it, one to lay fallow for a season, and the third to plant after laying fallow last season.
It’s a great idea. The only drawback is the labor to build the fence. If I ever get two pens built I’ll immediately start scheming for three. 🙂
Pigs have a heavy fat layer. Even lean hogs are fatty. Guess what conducts electricity like nothing else? You guessed it. String electric inside your main fence, and with a few poles you can move it around as you wish. Trust me, they won’t bother it at all if it’s hot.
And solar fence chargers can work REAL well!
The pen is within range of the grid. I just use regular AC to run the transformer.
When you get bored, may I suggest “The One-Straw Revolution” by Masanobu Fukuoka?
Dammit. About 5 decades ago, I read a book about gardening using massive amounts of hay mulch and minimal labor. I forget the book title and authoress’ name. I do remember it sounded great for a gardener like me with an aching back. It was a fantastic failure in my San Diego backyard with a massive snail population. To be fair, my kitty loved pouncing on the doomed gastropods after I attempted to throw them at orbital-escape velocity. Good times.
I read that back in the day, land could be cleared of trees if several holes was dug adjacent to tree trunk near the roots and a pile of corn was poured into hole. Hogs would root it out to get to corn and tree roots became too damaged to sustain life. Read another link stating pouring old cooking oil – fryer grease onto trunk adjacent soil did the same without having to dig holes. Hmmm.
I know for a fact that hog rooting is pretty thorough, like a hand grenade training site. All done with their snouts..
Yeah it’s impressive what a pig can do (for good or evil) to soil. In my case eating all the weeds and as many weed roots as they want is a good thing. But they also push piles of dirt up to the electrical fence and short it out.
Crop rotation: what a concept!
We’re keeping a few chickens this year, for the first time. Guess what’s entirely absent from their pen? Anything green whatsoever, that’s what! Had we a much bigger fence budget, doing crop rotation in the Victory Garden, with chickens during the fallow year, might be a very effective way of eliminating weeds and adding fertilizer.
(Yes, they obliterated not only all the nice clover and grass I’d planted for them, but also such jimsonweed as sprouted despite my best efforts at eradication.)