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Originally Posted by habitat_gardener
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I guess I should name the method. For vanity sake lets call it the Redbaron method.
Similar in concept. But scalable to a commercial level, and also potentially raising chickens between the rows in "chicken tractors" like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qzMZ5U2bbo
or this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYWYU...3WwjjiUxOJZ0Ee
OK so think of it like this. Combining the "Salad bar" animal husbandry and the "Lasagne" vegetable crop growing methods in a scalable way from small garden to large commercial in order to get 2 or more income streams off the same land at the same time. I mean lasagne is great by itself and a salad bar is awesome, but combine a salad bar with lasagne and you got yourself a real full meal!
Salatin from polyface farms already showed how to scale the small "chicken tractors" into something commercial. And commercial crop growers of things like tomatoes and lots of other veggies use black plastic mulch in a commercial way....but between their rows is just dirt or dirt covered in straw.
By using no till and leaving the area between the rows in pasture, sod, hay or whatever cover crop, but using that cover as forage, I believe a farmer could maximise the use of the land yet at the same time actually LOWER certain costs like fertilizer and pest control.
Now theoretically one wouldn't necessarily have to raise animals on that paddock between the vegetable rows. You could just mow it and save the hay or grass clippings. I saw a commercial organic pepper farmer in Oregon that does it that way. They have a small walk behind scythe similar to a brush hog and space the black plastic rows the same spacing as their scythe. But they use black plastic mulch instead of lasagne mulching in the pepper rows.
I would be using something like this, covered with mulch, old well aged manure, compost, grass clippings, leaves and/or whatever you got... Just make the top layer mulch.
http://www.ecoenclose.com/Bogus_Pape...p/pbr24-50.htm
This way you could cover the part of the row that contains crops in a matter of minutes with very little cost or labor.
I basically have taken all these various methods and have hopefully come up with a simple easy low cost way to combine them.
BUT keep in mind. While all these things are proven individually, I have never tried it all combined like this. So it is experimental. If you are the experimental type person you are welcome to join me, as I try to make it work and hammer out any "bugs" that pop up. If not, that's fine too.
PS I have even worked out how long the rows need to be and how far apart to handle a 10X12 chicken tractor for broilers. (1/2 a roll with 12 feet between rows) So between each 350 foot row of say tomatoes, you could raise 75-80 broilers to market size in one pass. (potentially getting 2 or more passes each year) And even planting traditional grain crops like corn or soy beans in successive years as part of a rotation. For those larger commercial farmers that raise their own corn and soy to feed their stock and also commercially raise veggies.
http://www.dewdropdrill.com/all-about.htm
That can replant either a crop like a grain or a cover or reseed the whole thing into pasture again. The only difference is that the part covered with paper and mulch would be 3 feet wide instead of 2 feet wide. (the paper rolls come in many widths, some even wide enough to use for melons) This way successive years when rotating crops the no till planter could go right down each row.
Just by itself "Managed intensive rotational grazing" can double the forage available from a pasture in the first year. (and up to 5 times as much as the pasture quality steadily increases) So any land that is attempting this technique to grow both veggies and forage off the same land will be easily offset by the additional forage gotten off other fields.
But for now I am just doing a prototype plot to prove the concept in principle.
It is extremely flexible for any situation. Any number of veggies or any number of animals could be combined. From as small as a little home made portable chicken or rabbit coop pulled between the rows of a garden, to as large as a commercial farmer making millions of dollars every year that might use cheap portable electric feathernet fencing to keep the animals out of the veggies.
Maybe it's all just craziness.
But at least in my mind I think it could work.