Weed Level

Funny you should mention Comfrey, around the same time we planted Borage, we also planted comfrey around the fruit trees for the “chop and drop” fertilizer benefits. Things were going fine until I had to uproot a couple of diseased trees. The following year when I re-planted some bushes, the comfrey apparently adopted the hydra’s mantra of “cut off one head and two grow back.” Except in this case it was more like “cut off one head and 2847239872893 grow back.” We are now comfrey farmers. . .

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Honestly, I think I rather have the weeds to contend with. :crazy_face:

Hello hello,

Since there is a sudden interest about gardening here (something I would have never expected on the Grim Dawn forum), I’ll drop a bit of information that I hope can be helpful to some of you.

Rocks:
After an initial clean-up, you will get more rocks forever if you till the soil. By definition you’re working to bring the lower rocks closer to the top when you till. “Yes but tilling is the only way to break the hard soil and grow anything, plus I have to uproot the weeds somehow right?” We’ll have solutions for that in a minute.

Weeds:
You can actually suppress weeds by burying them each year, adding matter on top of the soil instead of tilling. Now there are two ways to do that.

  • Some people use huge amounts of wood chips but that’s extra work and we’ll assume you don’t have access to them. It also relies on external machinery so I don’t see the point of promoting that. I don’t use wood chips. You can still look at videos of people using them if you want (Charles Dowding is a good reference). One positive aspect is that you can cover all of your terrain with them if you want and have a “clean” space where nothing is tall.

  • The approach that I picked is “no dig” raised bed with wooden sides. You still have weeds in between the raised beds but it won’t get into your growing space. Mow/scythe them and add them to your compost. For no dig beds you’ll need a lot of compost to get started but once it’s running it’s amazing. Plant whatever you want in them. Rake once before and after the growing season to remove the few weeds that landed here. It’s like a tiny zen garden. Aside of this minimal maintenance, you have a nice surface always clean and ready to be planted/sown in. To prepare them, you just need to make a rectangle frame with whatever material you like, make it maybe 20 cm (8 inches) high, then put cardboard at the bottom and fill with compost. That will kill the weeds and the cardboard will be eaten by worms in a few months.

Here is an example from my place. The photo is from the end of June:

Without the wooden sides, you can easily imagine how the clover would have invaded the growing space.
This specific area was terraced years ago so the soil is very hard. It doesn’t matter. The plants are very happy in the raised beds.

Rocks (part 2) and hard soil:

Essentially, if you use the no dig method, your plants have a nice buffer of 20 cm before going into the bad soil. The rocks stay put if you don’t disturb them. The hard soil will progressively get broken apart by the plants’ roots. This is true for all plants, and on top of that you can also sow plants that are “specialized” in breaking hard soil like Daikon radishes. If you visit reddit.com/r/Permaculture you’ll also find many example of people who turned clay soils, where you needed a pickaxe to make the smallest dent, into garden soils in a few years.

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Thanks for sharing your experience.

I happen to have a lot of wood chips and have used them to good effect in some places, like under berry bushes or fruit trees. Unfortunately, I’ve read the decomposition can deplete nitrogen from the soil, which is kind of a double-edged sword when it comes to repeated applications, year after year, when growing shallower rooted annual crops. It’s also a bit tricky trying to apply wood chips when you are growing small plants from seed that could easily get crushed and where weeds can spout up and grow faster than the crop plants. Works better with berry bushes since they have deeper root systems and one thick application of wood chips can last a couple years.

I think the long-term best thing is to maintain good garden hygiene - not letting weeds go to seed near your planting area. Having a barrier of lawn that you keep trimmed around your planters is a good way to accomplish that. Unfortunately, my garden is surrounded by untamed weedy, rocky, meadow type area that is hard to mow. Last couple years I’ve started weed whacking it through, anytime stuff looks about to go to seed. It seems to be helping gradually.

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Get a couple of goats, they’ll eat just about anything. :goat:

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Uhh yeah, that’s kind of a problem though when there’s a lot of stuff you don’t want them to eat. :broccoli::corn::carrot::tomato:

Just put them on a tether in the untamed, weedy, rocky, meadow stuff well away from the veggies. Or fence off the garden proper and let them roam wild outside the fenced area.

image

This guy and his buddies, I got on my game-cam would probably love some free-roaming goats

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True. Shame they don’t eat weeds instead. :wink:

Put up a guard donkey / mule (Mule versus lion).

We have plenty of deer around too but they much prefer ornamental plants and crops to the taste of weeds. Btw, deer will also try to eat your crops in FF.

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But can we hunt deer on our fields and eat them instead?

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Only in the proper season - and with a licence most likely.

Protect and guide your people as you forge a town from untamed wilderness at the edge of the known world

Clearly we are the law and can make our own rules…

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Of course! You can also fence off your crops to prevent animals from getting in.

is there any kind of animal feed crops in the game yet? And can you use fallow fields to grow things like hay etc?
Or even better, just let the animals go nuts on the weed infested fields (being fully fenced in so they cant escape) to eat all the unwanted plants leaving you with a nice 0% weed level :stuck_out_tongue:

You can set cows to graze on fields. Especially useful with clover. Or some unwatched cows may wander off and eat crops they find.

“Weeds” Unwanted plants that attract pests and suck the soil of all its nutrients.

I know the feeling. My Mom was gifted this neat little Ivy plant, she kept for years and years. One year she put it on the deck, thinking it’d be okay. The plant did find outside, even though it spent its life indoors. Little did we know that thing would thrive, spreading its vines everywhere. First year I notice it sprouting under the railing of the deck. 5th year I found it sprouting from the deck to the front yard by the mailbox on a 1 acre property. That’s going pretty far for a little Ivy that spent its life indoors. I finally told myself it’ll be a battle I fight for the rest of my life and it’ll come back every year to remind me this is my battle. Fun in the sun!

Here’s something I thought of a while back. I thought if it in a non-discriminative way. Though it’s got that offensive type of criticism. This idea is something that could be a basis to accomplishing advancement in technology and progress in multiple ways. I want to believe it demands colonist to brainstorm about healthy colony requirements.

The idea is to create a problem that requires attention. It’ll create a goal that involves colonists and put something in perspective for a basis of law or committies. It’ll demand rational thinking and colonists to think about solutions to problems.

My example is the “potato blight” in this post.

Create many reasons the crop is blighted.

Reason 1: Weeds growing in the area, sap the nutrition from the soil, leaving it dry, hard to work and unfertile.

Reason 2: Drunk colonist urinating wherever they like, creating toxic soil level unable to grow healthy crops.

Reason 3: Animals eating the crops, including bugs that cause less produce and even diseases that hurt production for many years to come.

Next is solutions for each problem. Keep in mind that each solution is motivated by a negative effect caused by the problems. Starvation, arguments about where to do what, money and how to distribute rations. And that there’s a cost for each problem and solution. Whether or not the cost is time and effort, grumpy demeanor or colonist or monetary is to be determined.

Solution 1: pulling weeds will help. This is hard and requires lots of labor. The negative effect motivates creative solutions, thinking of ways to get out of the hard labor. This is costly convincing colonists this is necessary to survive.

Solution 2: Holding tanks to sober up drunks will help. It will negatively disrupt loyalty temporarily, making some colonists angry and scared they’ll be treated the same. Will also demand rational and reasonable social involvement of colonist, in order to avoid make the same mistake again. Maybe an introduction to controlling the problem in the future, using chemical solutions by observing behaviors cause by the urine.

Solution 3: Fencing and ways to discourage animals from approaching the area will help. This is difficult and requires men and dogs to make it work. Build resources will be timely and costly to collect and maintaining will be another point to note.

Each of these examples allows for growth and development. With experienced colonists, there maybe options to advance the technology to better solve these problems in the future. Reducing the cost and effort made by colonist may be a big factor, when critical thinking is involved. This method also leads in the direction of unity and expansion, as they learn they grow.

I like this type of idea because it’ll compliment the idea of dangers already being developed, though also advance the monuments I post about earlier.

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I liked the mention of scions of evil in your post. It’s funny.