Quote:
Originally Posted by Redbaron
...The key would be to find a way to allow animals to eat the forage between the rows while keeping them away from the veggies. Essentially it is turning a liability, ie weeds between the rows, into a positive cash flow.
So instead of cultivating it which cost money in fuel and labor, or mulching it which also takes labor and a huge supply of organic material (especially if done on a large scale),...
|
I can think of a couple problems.
1. having a paddock in the middle of a path prevents picking there. So you still have the labor cost of moving the cages around, and if you have long rows, that can get pretty tedious for crops that need to be picked regularly. Also, either the paths will have to be wider than normal to accommodate the cages, or else the plants will need to be hacked back or maintained regularly to avoid getting tangled with the cages.
2. what are the regulations about keeping fresh animal manure and dander away from crops? Certainly you can't do this with leaf crops -- recall all the E. coli cases! -- but even with tomatoes, the pickers are going to be walking in fresh chicken manure, putting their picking crates down on fresh chicken manure, and tracking it all over the place. And the rain will be splashing it up onto the tomatoes.
One problem with using Polyface as a model is that Salatin tends to overstate the extent to which it's a closed loop. In fact, I've read he imports a lot of animal feed, so it's not in fact a closed loop at all.
I'd plant a mixture of low cover crops instead.
I see paths as a functional space, not wasted space. At one community garden plot, after I filled my planting beds, I had container plants lining the narrow paths inside my garden. It got crowded! It was hard to maneuver with constricted paths, which is how I learned to appreciate paths.