Preparing My Garden To Leave For 2 Months.

If we don't have time to work in the garden for a long time, for many months, what can we do? Especially in tropical, people will stop doing gardening after April because it's too hot. May, the rain comes, grass will grow overgrown like this. So it's a big problem when we start This is how my garden looked like in June after I left for two months. And now I will leave another two months. What I have to do to prepare to make it easier when I come back. So I don't want to have a lot of work. The first thing I have to do is to do weeding. I need to weed all of them, cut the grass off, and then cover them. But if I plan well before I leave the garden, I cover them before I leave the farm. It will not be like this. It will be easier and easier. Less grass, less work. So now I have to start it over again. Most of people, when they pull the grass off from the garden, they always take them away and move it somewhere else. But for me, I feel like I want to turn it into compost in my garden. My technique is when I pull the grass out of the bed and then I will lay them in the bed in the same direction. Like the end, the top part of it will go to one direction only. So the root will show up. The next layer will be above the first layer, but the root will not cover each other. It makes the root dry up fast and then they cannot grow again. But if we turn the grass in this way, the shoot of this grass will cover the root and keep a lot of moisture, and they can sprout again. They will not die. When we use the grass from weeding to turn into compost like this, it helps us to not work too much. We don't need to move them away, but then they can be compost. But another way, if we don't want to pull them, we just step them down, like push them down like this. Even if they're tall, but don't worry about that. And after we press them down, we can use anything to cover it, like straw or leaves or anything that can decompose, just cover it like this. With this technique, we work less than the first technique that we need to pull them. And when we cover them very thick like this, all the green grass will decompose fast. They will be good food for our plant in the future. So this technique is very easy too. But we need to know the kind of grass that we have in our garden. Because some kind of grass like kangkong or morning glory like this, they will not die easily if we cover them. Or another kind of a few kinds of grass, when we cover them, they will not dry up. They will sprout again. So those kinds of grass, it's good to let them dry for one or two days first. Then cover them very, very thick. They will not grow back again because they totally die after that. If there are some kind of vegetables that can last long, like kale or collard green, they can last for a few years. So this plant, we can thin them off and then let a few of them stay in the bed. Or we can move it to plant in another bed. I move them to another bed to plant them together with another collard or kale, so they can be together. They will not feel lonely here. Any plant that we want to keep them for a long time, like kale or collard or any plant like this, we don't want their leaves to be too thick and hanging on the ground because it will be a good shade for snail or slug or any other animal that likes to hide and eat them. So it's good to thin them off, make it more open, more space. Don't make it too dense to cover before we put the straw on top of it. After transplant them and then thin the leaves from the old plant in the bed, make it more light, more open, and then we can cover with anything as thick as we can. I use rice husk because we have leftover rice husk. Rice husk can be at the bottom first and then straw on top of the rice husk. Because the rice husk, it takes two years to decompose. If we put rice husk on top and then it will be exposed to the sun, it can dry fast, so it lasts longer to decompose. But if we put rice husk at the bottom and straw on top like this, the rice husk will be wet and microorganisms going to digest them, they can decompose a lot faster. If we want something to cover the soil for a long time, it's good to use rice husk on top because it takes a long time to decompose. And this season, if it's rainy season, we can plant corn or anything vine like beans. It's good to plant in rainy season. Before we plant, we need to make a hole in the bed first. Make a hole deep until you touch the soil because when we put straw very thick, if we plant something on top of the straw, if there's no rain and then the sprout, the root cannot go to the bottom, they will dry up. So if we make a hole and fill up the hole with compost or good soil and then we plant the seed in the compost, when the sprout, the root can go deep to the bottom, to the soil at the bottom, so they can survive. And then the straw and everything will decompose and then be very flat on the ground after that. So this technique, it works very well. We don't need to do weeding or watering after that. In the rainy season, everything grows so fast, especially grass. After we cut them only one week, they turn green again. The way to control them, I like to use cardboard boxes to cover the path or in the bed sometimes, cover them because the cardboard boxes can keep the soil dark and the seed will not grow or it can cover the leaves of the grass, make the grass not get sunlight and then they decompose. So this technique, it helps very well in the garden. If we can cover the bed like this, our garden will have no grass for a few months. This area is not a raised bed, but it becomes a normal bed on the ground directly. I plant some carrots, some of them survive. So I will clean out the grass from the bed first and then clean out the path and then use the grass to cover behind me. That pile of grass will be another bed later. I will cover this grass pile with straw later and then all this grass will decompose soon. So this is another way. I don't need to move the grass away. Some parts of the garden, we have something tall like chilies, eggplants or anything tall. That's easy to take care of because we just cover the bottom. If we see a lot of grass, we just press them down and use a lot of straw to cover them. All the grass will decompose. So this technique is fast and easy for the tall plant. It's easy to take care of. But some areas like fruit trees, we will not let any vine climb up on the tree like this. Many people, they cut the grass very nice, but they did not pull out the vine like this. That's not very good because it blocks the our fruit trees. It's important to pull them out, clean them out very well. And after that, we cut the root of the vine off and cover with very thick straw. This will help them to be more healthy and they grow fast. If we don't do that, they stop growing or die sometime. So after we use the straw, dry straw to cover, we can use anything green on top of the straw. So vine or anything, if we cover them, they can sprout again sometime. But if we put something dry on the bottom and put something green on top, this thing will dry up in the sun soon. So this is the way I will work less in the future. And this season, any fruit trees, if it's too many leaves, too dark, too dense, it's good to prune them off. Make them very open. Don't let any branch bend down too close to the ground because it will be a good home for many bugs, many diseases for our trees. And at the same time, it can make the vine cramp up to our tree easily. And then if we cut it open like this, it will be very healthy and grow fast. Don't feel bad to cut the branches off. Any branches that you feel like it's in the way, cut them off. And the next thing is compost pile. We don't want the grass to grow in the compost pile because it takes away a lot of food. It's good to cover anything with anything. So this is the way I take care of my garden before I leave. So I will come back in the next two months. I will go visit my son in Colorado for two months and come back. And then it will be easy to start the garden again because I will not dig the bed again. I just make a hole in the straw and plant any seedling in the straw. That will be easy for me. And then all the tall plant trees, chilies, fruit trees, they will be very healthy. When I come back, it will be very easy for me to start the garden again.