This week’s Talking Dirt brought Ashley Martin from Farm & Field Guide on—she’s running 40 acres in Central Texas with cattle, donkeys, chickens, bees, and a brand-new eighth-acre garden in its first season. We walked through an entire season’s system, no-till, no heavy machinery, no herbicides—how I would do it, based on experiences with my own gardens.
Ashley’s biggest struggle so far has been weeds—so we started there. Her plan: smother the whole bed with a tarp for two to three months, then start fresh with permanent beds sized to her broad fork. We talked through using potatoes and daikon radish as natural tillage tools—the digging and trenching works the soil for you, and daikon in particular breaks up compaction.
On weed suppression, black plastic mulch is the workhorse, especially in hot climates—though Ashley raised a good point about white plastic reflecting heat in Texas summers rather than adding to it. We also covered bare pathways versus landscape fabric, and why locking a bed into fabric can limit your rotation flexibility.
Fertility-wise, Ashley’s working with what she’s got—sheep, cow, and donkey manure, composted over winter. We talked heirlooms versus hybrids (keep both—heirlooms for seed-saving and flavor, hybrids for disease resistance), and companion planting’s real limits: it helps, but it won’t eliminate pests on its own. Ashley shared that planting onions throughout her garden this year seemed to keep pest pressure down, though she’s not ruling out beginner’s luck.
We closed on succession planting and timing around pests—like dodging Colorado potato beetles by sowing late—and Ashley’s plan to switch to drip irrigation this fall to stop watering her weeds along with her crops.
Big thanks to Ashley for joining, and to everyone who showed up with questions. Find her at Farm & Field Guide on Substack.
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