On 9/10/2016 9:47 AM, songbird wrote:
Danny D. wrote:
Muggles wrote:

Are you going for the "organic gardening" approach?

I don't believe in "organic".

me either, not since the gov't messed up the term.
natural methods are good enough.


I took plenty of chemistry in my day as I have multiple degrees.

Organic is meaningless (to me).
I would pay *less* for organic labeled products, but not more.

if you are using less inputs and can still get
results eventually it should result in lower cost
produce, but the demand is great enough at present
that the price/premium is holding.

i don't sell the stuff we grow here, but often
give it away. that's as low cost as it gets...


I just like experiments.
And I like to know exactly what I'm doing.

Details are everything.

yep, and sustainability over the long-haul.
is your topsoil improving each year or at least
holding up? or are you farming subsoil?

when i look around here most farmers have taken
prime topsoil and over the years turned it back
into subsoil. where i grow my veggies now used
to be climax forest for our area (150 years ago)
and there would have been about a foot of prime
topsoil. all gone, farmed away and back to clay.
it's fertile if you treat it right. used to be
a christmas tree farm here and then farmed again
for a while, then fallow for a few years before
we bought it.

i've been doing experiments around the place
since i've been here (about 10 years of the 20
years total we've owned this plot). i now have
a great example of a green manure patch which
puts out more nitrogen than the rest of my
gardens could ever use. when i started back
there the topsoil was gone, the subsoil was
compacted and there was no support for much of
anything, even weeds struggled back there with
all topsoil and organic matter being washed
away in any heavy rains.

first thing i did was level it (tilled a few
inches and then leveled). there were no worms
or night crawlers in there. then i seeded it
with a mix of birdsfoot trefoil and alfalfa and
kept it weeded so those were the dominant plants.
they are nitrogen fixers. after the second
season i started chopping them back once or twice
a growing season. which increases the rate of
nutrient cycling and increases organic matter.

after six years the previously uniform clay
subsoil layer has changed into about a foot of
noticeably darker soil. the worms and night-
crawlers are now all through there and i can
still harvest a few hundred lbs of good green
manure for use in other gardens if they need
a nitrogen boost.

i'm now increasing the complexity in the area
by adding other plants (strawberries, turnips,
radishes, beets, buckwheat, etc.) and so the space
is going to become even more productive now that
there is good topsoil. i've already taken several
hundred pounds of garlic out of there too. which
would take over if i let it. but i'm trying to
remove it as getting garlic out of heavy clay in
the middle of summer is not very easy... i like
eating it as green garlic and the worms love it if
i pull it out and let it dry out on the surface.

so, um, yeah, let's keep on growing and learning
what we can, but simple biology and knowing about
ecology will trump the narrow views of chemistry
any time. it's nice to know what is happening with
the chemistry of the soils, but as i've found out
over the years it's completely not needed if you
know how to farm for the diversity of the soil
community and soil organic matter drives that.

the simple chemistry approach ignores that. if
you go by strictly looking at NPK you're missing
95% of what is important.

having the examples of the surrounding farm fields
i don't need to see any more examples of their
practices.


We started off many years ago doing organic gardening, which for us
meant putting natural stuff into the soil.

--
Maggie