Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - Re: [permaculture] strategies for boron rich and/or hydrophobic soils

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Thomas Paul Jahn <thomaspauljahn@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] strategies for boron rich and/or hydrophobic soils
  • Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 23:23:24 +0200

Hi,

I have no experience, but from my general understanding about invasives I
would not recommend to fight the invasive, but rather establish your "crop"
or to plant your perennials. I would take a different perspective on it and
rather think of the plants you want to favor. Lepidium latifolium may be
your best companion, as it is able to thrive under the conditions you have
got. At least it will increase the organic matter of your soil.

Invasives are pioneers in disturbed areas rather than being the disturnbance
themselves. I recommend to welcome the alien.

With regard to seeding, I could imagine that seed balls may help. Here you
could choose a non local clay, komost and water source to prepare the
seedballs, giving the seeds a good head start under less stress full
conditions..


2011/7/7 Neil Bertrando <neilbertrando@gmail.com>

> Hi all,
>
> Has anyone here worked with boron rich soils (5 ppm at 0-12 inches, up to
> 40
> ppm at 3 feet)? how about combined with summer hydrophobic soils?
>
> We're in an winter wet-summer dry arid climate with cold winters and have
> applied 1 year of keyline pattern cultivation treatments and coupled it
> with
> compost extracts in some fields. Currently we're struggling with getting
> seeds to germinate and/or establish, and we think the Boron plays a
> significant role in this struggle. We're planting native rangeland
> grasses, forbes and shrubs and have used drill seeding, disk seeding, and
> broadcast seeding methods.
>
> We spoke with some local soil scientists who said we have 2 options re the
> boron issue:
>
> 1. only plant boron-tolerant species, which we included in our seed mix,
> or
> 2. irrigate enough during the summer to keep the boron washed below the
> root zones.
>
> The areas we're working on are not set up to have permanent irrigation. We
> can have temporary access to reclaimed water from the nearby wastewater
> treatment plant if we purchase the irrigation supplies.
>
> Some other notes about the context.
>
> - Soils are silty floodplain sediment,
> - many of the areas are near monoculture with an invasive perennial
> brassicaceae *Lepidium latifolium,*
> - the total area is about 35-40 acres
> - we've been treating the invasive with periodic mowing at the flowering
> stage
>
> Any thoughts or lines of research to suggest on this issue?
>
> I did read in Water for Every Farm p. 293-297 (yellow edition) that in a
> climate like ours we may want to plow in the mid-late spring when it starts
> to warm up and water is still present in the soils and rain is still
> expected. Has anyone tried this alternative timing of plowing? we did
> treat about 5 acres this spring with keyline pattern cultivation, no
> noticable difference yet, but I'd like to give it a year to see.
>
> Thanks,
> Neil
> _______________________________________________
> permaculture mailing list
> permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> Subscribe, unsubscribe, change your user configuration or find out more
> about this list here:
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
> Garden Hand Tool Sourcelist and Biointensive Gardening Guide
> http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/documents/gardening-hand-tools.faq
> permaculture forums http://www.permies.com/permaculture-forums
> Texas Plant and Soil Lab
> http://www.texasplantandsoillab.com/
> List contacts: permacultureforum@gmail.com, chrys@thefutureisorganic.netand
> paul@richsoil.com
>



--
<http://jordforbindelse.wordpress.com/>




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page