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  • From: Scott Pittman <scott@permaculture.org>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] We need to protect the world's soil before it's too late | Popular Science
  • Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2017 14:01:56 -0600

While this makes soil building sound easier than falling off a log, the missing ingredients are labor and time both of which are needed in large measure. Is that 16 tons per acre or ?? Creating soil in a few days is a pipe dream. In order to restore the complexity and function of good loamy soils takes years. That doesn't mean that you can't produce good produce early on but to reach maximum fertility is a long term proposition.

Where I live and garden raised beds are anathema. The moisture loss is too high for any arid region with raised beds. Indigenous people here used "waffle beds" or sunken beds to capture any runoff and to protect soil surface from winds and evaporative loss.

Scott Pittman

On 3/26/2017 11:38 AM, Lawrence London wrote:
On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 11:20 AM, Graham Unangst-Rufenacht <
graham.rufenacht@gmail.com> wrote:
The PopSci article, quoted:

"All this might not matter so much if we could just find more soil, or just
make soil ourselves. *But for all practical purposes soil is a
nonrenewable*
*resource.* The recipe for soil is incredibly complex, requiring an
intricate
mix of the right chemistry, biology, and physics. And it simply takes a
long time to form. The rule of thumb? *Between five hundred and several*
*thousand years for an inch of topsoil*."

That is a completely uninformed, uninspired, shortsighted statement.

Clear a piece of flat garden space. Spadefort it up. Find a rock quarry
with a MSDS listing the chemical profile of the siltation pond screenings.
If it is comple as far as garden soil is concerned and has no toxic
elements then have 16 tons of it delivered. Transfer it to your garden
space, dig it into the existing soil, add manures an composts plus mineral
soil amendments, apply compost tea and any other beneficial biological
innoculants. Form the site into 40" wide raised beds 12" above existing
grade. Plant seeds, harvest produce.

Follow this process and you have created soil in a matter of a few days and
it will probably be more fgertile and producting that the original soil on
site.




--
Best regards, Scott Pittman Director Permaculture Institute




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