Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Growers grow plants; plants grow mycorrhizae - most grasses, most plants,
esp legumes, all in soil with good organic matter levels. I'd try to
explain this way:  you don't "work our way down the list over time".  You
practice all the soil building approaches all the time, that we've gone
over, and Nature takes care of the details. All those problems or issues
you list are taken care of. 

After all, the planet has been growing vegetation for millions of years
without any experts telling it how. I like the line, "the deep and dark
blue ocean rolled on long before Byron told it to".

paul, tradingpost@riseup.net
---------------

The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not
television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. Only
those who know the most about it can appreciate how little we know about
it. 
   - Aldo Leopold in  Round River, 1933

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 6/20/2006 at 11:27 AM Greg Bell wrote:

>I think I was mainly wondering how the sellers grow mycorrhizae and 
>whether the same conditions (or a special area just for producing it) 
>could be done by the small-time gardener.
>
>
>> Don't slice and dice (plow or till) your soils and be sure to not rotate

>> your crop into a family of plants that is not mycorrhizal but rather is 
>> capable of using the same genus and species of mycorrhizae that you have

>> established.
>
>>From what I find on google, the interplay with rotation seems to be still

>deep in the research phase and not so much in the "do exactly this" 
>recommendation phase.
>
>As a hobby/amateur/small food grower it would be really useful to have the

>experts put the things we should work on in order of impact.  That way we 
>can work our way down the list over time - both in terms of education and 
>work on the land, and know we're getting maximum benefit as we go.  For 
>example (a guess):
>
>1) Soil pH
>2) Soil moisture content
>3) Soil salinity
>4) Soil drainage
>5) Soil NPK
>6) Soil structure
>7) Soil humus/organic content
>8) Soil macronutrients
>9) Cultivar/variety selection
>10) Crop rotation
>11) Soil micronutrients
>12) Planting depth/techniques
>13) Mycorrizae innoculation
>14) Mycorrizal species sensitive crop rotation
>15) Beneficial nematodes
>16) Something sub-atomic requiring 100s of thousands of dollars to analyze
>:)
>
>My fear is that my idea would quickly devolve into an argument with Expert
>A claiming that #11 is really the #1 thing to worry about, and Expert B
>saying no way, even being at #11 is too high given current research....
and
>we amateurs would be left back exactly where we started:  guessing!
>
>
>~gb
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