Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

I haven't had to remediate high salt content, but others may have more on
that. Apparently Michael Melendrez solved it but if it were me I wouldn't
look for the most challenging soil to begin with. If the object is getting
started growing as soon and as productively as possible, the best start may
be to avoid the worst soil and move on. As food transportation and water
costs keep rising, people in terrible growing areas may begin to question
where they're living. Still, growing for home use on a small scale - a few
hundred square feet - can be done almost anywhere with enough climate
protection, water, compost and other amendments. But that's more time and
work invested up front.  I accept that not everybody can grow everywhere,
but millions more can and should. 

paul, tradingpost@riseup.net
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 6/20/2006 at 3:18 PM Greg Bell wrote:

>> 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.
>
>The approaches are: humus-building, crop rotation, no-till, cover crops, 
>mycorrhizae innoculations and no chemicals?
>
>I guess I'm looking at my limited funds and (for now) limited time.  My 
>soil has issues, and my limits mean I have to prioritize.  I think I can 
>tell that mycorrhizae-friendly crop rotations are probably less important 
>to me this very day than, say, the high salt content of my soil.  Isn't 
>there an implied order there?  Actively fix one, then the other, then the 
>other problems will resolve themselves with the good practices?
>
>Looked at another way, aren't some of the issues "blockers" requiring 
>action on the part of the farmer, before the natural, time-tested 
>processes can run free and work their wonders?
>
>~gb
>_______________________________________________
>Livingontheland mailing list
>Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
>http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland