Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

Think that needs to be stressed. You can't make two and two equal five.
Returning all available organic waste to the soil was the prime directive
Sir Albert laid out back in the '40s. It was his demonstrations and
lectures that prompted J.I. Rodale to start pushing organic growing. 

We were scouting around the other day looking for sources of soil
amendments when it dawned on me (or was it the sunrise), we have half an
acre of green weeds growing on our new place. If I cut all that and compost
it before it goes to seed, we'll have more than enough to loosen the clay
and cover the beds. Also found plenty of native clump grass to dig up and
add to growing beds. Unless I heard wrong, that's a lot of root mass, green
growth on top, and mycorrhizae-formed humus underneath. It's virgin soil,
grows a lot of rabbit brush and when monsoon comes, a lot of native grass.
I figure the trick is to avoid working it anymore after placing it in the
beds, so as to keep it from the air as much as possible. Starting over's no
picnic, but the best possible growing soil is the only way I know to the
best production - and the only way to make it worth doing at all. 


paul tradingpost@lobo.net

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. 
--Henry David Thoreau 

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

On 7/29/2006 at 2:50 PM Harvey Ussery wrote:

>claim that we can make lots and lots of biofuels by fermenting these 
>crop wastes--even manures--and extracting out the volatile burnables. 
>And of course we can. But the more we use such "wastes" to run our cars, 
>the less are available to return to the soil as organic matter/humus. 
>We're already returning vastly less OM to agricultural soils than we're 
>taking off--accelerating that trend will only increase the rate at which 
>we are turning some of the best agricultural soils God ever took the 
>time to turn out--into desert.
>
>~Harvey
>-- 
>Harvey in northern Va
>www.themodernhomestead.us
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