Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

As it is I'm working without any powered machinery. The day will come when
we need to do without, and plenty of people now need to grow who can't
afford a thousand dollars here and a thousand dollars there.  We have a
tremendous advatage with the knowledge from so many sources, so we should
be able to do much better than our forebears, shouldn't we? Shouldn't we be
able to feed ourselves on an acre or less, without power tools? 

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

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

On 7/29/2006 at 2:47 PM Art Corbit wrote:

>Hi Paul,
>
>A good riding lawn mower with a grass catcher on it and a large compost
>pile
>are worth their weight in gold. It is really good for the raised bed
>gardens.
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
>To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
>Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2006 2:29 PM
>Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Wheat is the new oil
>
>
>>
>> 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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>> >http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland
>>
>>
>>
>>
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