Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Art Corbit" <art_c@cox.net>]

Hi Ken,

 

I grew up on a farm and also farmed on my own after I married. I was reading an article today on no till farming and they were saying it is so great for cotton. I just flat don't buy that and here is why. If you don't chop cotton stalks up and plow then under every year you are going to have one big mess you can't do anything with. A cotton stalk that is above ground can last for 3 to 4 years before it ever rots. Even then some of the larger parts of the stalk may still be solid.

 

If you did leave the stalks standing over the winter and then come in the next spring and replant in the middles between the rows you wouldn't be able to pick the cotton and sell it. All the stalks standing from the year before would trash up the cotton where a gin wouldn't buy it. If a cotton gin would even buy it and try to clean it up they wouldn't pay you very much for it. I think I would have to see this working before I would believe it.

 

Art

----- Original Message -----

From: Ken Hargesheimer

To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2006 4:18 PM

Subject: [Livingontheland] Heating a greenhouse

Read the book "Four Season Gardening"  Eliot Coleman.   He has 2-3 others. Excellant.  He is in Z. 4 and does not use heat. 

 

There is no reason to make compost.  Use the organic matter as mulch.  Tropical soils are thin and bad.  It has been proven over and over that using green manure/cover crops will allow the growing of a crop every year [no layout] and each year the crop is a little better than the last.  That is even more true of our temperate climate.

Rodale Farm has proven that over and over in PA. They are now going no-till.  Re-inventing the wheel.  Farmers in many countries have been no-till for decades.

 

If I have post the following here before, just delete.

 

When Soil is Plowed [or dug]

Dr. Elaine Ingham, describes an undisturbed grassland—where a wide diversity of plants grow, their roots mingling with a wide diversity of soil organisms—and how it changes when it is plowed.

A typical teaspoon of native grassland soil contains between 600 million and 800 million individual bacteria that are members of perhaps 10,000 species.  Several miles of fungi are in that teaspoon of soil, as well as 10,000 individual protozoa.  There are 20 to 30 beneficial nematodes from as many as 100 species. Root-feeding nematodes are quite scarce in truly healthy soils.  They are present, but in numbers so low that it is rare to find them.

After only one plowing, a few species of bacteria and fungi disappear because the food they need is no longer put back in the system.  But for the most part, all the suppressive organisms, all the nutrient cyclers, all the decomposers, all the soil organisms that rebuild good soil structure are still present and trying to do their jobs.

But agricultural tillage continues to deplete soil organic matter and kill fungi. The larger predators are crushed, their homes destroyed.  The bacteria go through a bloom and blow off huge amounts of that savings-account organic matter.  With continued tillage, the "policemen" (organisms) that compete with and inhibit disease are lost.  The "architects" that build soil aggregates are lost.  So are the "engineers"—the larger organisms that design and form the larger pores in soil.  The predators that keep bacteria, fungi, and root-feeding organisms in check are lost.  Disease suppression declines, soil structure erodes, and water infiltration decreases because mineral crusts form.  Dr. Elaine Ingham, BioCycle, December 1998.  (From ATTRA News, July 06)

If this does convince gardeners and farmers TO STOP DIGGING AND PLOWING, I give up.

 

Ken Hargesheimer

 

 

 

 

Go to: http://bibledvd.googlepages.com/home and www.nabuur.com

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