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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Seed starting medium (was: No-till manure application)

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Seed starting medium (was: No-till manure application)
  • Date: Mon, 04 Sep 2006 08:29:10 -0600


I like Flowerdew's style. He has raised beds that haven't been dug or
walked on for many years. He's been on BBC and the Royal Horticultural
Society. For starters. In his 1998 Organic Bible, Successful Gardening the
Natural Way, he stresses healthy soil.

"Guarding and increasing the life in the soil is the first and most
important principle on which the others depend. Without healthy soil
teeming with life, civilisation as we know it will disappear. We are
dependent on our topsoil to feed us. If it is overworked and abused it will
erode away. The only way to maintain, foster and increase the fertile
topsoil is by actively encouraging the multitude of organisms in the soil
which convert inactive minerals and water into the building blocks of life.
It is the dead bodies of all these forms of living material and the
by-products they generate that build up the humus-rich, water-holding loamy
soils that we all desire for the healthy plants they produce. Chemical
fertiliziers and over-cultivating burn off this store and destroy the very
organisms that could create more - in return for extremely short-term
gains." (p.14 in my copy)

Couldn't have said it better.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

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

On 9/3/2006 at 7:20 PM pete wrote:

>Have you tried making and using leafmould?
>Bob Flowerdew, one of the top organic growers in the UK, says that it
>works well.
>Pete
>
>
>
>> > We also use carefully aged (well aged) compost as a seed starting
>> medium. ~Laura
>>
>>Straight?
>>
>>That's something I'm trying to formulate: a seed starting medium that
>>doesn't require any purchased materials. I can do compost, and I have a
>>big vermicomposting operation.
>>
>>Are there others who have come up with a completely home-made seed
>>starting medium that works well for them? Share your recipe?
>>
>>~Harvey
>>
>>--
>>Harvey in northern Va
>>www.themodernhomestead.us
>>
>>"How we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is
>>used." ~Wendell Berry







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