Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

It may be the soil is too acid under the trees, or some other condition may
inhibit earthworms there. Worms don't eat raw organic matter directly. They
take in the decomposed material that's first acted on by microorganisms or
other minute critters. Leaf mulch should be shredded and composted, though
I'm not sure whether madrone might have some allelopathic effect to inhibit
germination, like black walnuts have. A layer of uncomposted leaves could
form a wet mat or keep water from penetrating the soil. As for cork oak,
someone else may be familiar with that.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

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

On 3/2/2007 at 12:41 AM Dieter Brand wrote:

>I have been using leafs for mulching our vegetable garden
>  for years, because we have a plentiful supply of dried leafs
>  from an wooded area (mainly madrone and cork oaks) on
>  our land.
>
>  However, lately I have been having second thoughts. Placing
>  seeds for cork oaks in the ground last fall, I was surprised
>  to find earthworms wherever I opened the ground, even in very
>  poor soil on sloping land where tilling under previous owners
>  has left only rubble and a bit of clay. On the other hand, in
>  rich soil on the wooded part of our property that hasn’t been
>  disturbed for decades, I didn’t find any earthworms at all.
>
>  Could it be that earthworms cannot digest dried leafs? If that
>  is the case, a mulch of leafs may cause earthworms to migrate
>  to other places. This would be a strong argument against the
>  use of leaf mulch in the garden.
>
>  Regards,
>  Dieter Brand, Portugal
>
>