Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Dieter Brand <diebrand@yahoo.com>]

Scientists have extolled the virtues of clay-humus complexes for generations;
however, when it comes to translating this into practical methods of soil building,

we, the practitioners, are mostly left to our own devices and mix compost with

soil at various ratios or simply apply it to the soil surface according to gusto.

 

Among all the unanswered questions, there seems to be only one certainty,

that is that most agricultural soils are badly depleted of organic matter and

it is hard to imagine a situation in which there is too much of it.

 

Dieter Brand,

in sun-scorched humus-depleted Portugal.

Michael Nevin <mikepnevin@yahoo.ca> wrote:

Hi - where I work as the food scrap composter, our rule of thumb is to use about 1/3 well-aged, well-screened finished compost to about 2/3 planting mix for our seedlings.  Pure compost might be quite rich. However, if you are doing intensive ag in raised beds such that the plant roots can not spread out due to the density of your planting, you might wish to jack up the fertility of your soil by going with more compost.

Is there any chance you could try several different %s of compost in otherwise identical raised beds? Many books on soil and compost seem to say that  organic matter % could be in the 5 - 10 % range. In other words, there is a lot of sand, clay,  air space, water in addition to organic matter.

Cheers, Mike in Toronto

Mike or Cheryl Modjeski <paperrain@semo.net> wrote:

Thank you, everyone for your help. I have a friend that is wanting to try
pure compost and I have never tried it.
I have a lot to learn and I read this list, even though I do not post often.
I thank everyone for sharing your experience and research!
Just a note of introduction since it has been a very long time since I
posted on here.
My DH and I along with our 13 year old daughter have raised for the last
couple of years, seedlings and veggies to sell and some Day Lilies, Hostas
and a few Japanese Silver Grasses. We want to do some cuttings and raise a
few perennials. We are doing everything on a shoe string, so it is a
process, but it is something we love so we press on. We have done raised
beds before and I love them, but we have also moved several times so we do
not have them here. We have a hobby farm with goats, rabbits, chickens,
guineas, turkeys, horses, and of course cats and dogs... so we have a bit
of fertilizer. : ()

Anyway, thanks for your help!


Cheryl in MO.


Ignorance killed the cat, sir. Curiosity was framed.
~ C.J. Cherryh


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