Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

No doubt you're right about our Estancia Basin soil and your area by the
Sandias. Still, we both have semi-arid climate and poor soil to work with. 

Here's my bottom line. If I spread my growing over a much larger area I
couldn't frame raised beds on this slope, I'd be in debt for a tiller, I'd
spend way too much on straw mulch and amendments, or without mulch I'd have
to weed bare ground constantly, I might run my well dry, and it wouldn't
produce any more than it does now on one-sixth of an acre. Why not? Because
I couldn't plant intensively in permanent beds, and with regular tilling
and/or weed cultivation it would take a lot longer to build up my soil
organic matter. Tilling oxidizes soil organic matter. 

Only the initial season was labor intensive, with fencing and framed, level
beds without erosion. Now I don't have to rebuild, redig and redo all the
initial amendments. I'm now in the process of just adding a thin layer of
the amendment mix without redigging the beds. And every bed will outproduce
last year. 

Until recently I wouldn't have believed this intensive approach could
produce so much in a limited space that I can work by hand - and start on a
shoestring and make a good retail profit at farmers markets. I'm convinced
this approach IS scalable, and would make a good living under better
conditions - if I had more level land, slightly more startup capital, more
water or rain (and if I were younger ;-) Yet millions of people do have
those better conditions, and could find financial security and independence
growing and retailing locally. 

So I don't exactly follow Ruth Stout, the Rodales, Jeavons, Fukuoka,
Salatin, Coleman, or anyone else, but try to take what works from everyone.
We're probably closer to bio-intensive than anything else. I make some
mistakes in adapting to conditions. However, I won't double-dig because the
subsoil is only six inches down, and I have to build up instead. And I
don't have years to wait for great soil, so I work in lots of the good
amendments to begin and won't dig or till at all in the future. Not
strictly no-till to start, but production is great already. We've had no
losses from the bugs tho they covered the garden by August. Of course we
use no chemicals or synthetic fertilizers. Healthy soil = healthy plants =
healthy people. YMMV.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

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

On 1/8/2008 at 12:02 PM Lynn Montgomery wrote:

>Dear Paul,
>    The soil here is the direct result of 15 million years of erosion from
>Sandia Mt., which started out way over the elevation of Everest. The
>geology of this mountain is unique. The soil out in the Estancia Basin
>where you live is different, being much more "adobe" or more clay content.
>Our mud is bad, but your mud is ridiculous. Anyway, you are doing very
>labor intensive raised beds, etc., and I am doing 4 acres utilizing
>ancient fields. I have been farming here, when not gripped by hopeless
>drought, for 35 years, making terrible, but educational, mistakes. This is
>how we learn to build productive farms and gardens. I used to subscribe to
>the Rodale book club over 3 decades ago, and my first choice was Ruth
>Stout. If no-till aficionados use only one source to convince others, this
>is all they need. One might tell me I need to mulch more. This is the
>desert, and mulch materials are very limited. Taking mulch from the wild
>is cheating the ecological systems that keep the wilds healthy. Mulching
>here doesn't work so well. The mulch often breaks down too fast and
>creates heat, which kills plants very dead. Anaerobic decomposition is OK
>for compost piles, but doesn't work too well in situ. Sow bugs and slugs
>love the environment underneath and decimate crops. Most mulches mat here,
>not allowing good absorption of moisture, preventing the absorption of
>oxygen, and making irrigation difficult. I do use mulch on specific crops.
>Wild grasses, which are grown and baled commercially in Utah, are the
>best, but I can't find any for sale lately, and it's over $9/bale if I can
>find it. So, I have had to leave Ruth on the shelf, as much as I admire
>her and her methods. The most important thing about tilling is to control
>erosion. Although soil does move down the rows and terraces, it can be
>brought back up by way of garden cart and sweat, as they do still in
>China, as long as there is catchment for it.
>