Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Dieter Brand <diebrand@yahoo.com>]

We usually have a lot of humidity until April and then not a drop for nearly 6 months with temperatures of 100 F or more and the clay soil drying out and cracking within a couple of days.

 

What has helped most is to improve the soil quality, i.e. increase the organic content of the soil, by adding organic matter in any form you can get (mulch, compost and manure).  Once the soil has sufficiently recovered it is often enough just to mulch.

 

I'm down to irrigating once or twice a week when my neigbours irrigate once or twice a day.  This year I'm testing to see just how far I can go without irrigation: I broadcast some beans, chick peas, squash, sunflowers, corn etc. into an existing stand of weeds and grass without cutting it first.  Then I covered the whole with 2 inches of mulch and drained the place in water for a few hours.  After two months they are all still doing fine even though I haven't irrigated once and the sun is burning down mercilessly every day with temperatures of around 90 F.  Tomatoes also do very well without irrigation for a long time once they have been established; the roots go down deeper and deeper to look for water.  I found most problems with tomatoes have to do with too much water.

 

Veggies like cucumbers, melons etc., that need a lot of humidity, I concentrate in one place that is fairly easy to keep wet.

 

Dieter

--- On Fri, 6/27/08, Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net> wrote:

From: Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] The Price Of Food: 2007 - 2008
To: emitch@att.net, livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Friday, June 27, 2008, 1:29 AM

I hate it when that happens ;-)  Seriously, over by June 1? Mulch and irrigation
setup sounds like the best bet; it's what I do. Here we've had about one
inch of rain all year. Temps are in the 90s and it's so dry forest fires are
popping up around NM. Shadecloth has its uses but it's limited to certain
crops and impractical for vining or climbing things, and expensive  for me. 

Our framed or raised beds make mulching and amending easier and cheaper, but
make irrigating more complicated and time consuming. Next season I must make a
T-tape setup which I have no experience with, to save time. Keep saying that
... I'm using a few 25' soaker hoses on top of the mulch in
3'x8' squash and pepper beds, but they do cost. Makes watering far
easier when they grow thick. On fence beds with pole beans, squash, and
fingerling potatoes I'm using 50' soaker hoses, tho it's easy to
overdo on the young beans - a mistake I've already made. Squash and
potatoes don't seem to mind excess water, but the beans start putting out
light green growth on top. At least we're on a well, no ridiculous water
bill. Tomato beds in the greenhouse show no stress at all. The wind protection
helps. The first stage transplant beds are over my head now, and they're
mulched with soaker hoses for water every other day, can't be watered any
other way. Gotta keep moisture even thru Sept. for b
 est tomatoes. We should have a *lot* of tomatoes, carrots, red onions,
fingerlings, plus some garlic and shallots in two-three weeks for markets. The
only wild card at this point is possible hail. 

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

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

On 6/26/2008 at 6:37 PM E. E. Mitchamore Jr wrote:

>We have had  no rain and much hotter temperatures this Summer, and my
>garden didn't respond well.  Crops were "done" by June 1. 
Clearly I need
>to raise my game.  More shade, mulch, organic matter, work on the water
>supply, more heat-tolerant crops.
>
>E. E. "Mitch" Mitchamore
>www.hillcountrynatives.biz
>  ----- Original Message ----- 
>  From: Tradingpost 
>  To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org 
>  Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 11:10 AM
>  Subject: [Livingontheland] The Price Of Food: 2007 - 2008
>


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