Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Dieter Brand <diebrand@yahoo.com>]

>The most biologically active part of the soil profile is the
>rhizosphere, the zone immediately around roots. So I figured
>that, with slow-to-decompose stuff, getting more growing
>roots into the mix would increase decomposition rate.

 

Harvey,

 

I’m not a soil biologist and can’t give you the correct names for all those little critters, but I’m pretty sure that the microbes that colonize the roots in the rhizosphere to feed the plants are of a different type than the microbes that decompose dead plant material.  In some case the latter can even interfere with germination or the development of young roots.  This is also the reason why some people believe that decomposition ought to take place in a compost heap separately from the growing area.  In an natural environment, both occur in the same site, but the decomposing microbes are mainly in the top layer, while the microbes of the rhizosphere are mainly in the layer immediately below that.

 

Dieter


--- On Thu, 11/19/09, Harvey Ussery <harvey@themodernhomestead.us> wrote:

From: Harvey Ussery <harvey@themodernhomestead.us>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Wood does belong in the soil?
To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Thursday, November 19, 2009, 10:45 AM

An interesting idea, Laura, and one I've experimented with in a parallel
way. The most biologically active part of the soil profile is the
rhizosphere, the zone immediately around roots. So I figured that, with
slow-to-decompose stuff, getting more growing roots into the mix would
increase decomposition rate. I put a flock of chickens on what amounted
to a giant compost heap, over the whole run--much of it oak leaves and
sawdust from "stable sweepings." When I moved the chooks to pasture, I
planted the run with a cover crop (cowpeas and volunteer oats and
wheat). After the whole summer, I put the chickens back on the plot to
eat/till in the cover. Then I "harvested" the compost--countless
wheelbarrow loads--for the garden.

~Harvey

--
Harvey in northern Virginia
www.themodernhomestead.us

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