Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

I'm quite familiar with coastal bermuda; as a teenager we set out 30 acres of 
plugs the wet spring of '57, the year of the Dallas tornado. It made great 
pasture and that's what you can do with it, goats perhaps? Not everybody can 
grow gardens where they are.

I assume you read the part where I pointed out poor growing practices can 
waste all that water, and organic intensive, water conserving as I do uses 
far less. BTW I get one third the rainfall you do.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

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

On 1/15/2011 at 1:03 AM paul@oneseedling.com wrote:

>Glad you quoted that article. We live in South Texas where temperatures
>reach 105+ regularly. In that same article it stated it could easily
>double from the 120 gallons per month.  Therefore "hundreds" of gallons.
>Here we can only grow gardens in very small plots due to super invasive
>coastal bermuda grass. One just cannot grow without constant backbreaking
>pulling grasses and weekly tilling. That much tilling is destructive to
>nutrients and microorganisms alike. Local farmers use chemicals to control
>the grass, something we will not do. Heavy mulching only encourages the
>grasses growth. Our super hard water causes the small emitters in drip
>irrigation to stop up.
>The grass can send runners 3 ft in one week, so even though my grow beds
>are 3 ft off the ground I still pull grass from the beds weekly.
>In our situation aquaponics just make sense. For others, not so much. If I
>had my choice, dirt farming would be it, but high temps in the summer, low
>rainfall totals (31 in) and time make it difficult.
>Paul the Skeptic
>
>Sent from my iPhone
>
>On Jan 14, 2011, at 8:01 PM, "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> Here we go again. You say your grow beds use around 75 gallons of water
>per month to grow intensively on 60 sqft. and dirt gardens require
>hundreds of gallons to grow the same amount. Hundreds of gallons on just
>60 sq ft each month?
>>
>> I suppose there are those who don't know of the hundreds studies and
>books produced by Rodale Press over the last 60 years or so, covering
>moisture and nutrient retentive organic soil building and mulching, and
>all the research elsewhere on intensive and drip irrigation.
>>
>> You're comparing your water use to the most water wasting situation
>imaginable, outdoor gardens with wide, empty aisles, bare sandy soil and
>high evaporation irrigation. Which of course is nothing like irrigating
>moisture-retentive (high organic matter)  intensive beds properly with
>drip and mulch to reduce evaporation, and no water on the aisles we walk
>on.
>>
>> Take a heavy feeder like tomatoes for example.
>> from Cornell: http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/pubs/ask/irrigation.html
>>
>>   "Tomatoes need a minimum of one inch of water per week, preferably 1.5
>inches in the heat of the summer. The bed measures 60 square feet (3 feet
>x 20 feet). One inch of water on one square foot is about a half gallon of
>water. For 60 square feet, you would need at least 30 gallons (60 feet x
>0.5 gallons). That's a minimum amount needed in one week and you could
>easily double this amount in the summer."
>>
>> So that's about 120 gallons per month for 60 sq ft of tomatoes (more in
>high heat). BUT we know the amount varies with conditions such as wind
>protection, temperature, humidity, mulch, and stage of growth. Mine are in
>framed beds (we don't water the aisles) in the greenhouse (for wind and
>frost protection) well amended with organic compost and mulched with drip
>irrigation, and they produce heavily for months. So my conditions conserve
>water in three ways and on average it very likely uses less than the 120
>gal figure, even in our semi arid climate. And get $5 lb for our Italian
>heirloom Genovese.
>>
>> paul tradingpost@lobo.net