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market-farming - Re: Horse manure/sawdust

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  • From: Sojourner <sojournr AT missouri.org>
  • To: market farming <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Horse manure/sawdust
  • Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 10:59:10 -0600


Robert Farr wrote:
>
> Holly:
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by: <spreading sawdust on TOP of your soil
> will not cause a nitrogen deficiency.> What wouldn't it?

Well, think about it - why WOULD it? How would a top layer of sawdust
reach down into the ground and yank nitrogen out of the soil? It's much
easier for it to react (when it needs to, during the decomposition
process) with elements in the air and not in the soil. There's a whole
lot of Nitrogen in our air, lots more Nitrogen than there is Oxygen.

Now, if you top dress with a nitrogen fertilizer, I would imagine that
the sawdust might "use up" some of that nitrogen in its decomposition
process as well, but personally I'm not using chemical fertilizers
anyway. I've forgotten the exact process and the byproducts, but as I
recall what happens is that most of whatever nitrogen gets bound up in
the decomposing process is available for later rerelease. It's
borrowed, and that mostly from the air, not stolen.

When you bury it (or any organic matter for that matter) you are forcing
it into an unnatural situation where the only recourse to Nitrogen is
what's in the soil, so of course that's where it gets it from.

For years I buried organic matter because that was supposedly the way to
improve your soil. Well, after two or 3 years of digging the same stuff
I had buried the previous year(s) up when adding the current year's
organic soil amendments, I finally got it through my thick head that,
hey - maybe the books are wrong! Because there in front of my eyes was
the proof positive that those guys were talking through their hats.
There, in the stratified layers of my double-digging and soil amending.
Like an archeological dig, the undecomposed remains of organic matter
lay exposed to the eye.

So I quit doing it and I went to green manuring, mulching and layering
organic matter on TOP of the soil. Voila, my soil began improving in
leaps and bounds. Instead of being faced every spring with a mucky clay
mess, and every summer with a cracked, hard baked, concrete like
surface, I suddenly had real soil. I had worms. I had healthy plants.
I no longer alternated between a swamp and a parking lot.

Due to a divorce that property was sold, but neighbors have informed me
that to this day the current owners still cannot grasp why the only
place the grass will grow on that whole lot (it was a plat house in a
suburb) is the area where they tore out my garden. It's been 12 years
now and that's still the only spot in the yard that's any good soilwise.

So let's think about this for a moment: we all know, don't we, that
leaf mold from a forest is really excellent soil, right? What are the
conditions in a forest? Lots of surface litter, mostly branches, twigs,
leaves (also high carbon) and downed trees. It rots down to a rich
black fluffy type of soil. The trees and undergrowth in the forest are
obviously not suffering from any lack of nitrogen - they grow just fine,
healthy, vigorous.

There's no reason on earth that you can't have the same sort of natural
process at work in your garden with sawdust, particularly sawdust mixed
with animal manure and urea. And if its slower to rot than say straight
grass clippings, who cares? That just means you get a little extra
mileage out of it as mulch in the meantime. It adds up over time.

> Also - I've heard to keep manure away from carrots. When I manure my
> carrot crop, it certainly provides bad tasting, forked monsters. Why is
> that?

Too much fertilizer for root crops makes them grow lots of little root
hairs; lush growth for a carrot makes the root (which is the part we
eat) rootier to support the extra top growth. They just grow too durn
much and too durn fast. Carrots and such actually do better in slightly
poor soil, as long as its not stoney or hard (which will also lead to
forking but not the funny taste).

--
Holly ;-D
Contrary Peasant
sojournr AT missouri.org




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