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market-farming - Re: soil improvement

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  • From: Joan Vibert <joan AT windwalker-farm.com>
  • To: market farming <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: soil improvement
  • Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 13:54:05 -0600

Title: Re: soil improvement
Vint – your response to my soil improvement post was interesting.  As a graduate of a permaculture design course in ‘94, I am very much aware of some of the issues you have brought up.  However, permaculture has become somewhat of a hot button for me since I find it difficult to combine permaculture concepts with a sizeable market garden – and that’s another story.  But thought I’d answer your questions – mainly as a helpful exercise for me.

Several things to consider.
  1. Why did your pond go dry? Simply surface evaporation or did it leak at a rate greater than it was replenished by rainfall runoff?
The pond went dry due to a major drought last year.  This was accompanied by extreme heat and winds which continued well into September.  The pond will drop in a dry summer but we have never had it dry up!

2. How was the pond originally constructed/ was it lined with clay(Bentonite) and has this been removed by the previous dredging/soil removal?
I have no idea how the pond was constructed.  It was built before we bought the farm and served as a stock pond.  From the looks of it it has always been a shallow pond.  We have never before done any dredging or soil removal.  We stocked it years ago with bass from our big pond, which is roughly 5 acres and a very healthy spring-fed pond that is 30’ deep.

3. Have you considered utilizing swales, gabions, and similar structures to trap the sediment before it runs into your pond? This is your topsoil that is ending up at the bottom of the pond where it is obviously less useful than up on the slope where it belongs.
This pond is filled by run off from our pasture.  There is no crop land connected to it and really no erosion going in to it.  As opposed to an overflow tube like our big pond has this merely has an area which would allow water to back up way before it would go over the banks.  The dam is quite high.

Back to permaculture for a second.  I believe strongly in the principles and have applied the design methodology for much of the farm activities.  I returned from the design course I took (a full 15 days course) ready to apply all of the wonderful things I’d learned to a new csa we were starting.  Over the next couple of years I created more problems for myself than solving them.  I had gardens full of sheet mulched areas that were weedier than my regular beds, I had paths full of weed filled carpet – which then could not be weeded and beautiful keyhole beds that required way too much weeding time.  We held a intro course here in ‘95 and the instructor from whom I took my course came to teach ours.  He was horrified by the  difference in growing conditions here east central kansas) as compared to his conditions in Colorado.  We have wind-blown weed seeds constantly – he had never seen cockleburs- they freaked him out.

For a couple of years several of us have tried to find the time to begin applying permaculture practices to kansas realities.  We haven’t yet been able to resolve many of the “sounds great” concepts to what we experience here.  I hope one day to tackle that – I still believe in much of it but what works in theory has yet to be proved in kansas, I’m afraid.

joan
windwalker farm
ottawa, kansas



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