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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost AT gilanet.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Application Rates for Poor Soil
  • Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2005 22:51:45 -0700


I can agree it's not too much work to build soil, since there's no other way
to improve crops over the long term. And I have to agree cover crops alone do
take time. Years, in fact. However I have to question the heavy metals notion
since there's no source for it and it's news to me. I'd suspect there's more
of a problem from nearby auto or tractor exhaust. I have used boards on a
small scale and one problem with them is, in summer they draw moisture from
the bed, esp on the south side, which tends to shrink the soil away from the
sides. A non-absorbent bed wall would help. I'm not willing to put chemical
sealer on the boards, so I'm forced to use something else or build up dirt
walkways between beds, to hold the bed soil in place. Someone else probably
has better ideas.

paul AT largocreekfarms.com
http://medicinehill.net
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 1/3/2005 at 10:32 AM Allan Balliett wrote:

>Seriously, Matt, food plants should NEVER be around old truck tires.
>Cadmium and other heavy metals are available in the soil around the
>tires (and to your hands) and it gets in the food and it is NOT GOOD
>for anyone. I sense that you may need to buy some newer gardening
>books. The tire idea came into vogue in the 70's but by at the
>mid-90s it was fairly well known in community gardening circles that
>tires are very dangerous around food.
>
>The 2nd thing I wanted to say to you is that it is very easy to get
>broadacre farming confused with market farming when you are starting
>out. There are many techniques of economy of labor and equipment and
>materials that are necessary when you are farming acres of something
>that are not pertinent when you are only doing a few 100ft beds of
>it. I have come to think of my 100ft beds as containers rather than
>as fields. DOing it this way, I don't feel bad about MAKING SOIL to
>fill that bed. If you do that, you can use peat or community leaf
>mold or ? to get the texture you want fast and you can do that 12inch
>nutrient balancing that you are apparently interested in doing
>easily, if you board your beds (30ft white oak 12inch fence boards
>can be fairly cheap from a sawmill. Maybe not in your area. You can
>even do this "Chineese Style" and just make mounded beds). I still
>advise you to work from soil tests. We built several hundred feet of
>boarded salad beds mid-season this year. I have to admit that I'm
>fairly disappointed with how they have performed, but I'm getting
>them re-tested and will work to balance nutrients better before this
>season begins. My point: it is NOT too much work to build soil - just
>like a landscaper would do - for beds. Texturizing with a cover crop
>is going to take you a lot of months to accomplish.
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