North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Alan Haigh" <alandhaigh@gmail.com>]

If I can't make a given soil work in my business I loose a customer.  Although my business is regional I have the opportunity to observe many different soil types every season.  On my bedroom floor right now there's probably dirt from at least 30 different sites, but I guess I should leave my personal habits out of this.

 

Anyway, when I talked about growing in clay before I suggested incorporating generous quantities of compost (50% by volume in top 6-8" of soil) topped with mulch.  Several others have suggested the same but of even greater importance in my experience is creating raised beds which was part of my original suggestion. 

 

A raised bed physically changes the soil into a more aerated medium.  The old French intensive garden technique was to raise the beds without walls such as cedar planks to create a continuing landslide affect as the beds gradually erode.  I remember long ago reading about a French horticulturist who observed the rapid growth of shrubs and trees in landslide areas and created the technique or at least the theory for the technique.

 

On the other subject of melons lacking sweetness in fall, I have often observed that the last of my summer squash is always the sweetest and I've long assumed that the cooler nights reduced nocturnal respiration which reduces vegetative growth thereby increasing carbohydrate storage in the fruit.  Unfortunately I've forgotten more about horticulture than I know and I can't remember if this was something I read or a personal creative leap.  I find the contradiction here to other peoples experience with melons to be quite perplexing.