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Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio
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- From: "Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>
- To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
- Subject: Re: [NAFEX] NAFEX Meeting Topic suggestion
- Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2008 22:35:46 -0500
Geoffrey Stone wrote: "I am new to these
concepts and wish to avoid re-inventing the wheel." He listed these
notions:
....we should consider
A) clearing our steep slopes for perennial crops
by:
1) felling trees and making use
of logs for lumber and firewood (do not destump)
2) leave the limbs in place and
add available organic matter and available char
3) inoculate this prepared
(terraced) area w/ "fungally dominated" AACT (see "Teaming With
Microbes).
4) plant fruit trees, nut trees,
food producing shrubs on these terraces.
5) manage the area w/ as little
disturbance of the "soil foof web" as possible
B) clearing our flat land for annual crops
by:
1) clearing and destumping the
area
2) tilling in mulch
3) inoculate w/ "bacterially
dominated" AACT
4) plant annual crops with as
little disturbance of the "soil web" that is being established.
I was at a garden meeting where a local guy named Jim Joyner said
that gardeners spend so much time worrying about the top six inches of our soil,
but that he'd seen instances where organic matter much deeper had had dramatic
results. He gave two examples. One was a tropical island where a
hurricane had knocked down all the coconut palms. Someone had laid the
palms down in a single layer and piled dirt on them before planting a commercial
avocado grove. He said that the trees in the part of the grove
with palms under them did much better than those without. He said that in
the Ozarks an expt station had been trying without success to produce grapes,
and finally resorted to making 4 ft deep trenches in the clay soil and filling
them with sawdust. The grapes grew fine after that. I have been
fantasizing about taking a ditch witch across our slopes for a decade now.
Because of these stories, I have let wild trees, esp pines, grow where they
shouldn't be so we can cut them down later after their roots have punched holes
down into the subsoil for my own trees to
follow. Branches of the trees we remove wind up piled on
the ground near the fruit trees. So I've done a lot of
what Geoffrey suggests for his slopes and permanent plantings.
Donna
|
- Re: [NAFEX] NAFEX Meeting Topic suggestion, Donna &/or Kieran, 08/07/2008
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