permaculture

[Elfpermacl@aol.com]

In a message dated 9/7/98 6:32:27 PM, you wrote:

<<The pressure to use something instant is funding.

people on the land in debt to the bank

have to use something quick and absolute, like roundup which has a

surfactant (hopefully only in older stock) that removes the skin of

amphibians!.

Some people use a very clever method of planting and harvesting that works

with the weeds *(sure there may be a reduced harvest quanitity per acre, but

the soil less is less and the water retention and organic matter building up

in the soil fantastically greater)

the method means ripping the soil with a deep blade -like a yeomans plough

then planting directly in the weedy soil with a tall

crop, taller than the weeds at harvest time. such as corn/maize, wheat,

sorghum, etc

then harvest HIGH not low on the ground, this leaves the weeds intact.

*This method was used with great success by Robyn Tredwell, (Rural Woman of

the Year Australia '96) She doesn’t worry about contamination of seed as she

has a seed sorting machine and uses any unwanted seed for fragile and

exposed areas on her cattle station . She has begun selling seed of native

grasses and pasture species to other farmers.



In Western Australia, Ron Watkins, a successful pastorlist and broadacre

farmer, uses an organic method too. He allows the weeds to grow to protect

the soil before he plants a crop, then he chips the weeds lightly to add

them to the soil as green manure. Into the dying weeds he plants the crop.



NEXT STEP:

Have you considered perrenial species such as pigeon pea which is harvested

for daal?

April

>>

Nice post, April.  I just returned from Paraguay where they have problems with
a weed with aspirations to be a broad tree, locally called Chirca.  I
recommended a smother crop of velvet bean or tropical kudzu.  Come to find
out, other "organic" types in Paraguay are also recommending velvet bean,
though they apparently are mainly ignorant about kudzu, fearing that once set
loose it will eat the Universe.  Actually kudzu is more useful by about 50
orders of magnitude, particularly the tropical species which is tame compared
to the warm temperate kind I've planted at my own place.

For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since 1982),
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