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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] walking away/mulching

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  • From: Rick Valley <bamboogrove@cmug.com>
  • To: <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] walking away/mulching
  • Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 16:26:47 -0700


> From: Mark <mpludwig@facstaff.wisc.edu>
> Subject: Re: [permaculture] walking away/mulching
>
>> Buckwheat is fast growing, attracts beneficials, makes a tasty green while
>> it's young, and provides plenty of organic material - not a nitorgen fixer
>> though - bees like it too...
>
> It is an exceptional mineral accumulator, with great soil conditioning
> capability. far out weighs the lack of N fixing IMO.
Potash, for a major one, eh? And I've been told the hollow stems of the
whole Buckwheat/Polygonaceae family are real nice microhabitat in a mulch or
compost.
I myself favor Madewaska Tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum) which is an
Acadian heirloom from Maine; it's a "single hull" type, and can grow taller
(less bending) and I think it tastes much better as flour. I can get a crop
planting any time from last frost to July (following garlic, f'rinstance)
and it self-seeds almost as good as a weed (you won't lose your seed strain)

Back to an earlier part of this thread; there's nothing that says "if you
start with mulch you must keep the system in mulch" Ruth Stout said so early
on- in answer to the poor denuded fools who told her mulch wasn't practical
because the soil couldn't warm up fast enough, she said "just pull the mulch
back, it'll be nice DARK soil underneath and it'll warm up quicker! (she
gardened in near-arctic Conneticut, fcs) I usually use mulch to blitz a lawn
or cover a gravel parking lot, and by about year three I've a bank of seed
containing nearly every plant I need, and I mulch here and there and leave
it off here and there and put compost heaps and towers (planted) here and
there. And I don't need to plant very much at all, I mainly select which
plants live and/or get eaten and/or mulched and/or trimmed.
The process goes "sloth leads to learning leads to chaos"
-Rick





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