permaculture

["Robert Waldrop" <rmwj@soonernet.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Valley <bamboogrove@cmug.com>
>What have you done to deserve such a blessing? I would sell rights to
my
>soul to Bill Gates for such soil.

So I'm doing good?  Methinks the Extension folks think I have too much
of a good thing.  I asked them what they thought I should "do about
this", and they said "grow stuff".  well, OK.  That's what I'm doing.

The basic soil is black, and in the farming area I grew up in in SW
Oklahoma, we would have called it "black tightland soil".  As far as I
know it has been lawn since it was native prairie, mostly bermuda
grass, but also with quite a bit of other stuff including a white
clover.  Since it was a rent house, I doubt anybody was spending much
money fertilizing or herbiciding the lawn so maybe I have the good
fortune of a small piece of land that hasn't been chemicalized to
death.

I took the soil sample in September by sampling several of my growing
beds, which are 1, 2, and 3 years old.  They were made by putting down
cardboard and newspaper, then dry mulch (mostly leaves and grass
clippings), and then topped with topsoil mixed with compost and then
mulched.  Most of the top soil I got from a small side yard which I
"mined" for this purpose, I did buy a pickup load from a materials
yard.  For fertilization, twice each year they've gotten compost,
which I make mostly from grass clippings, leaves, garden waste,
kitchen leftovers, and shredded trees, usually about 1/2 inch which I
just leave on top, after being made none of the beds have been
cultivated.

Each winter for 3 years I have seeded the whole property, lawn and
everything, with crimson clover and hairy vetch, and inoculated the
seeds with the bacteria, as a winter cover crop.  The crimson clover
is breathtakingly beautiful in the early spring..
>>
>How about some bulbs and fungi?

I need especially to learn more about fungi.  I have counted at least
9 different kinds of mushrooms etc (including one that is bright pink,
looks like a wad of bubble gum, and grows on a very rotted dead log)
naturally growing around here, several of which come back every year
in the same places. All of the beds are outlined with logs so there is
plenty of wood.

Robert Waldrop, okc
>