permaculture

[Marimike6@cs.com]

In a message dated 11/4/2003 1:22:20 AM Eastern Standard Time, samm_bucus@yahoo.com writes:

hello, i have ten acres in northern wisconsin, on the south side of lake superior making it a cold zone 4.  the soil is pH 4-5 and pure sand with an inch or so of topsoil and a lot of iron in it.  the land used to be field for grazing horses i beleive.

i have plans to develop it into a permaculture style farm and am looking for help on several issues from the list:
 
my main plan is to cover about half of it alley crop style. in order to make it financially i plan to develop a regular organic perennial flower/herb nursery, annual flower greenhouse and basil, tomato, spinach/malabar spinach greenhouse to provide value added crops in the alleys.  the rows will be fruit tree guilds, mostly apple, pear and plum based. 

Dear Samm--

My dirt is exactly like yours, but a bit more pH-neutral. You are going to have a big problem with fertility if you don't plow some organics into your sand. An inch of topsoil just won't do. Sand drains so well all your nutrients end up down at the water table after a few rains, so my experience has been you have to keep adding and adding the black stuff.

Look around the neighborhood and find sources for aged manure. If it's not old, crumbly and pleasant-smelling, put it into your compost pile for a year, along with your cleared brush or other source of mulch. This makes great dirt-enhancer for hungry soil.

Without adding organics I'm afraid your plants will live but not grow. I have a very diverse number of plants that are still the same size they were two years ago, when I first put them in the ground. They take huge amounts of food in order to come to fruit, so I hope you have either a pickup or a hay trailer to hitch up-- it's going to take a lot of loads worked into the dirt before you get State Fair quality crops.

If you can't glean a lot of mulch from your land, try the county or any developers who've been clearing land. They normally have a lot more brush than they know how to get rid of. The finer you grind it, the quicker rotting will occur. And to add nutrients, food leavings are tops, so ask your local farmer's market if you can scavenge their leavings after market day. Don't forget to ask the supermarket either-- they throw away a lot of veggies on a daily basis.

One exception in my case-- I've found that peaches really like my thin sandy soil. Same with a few ornamentals, like butterfly bushes or pyracantha. But tomatos? If your place is like mine, you'll get three or four dwarfs per plant, that's it. And they'll finally ripen around October.

M. Elvin
Wake County, North Carolina