permaculture

[Rick Valley <bamboogrove@cmug.com>]

Title: Re: [permaculture] Sandy soil

> 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.  

Find out what micronutrients you'll need to add (soil test) to make the soil ideal for N-fixing legumes (esp trees) I bet you can grow Maackia and it might be the best choice, but pea shrub would be excellent too. 

Any manure you get can be composted on site in windrows where you'll grow things later. 

I put 2 semi loads of dairy manure solids on 1/8 acre of sandy dredge spoil to turn it into a nursery plot. It was worth all the money and sweat. Obviously, you'll need to develop broadscale tactics too, and that's where the N-fixers come in. They'll build biomass on site.

start in the inner zones and expand outwards. observe your local succession regime.

-Rick