permaculture

[Steve Diver <steved@ncat.org>]

Anne -

My take is that Larry's soil amendment "rate of application" are
astronomical and should be viewed as experimental.  

Larry's advice on equipment and general approach
to the "combinations" of soil amendments are sound, fyi.  

You can get up and running as a 2 acre market farm,
or a large garden at 100' x 100' or a smaller garden at
50' x 50'....  with much more reasonable amounts of
compost and rock dust and so forth.

There are many ways you can build soil fertilty.  

It depends so much on your particular situation: soil type,
climate, growing season, equipment, cropping system
locally available amendments and organic fertilizers,
your own soil fertility philosophy, and so forth.

May I suggest that you look at the resources and publications
we've compiled on soils, compost, cover crops, etc.

ATTRA
http://www.attra.ncat.org

Keep in mind that what you see on the web page
is 1/5th of the resources we have in our archives.

Calling and talking by phone is still the number one
way to get connected and explore resources and
alternative farming methods.   

Steve Diver

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

LL,

I've got a couple of acres that are in abandoned pasture and weeds
(blackberry, thistle and canary reed grass) that I'm going to want to
prepare for food production and I was interested in the methods you
mentioned in your last post.  Are there any books that describe these
methods in more detail, describing for example how to determine how much
rock dust the soil can hold and when to apply it, what the "maximum
allowable quantities" of manure are for a particular piece of land etc.  
Basically, what the 12 month sequence to prepare land in this way would be.

Thanks!

Anne in Seattle