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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lflj@intrex.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Dry farming [Fwd: [SANET-MG] soil's influence on transpiration]
  • Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 12:13:15 -0500


Dieter Brand wrote:
Thanks, Lawrence. This will keep me bussy from some time.

Here's the first one, Dieter:

And my thoughts about this:
JG writes:
"In addition to biological approaches, you might also consider using shade cloth and light colored light reflective foliar coatings (e.g., diluted white latex or kaolin clay)"

I'll bet that you could spray/irrigate/fertilize-with-micronutrients a
sprayable mix of water and quarry rock dust.
Make the mix in a container, let the larger solids settle out then siphon off the cloudy liquid to put in the spray tank - agitate the contents frequently to keep the superfine rock particles in suspension and spray this effluent onto the foliage of your plants. You achieve three things:
1) irrigation
2) micronutrient fertilization
3) application of a somewhat reflective coating on the plant leaves

Repeat as needed after any rainfall cleans the plants; if in a constant drought then your spray routine may be all the water your plants get and they will also benefit from the light reflective coating and fertilization. Maybe insect predation and disease problems will be lessened or eliminated too. Local quarry dust may be more readily available than kaolin clay.

LL

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [SANET-MG] soil's influence on transpiration
Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 10:46:10 -0500
From: Joel Gruver <jgruv@HOTMAIL.COM>
To: SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU

Hello Edna,

The simple mechanistic explanation of the phenomena you have described is
that crop yield is influenced by many factors
other than water ( principally, crop genetics, resource availability (macro
nutrients, micronutrients, sunlight, CO2)
and the presence of toxins, pests, pathogens, weeds and symbionts)) and the
highest yield to water ratio will be
achieved when all factors other than water are non-limiting.

As documented by Widtsoe nearly 9 decades ago and many more recent studies,
the addition of nutrients will normally
increase yield to water ratios if the added nutrients address a nutrient
deficiency.

That said, some very interesting data has been collected recently by Dr.
Hui-lian Xu and others showing positive effects
of organic amendments and microbial inocculants on water use efficiency.
Section 2 in Nature Farming and Microbial
Application (Google books link and table of contents appended below) contains
several interesting chapters related to
this topic.

In addition to biological approaches, you might also consider using shade
cloth and light colored light reflective
foliar coatings (e.g., diluted white latex or kaolin clay)

Joel





  • Re: [permaculture] Dry farming [Fwd: [SANET-MG] soil's influence on transpiration], Lawrence F. London, Jr., 01/13/2008

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