permaculture

[Richard Wade <wade@coac.es>]

Dieter, When you speak of soy and such, are you talking about gardening,
or as a field crop? It seems that soy as an asian inmigrant was probably
more accustuned to more regular water that dryland farming here can give
it especially being a summer annual. How were they grown? And when were
they planted? When is your last frost date?
Also when you speak of lupins are you referring to tremoÇos?
I can colaborate what you said about the inoculation of the rizobium.
The Med. is full of all kinds of legumes and I would guess that the
bacteria are everywhere and have more than one way of surviving with out
hosts.
Richard (from Tarragona)

Dieter Brand wrote:
> Larry,
>
> About N-fixing bacteria, I live in a very isolated place which is surrounded by forests and which had been abandoned for decades before we took over.  Still, I don’t need any inoculation for legumes that are traditionally grown in my area (favas; lupines; field-, green- and chick peas; bush-, pole- and dried beans, etc.) even though these haven’t been grown anywhere near my place for decades.  The bacteria stay dormant in the soil until required to multiply for colonizing the roots of therespective legume.  
>
> I did try growing soya this year, which is not traditionally grown in this 
> area.  The plants grew well, but the beans turned out only half the size of 
> the ones I had sown.  I only became aware of the problem when it was too late 
> to check for the root nodules, but I think this indicates that the plants 
> didn’t fix enough N.  I will try again to coax the soya beans into growing a 
> little bigger by “natural means”.  If it means that it won’t work without 
> inoculation, I probably give up on the idea of growing soya.  Would be a 
> petty though, since Ispent much of my life in Japan and would very much like 
> to make my own tofu.
>
> I don’t know if soil can be damaged by chemical farming to the extent that 
> one might not be able to grow legumes without inoculation, I somehow doubt it 
> though.  Our hillside land has been badly abused by previous generations of 
> farmers, who were encouraged under the previous regime, the Salazar 
> dictatorship, to grow wheat everywhere, even on 40 degree slopes, so that 
> this region, the Alentejo in the South of Portugal, may become the 
> breadbasket of the country.  Most of the topsoil eroded within a few years of 
> tilling the hills.  On the upside, this being one of the poorest regions in 
> the whole of Europe, most of the small subsistence farmers were too poor to 
> buy synthetic fertilizers or other agrochemicals; which means that my land 
> probably never saw any chemicals and not even a tractor. The previous owner 
> still plowed with a donkey and a wooden contraption with iron teeth as a 
> plough.
>
> Dieter Brand
> Portugal
>
> PS: When I cut the grass and weeds at the start of the dry season, I use as 
> much as I can for mulching the irrigated part of our land, the rest I use for 
> making compost.  Mulch doesn’t decompose during the dryseason and poses an 
> unacceptable fire risk.  For example, when we get enough rain in April, a 
> grassy mulch will decompose within less than a month.  During the dry season, 
> the same mulch will not significantly decompose, even with some irrigation, 
> for six or more months.
>
>
>
>
>       
> _______________________________________________
> permaculture mailing list
> permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> Subscribe or unsubscribe here:
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture
> Google command to search archives:
> site:https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture searchstring
>
>
>