permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

A conversation:

> You don't find that the Howard rotovator (which I figure is what we call a
> rotary hoe) pulverizes the soil too much?

The Howard Rotavator has been in production for many decades, does a
great job and is very durable.
> Have you had any experience with spaders?

I have heard that they are excellent tillage implements but
I chose a tiller rather than a spader as I could not afford both and
knew what I needed the tiler for, a job the spader was not capable of -
see below.
It is possible that a spader may be the only power tool a small farmer
needs; I say that with some reservation but plenty of conviction.

> I recently purchased a farm that had machinery as well. It has a Caroni
> rotary hoe with 1.5m working width. I'm hesitant to use it as I'm of the
> understanding that, as Elaine Ingham says, they "slice and dice" the soil
> microbiology. What's your view?

Don't worry. Use it for a while to incorporate soil amendments into
heavy compacted soil then stop and switch to no till gardening methods
and work toward creation of permanent biointensive heavily mulcked and
composted beds that never need tillage except a light forking into the
top layer and hoeing to remove weeds. This is a reality.
I could go on for many pages about this and probably should but will
instead refer you to a document I continually update about permanent
notill biointensive raised beds. There is a lot of information and
advice there with external links to other resources and to excellent videos.
June 4, 2010 Revision
Gardening Hand Tool Sourcelist
==================================
Farm & Garden Hand Tool Sourcelist
==================================
Permanent Biointensive Double-dug Garden Preparation & Handtool
Information & Sourcelist
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/documents/gardening-hand-tools.faq
1) Yes, any tillage destroys the habitat for all the classes of
beneficial organisms Elaine Ingham talks about, especially fungi and
earthworms. You can till for a limited time but after that soil
quality/tilth/crumb structure/friability goes down and the tendency to
become compacted goes up. Without a large amount of resident fungi and
earthworms in your garden soil production capacity is far from what it
could be and the need for supplemental irrigation goes up.
2) If you have clay or otherwise hard compacted but good soil, to get
production up to desired levels, you need to mix a variety of soil
amendments with your soil, i.e. homogenize soil and amendments.
The quickest way to do this is with a rotavator and several other
implements including bottom/turning plow, Yeomans plow, tillage
tool/spring tooth harrow (optional but useful) and some sort of hiller
bedder for making raised beds or a row making tool if you're doing row
cropping or just rototill the beds and use them as is with only a small
amount of bed above grade.
3) I elected to use extensive tillage and even a skid loader to mix and
spread my rock powder/compost/manure onto the strips that would become
my beds. I planned to do a lot of destructive tillage up front to
massively change the soil in my beds, quickly, completely and correctly.
At some point I would retire the tractor, having completed bed
construction, and work the beds by hand ever after. Here are some of the
tools I use for that:
http://picasaweb.google.com/venaura/GardenTools#

> Is there any good research into the best implement for soil preparation of
> vegetable beds?

> I'm aware of the damage that rotary hoes do to soil structure and in
> creating a plow pan. Are there any good uses for this implement? Are they
> good for working up new ground or turning in green manures? Perhaps using
> a Yeoman's plow as well to shatter the plow pan?

> > What about power harrows? Spaders?

> I am also aware that perhaps one implement may not do all things required
> i.e. have friends who have a spader but find it is not so good for
> incorporating green manures.

> Spaders are quite rare in Australia especially for tractors. They are
> available for walk behind tractors.

That's an easy one. First determine what type(s) of soil you have
and how it is layered in the area you want to crop, i.e is there
any impermeable clay or gumbo and if so at what depth. Second,
work your soil when moisture content is optimum for tillage.

Prepare a mixture of compost, manure and rock powders plus any other
amendments you need, i.e phosphate, azomite, greensand, seaweed,
dried duckweed or alfalfa, etc. Apply this mix to your garden in strips,
where the beds will exist.

Farmland runoff channeled into catchment ponds could grow
duckweed to reclaim nutrients. Harvest with some type of seine.
Dry it in an open shed. When dry it forms granules that can be gathered 
and containerized for long term storage. These granules can be spread
just like dried seaweed, alfalfa, soybean meal, etc. or mixed with a 
compost/rock powder mix for immediate application to garden soil.
Duckweed likes a high nutrient load so its perfect for a manure lagoon.
It is also somewhat impervious to environmental pollutants. It is cold 
hardy and goes dormant during drought when water levels are low. It has 
as much protein as soybean meal and certainly as much as alfalfa.
It is excellent for recycling nutrients and make a great high nitrogen 
soil amendment for mixing with compost or direct application as a 
fertilizer.

Rotovate or rotohoe your beds. Hill and bed, Yeomans plow (three shanks
per bed) then hill and bed again. Repeat seasonally as necessary. I and
the late Eric Kindberg developed and used all these implements. You can
scale the size and configuration of these implements to accomodate the
power of your tractor, 40 minimum to 80 maximum horsepower required.
Pix of all of this here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/venaura/VenauraFarmPermaculture#
http://picasaweb.google.com/venaura/GardenTools#
http:/www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/venaurafarm
Some interesting scans of pages out of old ag books:
http://picasaweb.google.com/venaura/BOOKS#