permaculture

[Neil Bertrando <neilbertrando@gmail.com>]

Reno, NV, USA

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 10:11 AM, Michael Snow <msnow@valley.net> wrote:

> Done, I'll let you know if there are any bites.  Where are you?
>
> Mike
>
> On Jul 7, 2011, at 10:41 AM, Neil Bertrando wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Has anyone here worked with boron rich soils (5 ppm at 0-12 inches, up to
> 40
> > ppm at 3 feet)?  how about combined with summer hydrophobic soils?
> >
> > We're in an winter wet-summer dry arid climate with cold winters and have
> > applied 1 year of keyline pattern cultivation treatments and coupled it
> with
> > compost extracts in some fields.  Currently we're struggling with getting
> > seeds to germinate and/or establish, and we think the Boron plays a
> > significant role in this struggle.   We're planting native rangeland
> > grasses, forbes and shrubs and have used drill seeding, disk seeding, and
> > broadcast seeding methods.
> >
> > We spoke with some local soil scientists who said we have 2 options re
> the
> > boron issue:
> >
> >   1. only plant boron-tolerant species, which we included in our seed
> mix,
> >   or
> >   2. irrigate enough during the summer to keep the boron washed below the
> >   root zones.
> >
> > The areas we're working on are not set up to have permanent irrigation.
>  We
> > can have temporary access to reclaimed water from the nearby wastewater
> > treatment plant if we purchase the irrigation supplies.
> >
> > Some other notes about the context.
> >
> >   - Soils are silty floodplain sediment,
> >   - many of the areas are near monoculture with an invasive perennial
> >   brassicaceae *Lepidium latifolium,*
> >   - the total area is about 35-40 acres
> >   - we've been treating the invasive with periodic mowing at the
> flowering
> >   stage
> >
> > Any thoughts or lines of research to suggest on this issue?
> >
> > I did read in Water for Every Farm p. 293-297 (yellow edition) that in a
> > climate like ours we may want to plow in the mid-late spring when it
> starts
> > to warm up and water is still present in the soils and rain is still
> > expected.  Has anyone tried this alternative timing of plowing?  we did
> > treat about 5 acres this spring with keyline pattern cultivation, no
> > noticable difference yet, but I'd like to give it a year to see.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Neil
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