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  • From: "John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>
  • To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Quora question: How does one build soil?http://www.quora.com/How-does-one-build-soil
  • Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:50:46 -0000


You must not forget that Alwin Seifert had a very special method for making compost Christian. He called his system the "giant earthworm". He mixed organic material with layers of loam so that at all times his compost heap was cold and without any sign of bacterial thermogenic activity although of course there was a lot of bacterial and fungal activity taking place.
He turned his compost windrows quite frequently by hand and made superior compost this way so that he could aford to offer a price to any visitor who found a pest or disease on any of his crops in his garden.
I do believe that this way of composting makes for the smallest nutrient losses.

I was not able to follow Seifert's system until very recently because of total lack of loam. I had to import clay-sand to add to compost heaps for especially with horse manure a heap can get so hot that only ashes would remain if you didn't act.
And I am also with Dieter that sheet composting = direct spreading of organic material on top of the soil is often the way to go. It builds soil where you need it and it also covers weeds reducing labor weeding. When we take a crop out we mulch asap and this also stops erosion on our steep and often very wet land.
john

Hi Dieter,

if you have ever seen a good made compost - dark, good smelling, loose
structure and full of life - you wouldn't say so.
There are lossses of amount, that's true. But what you get, when the
process of composing comes to an end,
is more valuable than the loss.

Alwin Seifert, a german pinoneer of organic gardening, explained it like
this:

a wild crab aple tree (with small fruits which are only a shell for the
important seeds) grows and lives only from that,
what he took from the soil and what he got back from the leaves falling
down in autumn and return to the soil again.
This one layer of leaves is enough for him.

But for our productive apple trees, with big amount of apples this one
layer is not enough.

Because it is not possible to put the necessary ten or twenty layers
around the trunk he did it on another side nearby
- the compost heap.


In my garden I do both: composing (espacially when a lot of organic
matter accumulates in a short time without free
space on the garden beds) and applying organic matter directly whenever
possible.

Compost I also need for potting soil, for my greenhouse and as a
fertilizer for cabbage and others.

Greetings

Christian




Am 26.12.2011 10:35, schrieb Dieter Brand:
...Composing the organic material before adding it is much
more efficient soil building than adding it straight.
People end up believing this because it is being repeated all the time. In fact, the opposite is true: the longer something stays on the compost heap, the greater the losses. Hence, the most efficient way of using organic matter is by applying it directly to the soil without composting.


A good compost will heat up with microbial activity, and decompose
very quickly.
The greatest losses occur during the high temperature phase.

Happy Christmas,
Dieter

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