permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 4:01 PM, Scott Pittman <scott@permaculture.org>
wrote:

> While this makes soil building sound easier than falling off a log,
>

It actually is that easy.


> the missing ingredients are labor and time both of which are needed in
> large measure.
>

Of course, hours of manual labor but you/we all need the exercise.


> Is that 16 tons per acre or ??
>

16 tons is an average tandem or triaxle dump truck load. Maybe this
represents 14 cubic yards of material.
I am suggesting using this material as the only soil in your garden. You
would add to this rock phosphate, azomite, greensand, maybe a very little
of different kinds of limestone, maybe 5 cubic yards of aged compost
biomass and manures. You will get plenty of microbes in your soil on site
and from the manures and compost. Add a dressing of bird guano to jump
start the process of innoculating the total soil mass with beneficial
microorganisms, especially fungi. The only tillage done will be mixing the
biomass with the rock dust. The raised beds or waffle beds at or below
existing grade should should each be 40-42" wide, however long you want
(20' is good and 16-24 inches deep. So calculate the total volume of the
proposed bed and divide that into the total volume of rock dust and compost
and manure delivered to the site to determine the optimum number of beds to
build. You could always make the beds less deep and till the soil below the
added material. If you have really good soil on site then this would be the
way to go if you have the time to do all the hand tillage. Of course, till
the ground before you add the rock dust-compost mix.

  Creating soil in a few days is a pipe dream.
>

Give the project a week after delivery of materials if you are using 14
yards dust + 5 yards compost-manure. For less material and a single bed it
can be done easily in a day.


>   In order to restore the complexity and function of good loamy soils
> takes years.
>

It is a matter of building life in the soil and nurturing it. This means
adding compost each year for nutrients and organic matter. Not much tillage
will ever be needed.


> That doesn't mean that you can't produce good produce early on but to
> reach maximum fertility is a long term proposition.
>
> Very true. There is no denying that but you need to feed the
microorganisms as well as the plants, NPK and trace nutrients as needed.


> Where I live and garden raised beds are anathema.  The moisture loss is
> too high for any arid region with raised beds.  Indigenous people here used
> "waffle beds" or sunken beds to capture any runoff and to protect soil
> surface from winds and evaporative loss.
>

That is very interesting. I would like to learn more about that. Are there
any videos of waffle beds?

I hope you are well, Scott. Don't forget to take your fish oil gelcaps,
cinnamon, hibiscus, ginger, turmeric combined with black pepper (thanks,
Georg). Somewhere in there is help for breathing, blood pressure, heart and
cholesterol issues.

..........back to the truck to spread the load of black humus on the raised
bed. I think I will add some granite dust and pyrophyllite screenings also.

LL

I was just going out to spread a pickup load of black humus aged hardwood
chips (its just black powder now) on one raised bed. After that I will
spread some of the biochar gleanings from the winter's wood ashes from my
wood stove. Saw you message and decided to reply.


-- 
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared