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Gary350
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Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

If there is an easier and better way I am all for it. I have experemented with several new ideas but I always return to the way I was tough growing up. I just added my own twist to my method of gardening by putting compost in holes and trenches. It would be much easier if I had good soil to start with.

I have 2 cousins that share cop in Illinios. They both share cop about 2000 acres each. They say they pull the planter behind the chisel plow and only have to drive over the field one time to plant.

When I was growing up we use to plow first, then disc once maybe twice, then plant, then when the corn or beans were a certain height we cultivated so the tractor has to be driven over the land 4 times and one more time to harvest the crop for a total of 5 times per crop.

There is a TV show called the Victory Garden. I don't watch it anymore but they plant in raised beds on an Asphalt Parking lot. You don't need soil at all with raised beds. They are planting in peat moss with fertilizer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1KUxzBN3n0&feature=related

Dillbert
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in 1979 - at first chance to settle down and do a decent garden - our oldest was five. once upon a day I wandered outside and found her munching on garden peas. my immediate thought response was "gosh, glad I didn't just Sevin those aphids to death" - that was the day I went totally organic.

it didn't hurt that my grandfather - who did amazing things (okay, okay, I was a kid . . ) was organic from the git go. I have his autographed First Printing (1959) edition of J.I. Rodale's Enc of Organic Gardening - but bought a new copy because I refer to it constantly and didn't want to beat up his copy. I also have his autographed copy of A.B. Graf's Exotica (1957.) it's a long story...

I am most definitely not dismissive of your approach or ideals.

I have technical issues with the carbon sequestration, etc. why does the swamp bubble? if the methane of decomposition is so deep in the soil the (clay?) layer prevents its escape, how to the plants get at it? and as the decomp has occurred at the surface within the organic layer, how did it get so deep?

there's nothing wrong with "carbon" in the atmosphere. detrimentally chemically active compounds - almost without exception containing carbon - are another question.

working from the top down, ala nothing but biological action, certainly will work over time. at my age, I don't have that amount of time - I'm looking to create 8-10 inches of really good soil atop my mountain of clay. I'd like to eat something before I die.

oh, that the old fxrt Dillbert doesn't tolerate weeds is really a bad assumption. I've got the suspicion I could put the Messy Gardener to shame....

>>the Dust Bowl
interesting example. what has become of the Dust Bowl today?
in 1930 (to 1940 +/- depending on region) a rather widespread geographic area (US up into Canada) experienced a prolonged drought. did poor agricultural practices contribute to the problem? no doubt about that. are we smarter now? mebbe. prolonged droughts are not unique - and Freon aka "greenhouse gasses" had just been invented (1928) - so other than making a bad situation worse, mankind likely played little role in "creating" the root cause of the Dust Bowl.

I've more than once flown over the mid-west and observed the green "crop circles." artificial irrigation has had a proven effect on the aquifer - and I would hazard the opinion that no-till farming is unlikely to solve the issue of inadequate natural rainfall.

>>As for grass-fed versus CAFO
here's the link
https://blogs.reuters.com/environment/2010/04/08/grass-fed-beef-packs-a-punch-to-environment/

it is complete? is it accurate? where are the research facts?
hmmmm, like so many white papers, there's precious little to be found.
it's a "spin" on a headline, not unlike many other "sources." good science is hard to find - not the least of which is due to "they just don't know it all."

and so far as large scale no-till operations are concerned - it's a wonderful idea - but . . . if it actually was more economical/efficient absolutely every corn farmer would be there. they aren't.

is it more eco-friendly? is it more sustainable? perhaps. but there's some hard cold economic facts that must be addressed.

small scale farmers are in it for the crop - mostly, you can't eat "but it's better for the world." large scale farmers are in it for the money - they gotta pay the seed bill. if no-till was more cost effective the megaliths would be in it mega-big-time, and they are not. this is a separate issue from "are crop prices too low?"

notice the absence of "fertilizer bill." why? if you calculate the amount of cow poop needed for a 300 acre field, every year . . . . you're gonna' need a lot more cows. on a small scale, 20 cows and a vegetable patch works. on a large scale, tee or twenty 300 acre fields and 3000 cows does not work. the number are not there (it's a "old math" thing)

I've looked at the USDA lists of "approved" stuff used in the production of "organic label" products - vegetable to animal. the list is appalling. I personally fully agree the "regulations" have been outrageously slanted to the "least minimum" (and that's being generous) - but that's an entirely different rant.

>> Sand addresses the mechanical issue alone, while my method addresses the chemistry, biology,
somewhere I dimly recall citing the idea of working organic matter into the soil.

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rainbowgardener
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The Dust Bowl did have to do with drought, partly related to changes in ocean temps and jet stream (sound familiar?). But there had always been droughts on the plains and there never was anything like the Dust Bowl with literal tons of soil just blowing away. What made the difference?

"Major wind erosion occurred on the Great Plains of the United States in the 1930s. The erosion and its harsh consequences are known as the Dust Bowl. The Great Plains are very dry and windy, and prolonged droughts are not uncommon.

When settlers came to the area, they built farms and planted crops. Their crops replaced the natural grasses in the area, which had root systems more capable of sustaining life under the difficult conditions. In addition, the farmers grazed their animals over large areas and plowed entire fields at the end of each harvest. These factors also hurt the soil and were causes of the Dust Bowl. "
https://library.thinkquest.org/26026/History/the_dust_bowl.html

"The phenomenon was caused by severe drought coupled with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops or other techniques to prevent erosion.[1] Deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains had killed the natural grasses that normally kept the soil in place and trapped moisture even during periods of drought and high winds."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl

Even the 1930's drought was likely partly human created. We are seeing that now - areas of the Amazon rain forest that are deforested have declining rainfall. Once the forest is cleared, the soils dry out and harden up and don't hold as much moisture. The leaves in the forest transpire and give off moisture into the atmosphere which comes down as rain. Without the trees all that goes away:

"Fires and climate change are having a dramatic impact on the Amazon. Recent studies suggest that the Amazon rainforest may be losing its ability to stay green all year long as forest degradation and drought make it dangerously flammable. Scientists say that as much as 50 percent of the Amazon could go up in smoke should fires continue. Humidity levels were the lowest ever recorded in the Amazon in 2005. "
https://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html

"Theoretical Physics Division of the St Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, propose that the thermodynamic driver of air mass circulation is far secondary to a much more powerful driver tied to the evaporation and condensation of water vapour [3-6]. They conclude that the loss of the Amazon rainforests, for whatever underlying cause, would be disastrous in the extreme. It would threaten much of South America with unprecedented drought, and lead to desertification in the central and western part of the Amazon Basin, with repercussions right up into the Andes and beyond . . .

water vapour is first drawn into the lower atmosphere through evapotranspiration from dense forest, with its relatively high leaf area index, and then, higher in the lower atmosphere, condenses as a result of declining temperatures. And they make it very clear that a high leaf area index is vital to the process and that replacing the forest with pasture or a plantation of soya, in which evapotranspiration is an order of magnitude lower, simply will not do.
https://www.I-sis.org.uk/importanceOfTheAmazonRainForest.php

Similar processes were going on when settlers cleared the tall grass prairies.

Human beings changed what might (or might NOT!) have been stressful drought years to disastrous Dust Bowl years. We can do it again or we can choose to do something different this time.

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applestar
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If it's a matter of making clay soil better.... Here's my experience in my small-scale garden:

Back in the '80's I was a regular subscriber to Organic Gardening magazine. I joined the bookclub and bought more books than strictly necessary. I came across the concept of sheet mulching back then.

Fast forward to my current garden -- needless to say, always organic/no-chem -- it's a farm scraped to the subsoil development. Under the sod, there is nothing but bright blue-green clay. Removal of turf consists of cutting and peeling, because the roots don't have any grip on the clay at all.

When I had to move the vegetable garden due to growing trees casting too much shadow in the previous location, I found -- clay. But I was determined to have my garden so I spread my weedy compost on top of the grass, laid cardboard, and layered bagged topsoil, compost and sand. Since I was in a rush and prepped the garden in spring, then planted, the performance was good but not fantastic. When the roots hit the cardboard, all the plants went into nitrogen deficiency shock. But compost tea took care of that. I still had produce out of the garden and I was happy.

I had also started a fence-row of corn and sunflowers that was even less well prepared -- sod turned over face down, then minimal compost and amendments layered on top, then planted. Mulched deeply with straw.

In the fall, I piled compost on the garden, and sheet mulched another extension. For the new extension, I decided to experiment with modified hugelkultur and layered 1/2"~1" thick branches along with half-finished compost as the bottom layer under the cardboard.

Where I planted corn and sunflower, I wanted to plant fruit trees to be espaliered. When they were done, I used loppers to chop down the stalks. Imagine my surprise when little over a month later when I received my fruit trees, I found that the soil along the fence row, which only in spring, had been nothing but clay went down loose and black as deep as the depth-and-half of the garden shovel. The deep growing corn and sunflower roots had thoroughly loosened the soil, and there were nothing left of their roots except in about 2" radius around the stalks.

Next spring, I found the same results in the vegetable garden where I had also grown some corn and sunflowers, and also where I had grown tomatoes. Where I had grown only shallow-rooted veggies, thinking that was all the sheet mulched beds could support, the clay was not as well worked.

In part of the extension that was prepared the previous fall, I planted potatoes -- I was counting on the idea that potatoes are good pioneer crop for a new sheet mulched/hugelkultur bed. I had a bumper crop of potatoes, and that part of the extension is now elbow deep in fluffy soil.

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rainbowgardener
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Gary- "My soil is all clay. When they built this subdivision they bull dozed all the top soil away. In the summer the soil is almost as hard as my cement driveway. The only way I can work my soil is to put compost in the whole garden. Without compost the tiller just bangs away at the surface and not much happens. I add a lot of compost to loosen the soil but it composts away and I have to keep adding more compost just so I can work the soil. Sand helps to break up the soil but it has not food value for plants. I had tried to till in my leaves in the fall but the soil is always too wet and the leaves are wet too so it is just a big mud mixing job."

What AS and I are trying to tell you is that we are/were in the same situation. My soil is all hard clay and rock (where it hasn't been gardened--all of it used to be). I'm sure I couldn't get a tiller through it; haven't tried. But if you aren't tilling it up all the time, it is a lot easier to turn the clay into nice fluffy loam, without adding nearly as many tons of stuff. I add buckets full of compost and wheelbarrows full of mulch, no tons of anything.

Don't till the leaves in the fall, just lay them down. In the spring they will be a lot more broken down and your soil will dry out and then you can turn the leaves under (not necessarily with a tiller).
Last edited by rainbowgardener on Sat Apr 17, 2010 7:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

Dillbert
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it seems you asked and answered the question RBG -

>> Their crops replaced the natural grasses in the area, which had root systems more capable of sustaining life under the difficult conditions

till or no-till does not affect the above - foreign crops supplanted natural vegetation. other than leaving the natural vegetation alone, what are the options?
drain the aquifer?
leave the prairie to itself?
re-route a couple rivers?
none of the solutions are working out without significant "side effects" - wanted, unwanted, intended, unintended, political or a-political.

>>"The phenomenon was caused by severe drought coupled with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops or other techniques to prevent erosion.

>>without crop rotation...
okay, non-rotation exhausts the soil of key nutrients for the "desired" crop, leads to poor production, scrawny plants, but scrawny plants don't make for dust. the native species are a tad on a scrawny side....

>>fallow fields, cover crops or other techniques to prevent erosion.

- per my earlier, are we "smarter" now?
- will being smarter prevent the droughts?

I think not. droughts will continue / are continuing to occur in many places. human ignorance/stupidity can indeed make the results worse, but that ignorance/stupidity did not / does not cause - nor remedy - the drought.

so iffin' you're gonna' go farming in drought prone areas, you need to plant / harvest only the naturally adapted vegetation.
ah nuts, not much market for tumble weed . . . . the world population has not acquired a taste for dried tumbleweed.

iffin' one chooses to remove from cultivation all drought prone areas, well, that could pose a couple other problems. something akin' to my prior "half the world starves to death"

there are no simple 128 character max length "fits in Twitter" answers. as Kermit once said "It ain't easy being green." each and every miracle solution presents (predicted or unforeseen) negative issues.

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rainbowgardener
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Dillbert wrote:it seems you asked and answered the question RBG -my comments in red

>> Their crops replaced the natural grasses in the area, which had root systems more capable of sustaining life under the difficult conditions

till or no-till does not affect the above -Yes in fact it does. No-till, where you just lay a bunch of stuff down and plant into it, would hold the soil a lot better. foreign crops supplanted natural vegetation. other than leaving the natural vegetation alone, what are the options? As above. Also they were plowing their fields and then leaving them bare all winter. Don't plow in the fall! Plant cover crops!
drain the aquifer?
leave the prairie to itself?
re-route a couple rivers?
none of the solutions are working out without significant "side effects" - wanted, unwanted, intended, unintended, political or a-political. Yes, the simple solutions of no-till, compost, mulch, "one-straw revolution" gardening do work out without dramatic interventions such as you suggest. I know the people back then weren't aware of this.

>>"The phenomenon was caused by severe drought coupled with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops or other techniques to prevent erosion.

>>without crop rotation...
okay, non-rotation exhausts the soil of key nutrients for the "desired" crop, leads to poor production, scrawny plants, but scrawny plants don't make for dust. the native species are a tad on a scrawny side....

>>fallow fields, cover crops or other techniques to prevent erosion.

- per my earlier, are we "smarter" now? YES!! We know a lot more about this stuff, whether we choose to use it or not.
- will being smarter prevent the droughts? If we use what we know, YES

I think not. droughts will continue / are continuing to occur in many places. human ignorance/stupidity can indeed make the results worse, but that ignorance/stupidity did not / does not cause - nor remedy - the drought. Did you read the part about the Amazon rain forest? We are right this minute CREATING droughts and turning the rain forest in to desert, in the attempt to ranch beef cattle in an area where they do not belong. We do not have to do this and we could remedy it. One simple solution: don't eat meat. I've been a vegetarian for about 40 years now.

so iffin' you're gonna' go farming in drought prone areas, you need to plant / harvest only the naturally adapted vegetation.
ah nuts, not much market for tumble weed . . . . the world population has not acquired a taste for dried tumbleweed. 1) you can grow other crops if you do it smartly and 2) native vegetation even in Oklahoma includes way more than tumbleweed

iffin' one chooses to remove from cultivation all drought prone areas, well, that could pose a couple other problems. something akin' to my prior "half the world starves to death" I never suggested removing it from cultivation; no-till, compost, humanure/night soil, MULCH, wise use of small amounts of irrigation water. I stayed on Hopi reservation at Third Mesa, AZ. They have grown corn in the desert for centuries and they do not waste their soil.

there are no simple 128 character max length "fits in Twitter" answers. as Kermit once said "It ain't easy being green." each and every miracle solution presents (predicted or unforeseen) negative issues.

The Helpful Gardener
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Dillbert, you are looking at the links I'm posting right?

You see where Alan Savory is from? Zimbabwe. The man regreened desert there while running cattle. He is working in Arizona now. You are assuming desert was always desert and always will be. The Sahara used to be farmland and have water, but not any more, right? Why? ... why are most of the places humans have farmed or cultivated the longest spent? It ain't just climate change...

Here's some stuff supporting my general theory [url=https://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/54450000/Newsletter/Jul2007.pdf]from USDA[/url]. It talks about the gains from plowing, and how they are short term with long term repercussions... carbon loss in soil at 30% to 50% throughout the Corn Belt. That's not sustainable... What happens when you lose the carbon (humus)? You lose biology. What happens when you lose bacteria? No more nitrogen. What happens when you lose fungi? No more glomalin. What happens when you lose glomalin? You get dust. Dustbowl. Desert.

Here's [url=https://www.agry.purdue.edu/CCA/2007/2007/Proceedings/James%20Hoorman-CCA%20proceedings_KLS.pdf]a paper from Perdue[/url] that details what I have been talking about in relation to tillage... I quote...
Tilling the soil is not a natural system and wastes soil nutrients due to decreases in SOM (the storage vessels for nutrients), no active roots, and lower microbial populations. In natural ecological systems, plants and microbes are actively growing and soaking up soil nutrients and recycling those nutrients and plants keep the soil covered to prevent soil erosion.
You insist that no-till isn't feasible, can't match returns, doesn't change water retention, etc., etc... (We've yet to see scientific baccking to those claims). [url=https://www.ky.nrcs.usda.gov/news/NoTillClark.html]Jack Clark[/url] thinks you're wrong... I'm not a fan of all Jack's practices, but his soil management is good with me...

If professionals are willing to change their minds, why not us?

HG

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rainbowgardener
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" Jack Clark thinks you're wrong... I'm not a fan of all Jack's practices, but his soil management is good with me... "

no, he lost me at the round-up and other herbicides and pesticides. ...


but I did think it was interesting what they said, soil that has been continuously managed as no-till for years and has improved a lot in fertility, tilth, etc. can lose most of those gains if tilled even once! Wow! I didn't know that.

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Combine no-till with a practice like [url=https://ag.arizona.edu/oals/ALN/aln48/hanzi.html]polyculture[/url] (think [url=https://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Feb04/AAAS.MtPleasant.kb.html]three sisters[/url]), and we can [url=https://ucanr.org/repository/CAO/landingpage.cfm?article=ca.v045n02p20&fulltext=yes]increase yields per acre BEYOND anything that conventional agriculture can match[/url]...
The tomato-zucchini polyculture offered a considerable yield advantage. It required 1.02 acres of tomato monoculture and 0.64 acres of zucchini monoculture to produce the same quantities of tomato and squash harvested from only a 1-acre polyculture. The land equivalent ratio (LER) for tomato and zucchini was 1.66, which indicates that the total yield of the polyculture per unit area was 66% greater than for the monoculture.
Not less food organically; MORE... just need to learn some new/old tricks... :wink:

HG

Dillbert
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yes indeed. it's all quite fascinating.

The Helpful Gardener
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Yeah, RBG, the wierd thing is a lot of the RU-RTU crowd has gone no till. Who ever thought I'd find an upside to that garbage? Needless to say I think we can do both, but not a lot of folks trying that yet as it means some other paradigm shifts that are difficult for a lot of folks...

Dillbert, I hope I'm wearing you down some here; I'm not entirely discrediting what you've said about soil mechanics. S'all true, isn't it? :lol: But I just don't think a concentration on mechanical properties is focused in the right place. I hope I've at least got you considering that the biological aspects of soil override all other considerations as they touch on every other aspect, and the other parts don't work without it. It's kind of the centerpiece of how I think we should be farming and gardening, and as you see, I have supporting evidence... :wink:

HG
Last edited by The Helpful Gardener on Fri Apr 16, 2010 8:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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applestar
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Tomatoes and zucchini huh? Interesting.... 8)

Dillbert
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>>wearing down
sorry. not even close; not even in this galaxy.

the difference between old fxrt organic gardeners and new fxrt organic gardeners is the old geezers have learned the constraints of the technology.

gimme a ring in 30 or 40 years and let me know how it turns out.

The Helpful Gardener
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Technology?

The "tech" I am talking about is billions of years of biology... :?

If there's any constraints on that, it's us...

IMO, you are the one making an argument for a broken technology, my friend... :wink:

Check out how Sepp Holzer farms. Polycultured terracing sort of like New Guinea... but it's [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw7mQZHfFVE]all Sepp[/url]

Bet Sepp has been farming as long as you have, Dillbert... :D

Not new technology, just different...

HG

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Sage Hermit
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Arguing with a grandmaster?



...I'm going to china soon... and I have been studying martial arts and forgein language my whole life so I am just talking jibber jabber.

I'm not going to lie I'm still a novice.
Last edited by Sage Hermit on Fri Apr 16, 2010 9:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The Helpful Gardener
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C'mon Sage, cut it out with all the master stuff. Sepp, maybe...

DoubleDogFarm
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Thank You Gentlemen, well done and interesting. :D



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