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Ben Johansen wrote:little to no problem with germination
Ben Johansen wrote:Loose straw mulch. Shake out flakes of strawbale, as a light layer over the top of your rootcrops. I've been doing this for years, and had little to no problem with germination. Grass clippings would be ideal, but loose straw mulch works wonders.
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"The rule of no realm is mine. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, these are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail in my task if anything that passes through this night can still grow fairer or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I too am a steward. Did you not know?" Gandolf
Marco Banks wrote:cut little X's into the fabric
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5. Permanent mulches attract vast numbers of earthworms. Undisturbed soils covered by permanent mulches over 4 seasons can have earthworm populations exceeding 1 million earthworms per acre = 23 worms per cubic foot. 1 million worms produce 1 ton = 2,000 pounds of earthworm casts = earthworm manure per acre per day during the growing season. That is a vast amount of free organic fertilizer.
Or you could lay your burlap bags down over the bed, and cut little X's into the fabric with a sharp knife. Then add a small bit of planting mix inside the X and plant into those holes.
Stephanie Ladd wrote:
For my other beds, I am going to just do what the other have said above. Although, I never put compost into my beds last year, how should I go about getting the compost amendment in there without disturbing the soil?
Well, getting your compost down into the soil without actually disturbing the soil isn't really possible --- but it's not really necessary. I suppose you could poke some holes and pack compost down into the holes, but that's a lot of extra work for a limited benefit.
There are a couple of key things compost brings to your soil that do not require it to be integrated (mixed) into the soil. Most significantly, compost contributes a big boost of beneficial bacteria and microbes to the root zone around your plants. So as you mulch the surface of the soil with compost and then water it in, those billions of bacteria and microbes are washed down into the soil. Job done. (And a good reason for using rain water or well water --- tap water is full of chlorine, and is hell on bacteria --- if you're using city water, fill a big garbage can with the water you'll be using tomorrow, and let the chlorine evaporate out).
In the same way, nutrients in the compost (N,K,P, and others) will wash through and down to the root zone as you water your plants.
Third, the humus/carbon will be integrated into the soil by the worms. Put the compost on the surface, and if you can, cover it with a bit more carbon rich mulch (leaves, chips, straw, whatever) and the worms will "dig it in" for you. Sunlight will irradiate bacteria and soil microbes, so if you can cover your compost with a layer of something else, it helps. That's why bare soil is so often dead soil -- at least on the surface. Worms will come out at night, but not during the day --- they don't need a sun tan. A thick layer of mulch keeps it dark for them --- they'll come up, move through your compost, and poop it out through the root zone.
No till, no problem.
"The rule of no realm is mine. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, these are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail in my task if anything that passes through this night can still grow fairer or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I too am a steward. Did you not know?" Gandolf
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Stephanie Ladd wrote:Thanks! I began setting up the burlap mulching yesterday and as I thought about it, I don't think it's going to work. It's not going to break down in one year and I don't want to have to pull it up at the end of the season/early next season and disturb all the buggies.
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Casie Becker wrote:
Stephanie Ladd wrote:Thanks! I began setting up the burlap mulching yesterday and as I thought about it, I don't think it's going to work. It's not going to break down in one year and I don't want to have to pull it up at the end of the season/early next season and disturb all the buggies.
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I'm a little confused about why you would need pull up the burlap at all. My wood chips mulches don't completely degrade in the course of one year, but I just push it aside as needed to plant and add more mulch on top. Is there a reason why you wouldn't just cut new holes for planting through the old burlap next year? That's assuming that it won't biodegrade in a year. I think people who are used to chemical agriculture tend to underestimate how much a healthy soil can digest in a year. My wood mulches are applied up to six inches thick and yet, if I don't refresh it, they will be down to and inch or less by the end of the year. If I'm trying to kill grass I might go as high as twelve inches, and even that is down to four inches or less after a year. It's only that very top layer that is exposed to sun, wind and weather extremes that will be slow to break down.
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Casie Becker wrote:Actually, I do most of my mulching with a combination of cardboard (for starting most new beds) and ramial wood chips. I was actually wondering if there was something that I was misunderstanding.
I was curious what made burlap such a different experience than chipped mulch. Particularly since you say they didn't do well in your community garden. I find I learn as much about how to care for my garden by what goes wrong as I do by getting it right the first time.
To be honest, everything you say you did this fall sounds exactly like how I (and my mother for 30+ years) garden. We just keep piling different layers of organic material on the soil. Worms and other soil creatures pull it down to the plants. We only dig enough to fit seeds or seedlings into the ground.
After the initial mulch buries the seed bank it is just a matter of keeping ahead of new seeds blowing in. Weeds are very easy to pull from out of organic mulches.
Peter Ellis wrote:Stephanie, on the burlap bags, my first question is whether the bags you have are natural fiber burlap or some synthetic. One quick and easy way to check is a burn test. Snip a little piece and light it on fire. If it leaves a blob, not powdery ash, it is definitely synthetic and likely will not decompose. I ask because a natural burlap in contact with soil for a year should definitely be breaking down.
If you plant through natural burlap, I would leave it year after year, trusting that tells soil organisms will eat it like all the other organic matter. I also would not worry about roots getting through.
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Casie Becker wrote:My wood chips mulches don't completely degrade in the course of one year, but I just push it aside as needed to plant and add more mulch on top.
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"The rule of no realm is mine. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, these are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail in my task if anything that passes through this night can still grow fairer or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I too am a steward. Did you not know?" Gandolf
Plenty of good advice above already. I'd say, just consider how nature does things. Case in point I was on my property last weekend and decided to go on a hunt for potting mix. I walk in the forest floor and what do I see? : 1.)loose branches and dry leaves with perennials poking through. I go to the base of some birch or poplar, or fir trees, and scrape off the dry branches, dry leaves or needles, and take off the heavier materials down to the next layer. What do I see? : 2.) It's the same stuff, but it's wet, it's broken down (the bits are smaller, mushier), it's full of white mycelial hairs and likely lots of bacteria. I sometimes see worms. I scrape up some of this material with my trowel and put it in my pail. I put the dry mulch back and grab a few extra sticks locally to add to and to help the mined area to recover quicker. I make sure my next harvest area is at least 20 feet away, and do it again. The point though is that soil is build from the top down. You never need to till it or fork it, or dig it, but sometimes people do till a bed for the first time, or they double dig it, or they broadfork it, or they spade fork it, but soil can be built by just mulching (sometimes with areas with tenacious weeds like thistles or grasses the mulch has to be quite deep [like a foot], and is best helped by cutting the weeds down to their crowns, wetting the cuttings and soil, covering the area with a layer of cardboard and then mulching heavily... sometimes this must be left undisturbed for a couple years to be sure of killing some weeds, but it's worth it, and the soil is amazing!). Worms and your plants and the rest of the soil community do most of the rest of the gardening for you. You should never need to work your top layers (compost or mulch) into the soil. The worms do it. The burlap, or cardboard, or straw, or wood chips... all of them will gain a mycelial web that will interface the carbon with the soil food web matrix, and will slowly become soil from the top down.today I turned the very top layer (tried to minimally disturb)over in the garden with a fork and piled on some compost. And now I'm questioning if that was a good choice. I didn't want to till in the compost because I have sooooooooo many worms and spiders and milipedes living in there that I didn't want to disturb them too much. So now I just have a layer of compost on top which I directly planted the beet and radish seeds into. Do you think it will all dry out? Kill the good stuff in there? I have coffee bean burlap bags that I could put on top to protect the soil a bit, but then my seeds won't germinate.
Any ideas about what to do?
What you could do is cut X's the size of mature beets in your burlap to plant your beet seeds. When you pull the beets out, you could put a small lettuce transplant or seed into the hole. Let the lettuce die in the hole (or chop and drop it), it drops it's leaves on the burlap. This lettuce crop/residue keeps the burlap shaded or covered and thus wetter which help the microbial system to create soil and keep the burlap breaking down, just like Nature does to a stick or a leaf or even a log in the forest. The more it is in touch with the soil, the more it is kept covered, the more it is kept damp, then the more it will break down.If the burlap doesn't break down after a season, so what? Just cut the plants off at the ground (leaving the roots in the soil), punch new holes through the burlap, and plant next year's crop in these new holes.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."-Margaret Mead "The only thing worse than being blind, is having sight but no vision."-Helen Keller
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Paul Walker wrote:Wood mulch is probably the worst thing you could put on the garden of anything else. First, it depletes the nitrogen in the soil as it uses vast amounts to break down and compost. Second, it draws criters, mostly the kind you do not want. The best thing to do with wood is to let in fully, repeat fully, compost before using. Also, the wood mulch is probably cover with weed spores and seeds.
Leaf compost is the very best, but let it cook, 140 to 160+ degrees to kill the weed seeds then keep it covered until you use it. I have a piece of ground that is sandy clay, like concrete when dry and a sloppy soup when wet. I put the leave compost right on top about 6-8 inches deep and four feet wide and plant in that. It goes into the ground and now after three years I have good soil 4-6 inch deep and getting deeper. When I get ready to plant I just add more leaf compost on top.
I am not sure how it works, but I have attempted to attach a couple of pictures.
"People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do."
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Paul Walker wrote:Wood mulch is probably the worst thing you could put on the garden of anything else.
Idle dreamer
Paul Walker wrote:Wood mulch is probably the worst thing you could put on the garden of anything else. First, it depletes the nitrogen in the soil as it uses vast amounts to break down and compost. Second, it draws criters, mostly the kind you do not want. The best thing to do with wood is to let in fully, repeat fully, compost before using. Also, the wood mulch is probably cover with weed spores and seeds.
Leaf compost is the very best, but let it cook, 140 to 160+ degrees to kill the weed seeds then keep it covered until you use it. I have a piece of ground that is sandy clay, like concrete when dry and a sloppy soup when wet. I put the leave compost right on top about 6-8 inches deep and four feet wide and plant in that. It goes into the ground and now after three years I have good soil 4-6 inch deep and getting deeper. When I get ready to plant I just add more leaf compost on top.
I am not sure how it works, but I have attempted to attach a couple of pictures.
"The rule of no realm is mine. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, these are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail in my task if anything that passes through this night can still grow fairer or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I too am a steward. Did you not know?" Gandolf
Oaken Sage wrote:What about using old cotton or wool clothing as mulch? I have some threadbare cloth I've considered cutting to flatten out, and plant through.
"People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do."
This might work, but I'm not sure. But if your quack is as bad as mine, then it might send a long branch of rhizome past the fabric in search of light. If you prepare a complete cover over an extensive area, by overlapping several pieces by at least six inches, you might have a chance. This method is what I have had success with cardboard and with newsprint.I think it would work great. Especially wool. I wish I had some to try on quack grass.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."-Margaret Mead "The only thing worse than being blind, is having sight but no vision."-Helen Keller
Mediterranean climate, hugel trenches, fabulous clay soil high in nutrients, self-watering containers with hugel layers, keyhole composting with low hugel raised beds, thick Back to Eden Wood chips mulch (distinguished from Bark chips), using as many native plants as possible....all drought tolerant.
Cristo Balete wrote:I'd just like to mention, here, that the wood chip version of Back To Eden doesn't provide enough nutrition for a human being.
Idle dreamer
Cristo Balete wrote:I'd just like to mention, here, that the wood chip version of Back To Eden doesn't provide enough nutrition for a human being. Just because you can grow big, verdant plants doesn't mean they have nutrition in them. We can get tons of growth out of high-nitrate fertilizer, too, and we all know we get nutrients we don't want out of that, so greenery cannot be the only indicator of healthy food.
"People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do."
Cristo Balete wrote:Humans need organic matter from many sources, Compost, leaves, mowed weeds, animal manures, chopped greenery and cover crops. We need as many sources of soil amendments as we can possibly get.
The other part of the wood chip issue is that not all wood chips are alike. Everyone talks about them as if they are equal, and they are not. It's crucial to know what kind of wood you are getting, because some of them, like redwood and red cedar, have growth inhibitors.
Invasive plants are Earth's way of insisting we notice her medicines. Stephen Herrod Buhner
Everyone learns what works by learning what doesn't work. Stephen Herrod Buhner
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Anne Miller wrote:
relying only on wood chips is relying on just the nutrition in the wood. And pine, cedar, and redwood all inhibit growth. I can't plant anything within the drip line of my cedars. There are some plants that like growing there like agarita and a thorny vine that I don't know the name of. Adding compost, leaf mulch and other things give the plants better nutrition. Like composed egg shells would supply calcium to the plants. And most understand the benefit of nitrogen fixing cover crops. And these nutrients need to be replenished every years as the plants are using them up.
"People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do."
Invasive plants are Earth's way of insisting we notice her medicines. Stephen Herrod Buhner
Everyone learns what works by learning what doesn't work. Stephen Herrod Buhner
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It would give a normal human mental abilities to rival mine. To think it is just a tiny ad:
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