I prefer no-till "Lasagna" gardening, or "Sheet Mulching" as others call
it. To my way of thinking it is the best way to garden, and it requires
less exertion.

---

Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture
(Paperback)
by Toby Hemenway
http://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-S...culture/dp/160
3580298/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271266976&sr=1-1

p. 81 - 82

To Till or Not to Till

We've seen that organic matter keeps soil light and fluffy and easy for
roots to penetrate. What then about the mechanical methods used for
breaking up soil?

The invention of the plow ranks as one of the great steps forward for
humanity. Farmers know that plowing releases locked-up soil fertility.
Plowing also keeps down weeds and thoroughly mingles surface litter with
the soil. We do all this, too, when we drag our power-tiller out of the
garage and push the snorting beast through the garden beds in a cloud of
blue smoke.

What's really happening during tilling? By churning the soil, we're
flushing it with fresh air. All that oxygen invigorates the soil life,
which zooms into action, breaking down organic matter and plucking
minerals from humus and rock particles. Tilling also breaks up the soil,
greatly increasing its surface area by creating many small clumps out of
big ones. Soil microbes then colonize these fresh surfaces, extracting
more nutrients and exploding in population.

p.82
This is great for the first season. The blast of nutrients fuels
stunning plant growth, and the harvest is bountiful. But the life in
tilled soil releases far more nutrients than the plants can use. Unused
fertility leaches away in rains. The next year's tilling burns up more
organic matter, again releasing a surfeit of fertility that is washed
away. After a few seasons, the soil is depleted. The humus is gone, the
mineral ores are played out, and the artificially stimulated soil life
is impoverished. Now the gardener must renew the soil with bales of
organic matter, fertilizer, and plenty of work.

Thus, tilling releases far more nutrients than plants can use. Also, the
constant mechanical battering destroys the soil structure, especially
when perpetrated on too-wet soil (and we're all impatient to get those
seeds in, so this happens often). Frequent tilling smashes loamy soil
crumbs to powder and compacts clayey clods into hardpan. And one tilling
session consumes far more calories of energy than are in a year's worth
of garden
grown food. That's not a sustainable arrangement.

Better to let humus fluff your soil naturally and to use mulches to
smother weeds and renew nutrients. Instead of unleashing fertility at a
breakneck, mechanical pace, we can allow plant roots to do the job.
Questing roots will split nuggets of earth in
their own time, opening the soil to microbial colonization, loosening-
nutrients at just the right rate. Once again, nature makes a better
partner than a slave.
-----

McGowan's Drinking Guide (Translated from the original German. It's
complicated, OK?)
Drinking Problems

Symptom Fault Action to be Taken

Bar is moving You are being Find out if you are
carried out being taken to
another pub - if not
protest that you are
being kidnapped by the
Salvation Army.

--

If you like weekends (8 hr./day & 40 hr./week), then thank a labor union.
They paid for it in blood. Real working class heros.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair

Taxes
Citizen$ --- Government --- Corporations --- Top 1% --Where the
money went

Are you better off than you were 30 years ago? 10 years ago? Last Year?
--
- Billy

Dept. of Defense budget: $663.8 billion
Dept. of Health and Human Services budget: $78.4 billion


Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953