On Fri, 14 May 2004 20:27:56 +0800, "nswong"
wrote:

There is no such thing of best approach to solve a problem in all
short of situation/environment, what I will do are choose the approach
that come out the best result with resource available for me.

I agree completely.

Many gardeners/famers don't have time to wait.

In a bussiness, if we got time and money, we can go to long term
investment. If not, do other way.

I agree with this also.


In my case, I prepare my land for retirement and for experimental
purpose.

Improving soil almost always means introducing
organic matter. Unless "no-till" has some very tricky definitions,
some sort of soil disturbance is necessary to accomplish this.

Dead body of life form(plant root, earthworm, fungus...) in soil are
organic matter, this does not till in by man. For soil contain high
organic matter, tillage can avoided by the first day. For those soil
void of organic matter, planting cover crop and mulch can work, but do
take long time. So I choose to till in organic matter before
implement no-till system.

But if you were willing to wait "a long time," how would mulch make it
down to the soil that needs to be improved? I have a lot of worms in
my compost, but the clay ground underneath is still...clay.

Tilling certainly kills plants
(weeds) and buries the remains, but that means *more* organic matter
in the soil

Most weed are succulent, the organic matter in a form(starch...) that
will not last long.

Maybe in Malaysia. Weeds here are pretty much regular ol' plants,
grasses, and vines.

Tillage do cause lost of those(humus...) that can
last long. So most of the time, organic matter introduce by tillage
does not compensate the lost cause by it. In my case, I till in a lot
of lignin(rice hull), and lost non(soil void of organic matter).

How does tilling reduce organic matter?

I have nothing against mulch. However, if the mown weeds contain
seeds
or parts that easily root, I don't see how this is any 'solution' to
the problem of weeds competing with desired plants.

Weed can regrow from root, weed can grow from seed... But there is
mulch to suppress there grow. A transplat in polythene bag provide a
good start. By the time weed push through the mulch, the transplant
already establish, can compete better than weed. Without weeding, the
harvest are satisfactory. Of course I can weeding and make it look
like a normal garden, but just don't feel the need. I prefer spend my
resource on other thing.

I don't know your methods, but around here, mulch has to be regularly
re-applied to surpress weeds. And my experience is that desired plants
that have to compete with weeds for water (in short supply at some
times of year) do poorly, no matter how vigorously they start out.