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Old 16-05-2004, 04:05 AM
nswong
 
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Default Newbie question on tilling

Hi Frogleg,

I can't find it in my notes, I think has been deleted, so I will reply
base on what I remember.

But if you were willing to wait "a long time," how would mulch make

it
down to the soil that needs to be improved?


Direct way as a night crawler(earthworm) pull the mulch down to the
tunnel.

Indirect way as a slug eating the mulch, and die in a tunnel due to
old age.

I have a lot of worms in
my compost, but the clay ground underneath is still...clay.


If the worms in the compost do not want to move down to your clay
soil, this is what you get.

It can be they don't like your soil(low PH, water log...), or they
don't have the need(looking for shelter, water...) to do it.

If you plant some deep root type plant on your compost after it's
cured, you will see the soil are changing.

But you have to make sure the plant will bear with your soil. There is
some plant that can live in a low PH, water log 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.


Succulent just a generic indicator of lack of lignin, search in Google
to find up the % of lignin in your *regular ol' plants,
grasses, and vines*.

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.


When transplant, I will use a hand held string treamer to mow(?) dow
the weed, make a hole, plant the transplant. Add more mulch to about
6 inches thick. Normally people recommend 3 inches, but I'm using
thick mulch to avoid the need to add mulch for annual plant.

For perenial, I will use string treamer to mow dow the weed where it
can be. For weed around perenial, I use sickle to mow(?) it. After
that I reapply mulch to 6 inches deep. I do not pull the weed because
some weed are hard to pull and weed pulling will hurt perenial feeder
root.

One of the reason of I prefer man power than large machinary are this
will create job and reduce the crime cause by unemployment.

Regards,
Wong

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