Hello Wong,

Hi Salty, g

"Salty Thumb" wrote in message
...

After finished another reply to your posting, I realize it is too late
to go to my land now. :-(

Never mind, since I'm in good form to write, it's better do my writing
now. :-)

As I understand it, for optimal decomposition, you should have a C/N
ratio of 30:1. I have read that wood chips and sawdust will reduce
nitrogen availability during decomposition when used as mulch or in
a
compost pile, and I assumed that was because of the high carbon
content.
Newspaper has approximately between 1/2x and 5x the carbon of
sawdust
(both primarily celluose).

[1] http://compost.css.cornell.edu/calc/lignin.html

Diamon also having high C/N ration, I can assure you it will not
reduce the N available to plant when use as mulch. g

It really depend on the available carbon instead of the total carbon
contain.

I believe mulch will reduce N available to plant when the carbon(in
liquid form) leach to the soil in rain, but not when there is no water
soluble carbon are present in mulch.

In my impression, newspaper does not contain much water soluble
carbon. It need enzyme to convert it, and that is a slow process.

hmm, according to [1], you are right, at least for lignin
decomposition.
A certain quantity of additional nitrogen will speed up anaerobic
decomposition, but excess has little or no effect. It does not say
about
cellulose.

Adding N more than substrate(mulch, soil, compost...) can hold are
waste of money, the extra N will lost in air or worse, leach to the
groundwater.

If I'm not wrong, cellulose are not one of the form of carbon that
directly available by bacterial.

Mulch supress weeds not just because the physical blocking
ability, it
can also leach out some chemical harm weeds. Critters in mulch
will
also help to supress weeds.

Yes and also fungi.

I thinks I should use "soil live" instead of critters. g

My point is if you wanted to increase nitrogen availability to the
soil
to compensate for newspaper decomposition loss (if there actually is
any)
you could add to the soil, but actually if you wanted newspaper for
nutrients (as opposed to weed control), you should probably do that
in
the compost pile and not in the flower bed.

I agree.

I agree, the amount of nitrogen fixated (if any) by electrostatic
effect
over a surface is probably minor, but I mention it because
occasionally
you hear about people growing huge tomatoes with panty hose (nylon)
and
the effect may be similar.

I don't now what is panty hose(nylon).

I do read tomatoe will grow larger when using red "plastic sheet"? as
mulch due to the infrared and the higher warm of soil.

For this I do facing problem to explain my view. In bussiness, we
talk
about total cost of ownership. In here we talk about in the total
life
span of the product, how much cost involve and how much the return
get.

In these terms, landscape fabric is USD$10 / 150 sq. ft (14 sq.
meter),
with a life span of 15 years when installed properly, plus the
starting
cost of mulch, USD$2-3 / 3 cubic feet (for large pine bark nuggets)
at
recommended coverage rate of 4-6 inches (10-15 cm, mine is probably
less
than 2 inches) and periodic replacement cost for wind or
decomposition
loss. Other factors: labor savings in amount of time spent
weeding,
labor increase in adding amendments, productivity comparisons if
relevant, etc. My recommendation is based on use for a home flower
bed,
not a large scale or intensive operation.

To explain my view, this will become a very long posting.

One of the example of the cost I refer are stocking cost, purchasing
cost(time spend on searching, barginning...), disposing cost(collect
and send to landfill..._)...

In my experience, earthworms (not necessarily nightcrawlers) will
continue to crawl until it finds an existing opening and not attempt
to
chew through paper to find an exit. In this way, I assume it is
similar
to fabric, although there is no way the earthworm will be able to
chew
through landscape fabric. These observations were in daylight, so
may
not be representative of normal behaviour.

From what I read, all the earthworms will not like to expose under the
light.

You may find earthworms gether around the opening of landscape fabric
can be due to they need to feed on plant debris at night time and seek
shelter in the soil under landscape fabric at day time. Earthworm
happen to around opening are the only survival, earthworm under the
landscape fabric that can't manage to find the opening are long dead.

Look at all short of filter we use, they all block. Do a test,
remove
the mulch on top of your landscape fabric, put some water on top
of
it, see how long it will pass through.

I do not think this is a problem. When it rains, I do not have a
problem
with drainage, so the water must go down some where, even if the
gutters
are removed (and rain falls directly from the roof to the flower
bed).
If you test the fabric by itself, fast moving water (such as from a
faucet) will be deflected from the surface, but slow water (as
typical
with mulch impeded flow) will drain. If it weren't porous, you
might as
well just you regular black polyethylene sheeting.

I'm refer to no matter how porous landscape fabric are, it hole will
block by something by one day, either it's a plant root or clay or
something.

Mulch have critters making tunnel in it, except there is little
critter in it.

I could be wrong, but I just don't see macroscopic organisms eating
vertical holes through newspaper to gain surface access.

Critter need shelter, food, water and air to survive. In search of
these resource, they will moving around, and creating tunnel through
everything if they can.

E.g. critter will move deeper in soil to avoid the heat at day time,
move to survice of soil to get food, move deeper when soil surface are
dry, move to survice when ground water level are high.

Plant will also grow throug the newspaper in search of resource, be it
shoot from below or root from top.

I'm refer to those nutrien that resolve in water as liquid form.

You mean nutrients that are dissolved in water? It is possible that
the
fabric (different kinds of fabric vary) will filter the dissolved
nutrients (in the same way a paper coffee filter may filter salt
from
seawater). I do not know, so I would not rely on it.

Yes, I do mean "dissolve". Thanks for your correction. :-)

I do doubt about the hole of landscape fabric are as small as this.
If it do, I can assure you neary all the rain will end up as run off,
and there will be not enough water to keep plant survive without a
drip irrigation system.

Landscape fabric can become embeded with roots attempting to
penetrate
from below, but the removal of such fabric is of minor
difficulty.

From what I read, those user of landscape fabric donot take it as
"minor difficulty". g

haha, perhaps the Green lacking in my Thumb is made up with my
Incredible
Hulk strength.

If there is some bush grow on top, and rooting through landscape
fabric, it still will be a mess even you manage to get "Incredible
Hulk" to help you. g

Sorry, I'm getting a bit impatience. :-(

No comment. :-)

Although try to manage it, I do still affect by mood. ;-p

Cheers,
Wong

--
Latitude: 06.10N Longitude: 102.17E Altitude: 5m