"Salty Thumb" wrote in message
...

This is my point, it's the carbon available to bacterial, not the
actual amount of carbon that causing temperary N deficiency.

If the carbon do in a slow release form for bacterial, it will not
cause a suddent bacterial bloom even there is a lot of carbon
there.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. The carbon in cellulose is not
going
to be released in any significant quantitiy without bacterial
action.
The bacteria will not have action without also N being present.
When
both are present the bacteria will use both the N and C, making less
N
available for plants. [I don't know what happens to the N after the
bacteria get it (it has to go somewhere)]. Regardless, bacteria
will not
be able to decompose diamonds.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

If the carbon do in a slow release form for bacterial,

Think about fertilizer, there is water soluble and slow release. I
believe carbon do so. I believe sugar and starch are water soluble,
cellulose and lignin are slow release.

it will not
cause a suddent bacterial bloom even there is a lot of carbon
there.

For a fertilizer, it will causing root burn or not does not really
relate to the amount of element it contain. With the same content of
element, a water soluble fertilizer will surely having bigger chance
to cause root burn than a slow release fertilizer.

Let say there are total carbon enough to construct 1000 bacterial, but
If the carbon make availble(release) in any bacterial life cycle are
just enough to maintain 10 bacterial, no more than 10 bacterial will
coexist at any given time period.

The carbon in cellulose is not going
to be released in any significant quantitiy without bacterial
action.

IIRC, a lot of the form of carbon can be change to
available form by enzyme, and there is also a lot of the life form do
secrete these enzyme. If I'm not wrong, when those carbon in
unavailble form pass through the earthworm digesting system, the
enzyme secrete by earthworm do convert them to available form for
bacterial. Fungus do secrete enzyme too.

Oxidization also will turn it to plant available form. g

Both newspaper and sawdust have high cellulose percentage.
Sawdust is
reported to reduce nitrogen availability when used in a compost
pile.

I believe that is starch and sugar in the sawdust that cause this,
not
cellulose or lignin. I believe newspaper do lost some of it starch
and
sugar while in the process.

Cellulose is made from repeating units of glucose (a simple sugar)
[1].
Starch is also made from glucose [2]. So unless there is some other
form
of sugar you are thinking of, I don't think so.

I do come across the explanation before, but it's too technical for
me, so I just skip that part.

My explanation a
Put one part of flour in ten part of water in a container, stir it.
Put one part of newspaper in ten part of water in another container,
stir it also. You will see the different. g

[1] http://www.psrc.usm.edu/macrog/cell.htm
[2] http://www.poco.phy.cam.ac.uk/resear...rch/whatis.htm

Thanks for the links. I do hope it's something that easy to
understand. ;-)

"AY-279 Earthworms and Crop Management"
I personally think this earthworm article as the best I read in
website are because it's something easy to understand for me, not
because it's the one that go to the most detail.

So, either mulch will cause temporary N deficiency or not will
depend
on the C/N ratio make available by rain to soil bacterial.

I will say that, some mulch will and some mulch will not causing
temporary N deficiency. It will depend on the amount of the C and
N
available to bacterial that do bring to soil by rain water.

What I try to say a Put a KG of flour as mulch to one plant. Put a
KG of cotton as mulch to another plant. Sprinkle some amount of
water(rain) on top of both "mulch", and see which plant leaves will
turn to yellow due to the carbon bring down by water from mulch.

If you have high N, some of that N will be
used
by decomposers leaving X amount for the plants, which still might
lead to
low N. If your top layer is biologically active, then most of N
from
rain will be intercepted before it reaches the plant roots.

Maximum number of life form are limited by resource, it included
space, water, air, and other element. The one that lack of will become
the factor of constrain, and those resource that is abundance remain
as abundance.

When a life form are in bloom, other life form depend on this life
form also will increase in number and put this life form in check. We
call this as predator, the poo of this predator mostly in a form that
can use by plant.

Iife form convert N from one form to another form. Man eat plant get
protein give ammonia. Man cannot digest ammonia, that is convert to by
man. An bacteria convert nitrite to nitrate will not take in nitrate

Some bacteria convert the ammonia to nitrite, some bacteria convert
nitrite to nitrate, plant convert nitrate to protein.

So "if my top layer is biologically active", each life form will hold
N in one form for a period, and act as a nutrient bank, at the end
make it slowly release to the plant.

To tell the true, I don't know what is actinomycetes. g

"The mulitcellular actinobacteria include filamentous prokaryotes
that
were originally mistaken for fungi. Unfortunately, even though they
are
prokaryotic in all of their features, they are still sometimes
called
'actinomycetes'."

Thanks. But I do doubt I can remember all these names. g

But if I were using my land
for commercial interests, I would keep an eye on it.

I do research with searching, so instead join and reading in a
newsgroup, I will search in a newsgroup.

I join and reading in a newsgroup because I feel lonely, and want to
participate with other.

hmm ... I don't know what happened to the group ... I only see
sci.agriculture now (no '.bio') and that has quite a bit of useless
junk
in it.

Maybe due to lack of traffic, Google discontinue to carry it.

They do need food, the landscape fabric do block organic matter to
reach the soil. If you mixed in a lot of manure yearly to the soil
that is another story.

I do not know exactly what earthworms(#2) eat, but plants do secret
organic debris from their roots, so perhaps falling surface debris
is not
the only source of food for them.

From what I read, earhworm getting microorganisms in rotting plant
debris by ingesting(eatting) rotting plant debris. So if there is more
rotting plant debris available, there is more food for earthworm.

There may be significant initial suppression,
but
it seems to me that would be eventually negated by the additional
fertility (of decaying mulch and other amendments).

As you said, I think the main purpose of newspaper are the initial
suppression before it decay.

It really depend on how abundant life form are there. An example
are,
I put the newspapers under my curing compost that have abundant of
groundbettle, millipete, earthworm... I do quite sure it take
less
than three days to have a first hole that go through all the layer
of
newspaper if the newspaper are wet.

See above ... won't this make the newspaper less useful for weed
suppression?

Except initial supression before decay, I think newspaper are for
press down the weed.

Take my case as example, I do cut/mow or roll down the weed before
apply mulch, without doing this, the mulch will be hard to distribute
evenly. With newspaper, I think I don't need cut/mow or roll down the
weed.

okay, but why would you add nutrient to the surface of your mulch
(and
not directly to your flowers) or at least under the mulch? I know
you
said you like to top dress, and let organisms do the transport, but
this
seems inefficient for a small scale (ranking time to nutrient
accessiblity higher than labor time).

I never top dress nutrient on my mulch. But I do suggest if someone
need to do fertilization after mulching, he can top dress on the
mulch.

I develop/build up my soil fertility/organic matter before planting
crop, and use organic mulch to maintain the soil fertility/organic
matter.

I think you are wrong about the soil not getting much water. I
rarely
water my flower bed, and have the gutter blocking run-off from the
roof,
and the plants appear very healthy.

As you said, your flower bed are narrow. And if your ground are
level, that will not much run off can occurs.

The good thing about landscape fabric is you don't have to spend any
time
weeding. Once every three months (or even longer), you can take a
look,
a few thing may grow on top and these can be picked off by hand. No
significant root penetration occurs, so even a child could do it.


More importantly, there is no significant penalty for delayed
removal.
Without landscape fabric, a weed may grow quite large and maybe even
go
to seed or vegatatively propagate in 3 months (at the same time
competing
with desirable plants for resources). With landscape fabric, the
weed
may grow large, but the root system will be significantly impaired
and
probably will not seed before it is pulled.

When weed go through the mulch:

In my case of not using newspaper, I will use sickle or handheld
string trimmer cut off the weed part that on top of mulch, on top of
the weed debris, add some more mulch. This will last about two month.

Using newspaper, I will simply laydown the newspaper on top of the
weed, add some more mulch. I believe it will last more than two month.

BTW: Weed here grow quite fast, today I cut it to the ground, next day
it can grow up to one and half inches. Weeding without mulch are not
the way to go.

Getting sleepy, brain are not clear now, write shorter. :-)

4:04 AM here.

Good night,
Wong

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