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

I composted long before today's "experts" knew what it was and only a lazy person shies away from rototilling. So how do today's "expert" put in a lawn. Lay cardboard and newspaper across the empty space for a year then seed? Todays "experts" have an answer for everything, that is taking shortcuts to save the environment.

In article ,
bullthistle wrote:

I composted long before today's "experts" knew what it was and only a
lazy person shies away from rototilling. So how do today's "expert" put
in a lawn. Lay cardboard and newspaper across the empty space for a year
then seed? Todays "experts" have an answer for everything, that is
taking shortcuts to save the environment.

There are those of a different opinion on rototilling. Why shouldn't
their concerns be allowed to be expressed?

"A lawn in preindustrial times trumpeted to all that the owner possessed
enough wealth to use some land for sheer ornament, instead of planting
all of it to food crops.

And close-mowed grass proclaimed affluence, too:
a herd of sheep large enough to crop the lawn
uniformly short. These indicators of status whisper
to us down the centuries. By consciously recognizing
the influence of this history, we can free
ourselves of it and let go of the reflexive impulse to
roll sod over the entire landscape."

You are in favor of saving the environment, aren't you?
How would you do it differently?

Please, continue.


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? 1 year ago?

Thank Reaganomics/Thatcherism, a.k.a. Voodoo economics :O(
--
- 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

Crackpots come in all shapes, colors and sizes who assume they have "all" the answers. Meet many wouldn't be a friend to any.

In article ,
bullthistle wrote:

Crackpots come in all shapes, colors and sizes who assume they have
"all" the answers. Meet many wouldn't be a friend to any.

Bull, why do you use so many words to say nothing?

"The philosopher who said that work well done never needs doing over
never weeded a garden."
- Ray D. Everson


Are you better off than you were 30 years ago? 10 years ago? 1 year ago?

Thank Reaganomics/Thatcherism, a.k.a. Voodoo economics :O(
--
- 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

On Apr 25, 8:29*am, Billy wrote:

Bull, why do you use so many words to say nothing?

Damn, if your not the pot calling the kettle black!

I till a new bed the first year and then turn it over the following
years with a spading fork. A tiller chops up way too many earthworms
which I like in my beds.

Rich

Tilling is a good way in my book for first time ground prepping. After that
no more tilling is needed ever. Be it for new lawn or garden.

--
Enjoy Life... Nad R (Garden in zone 5a Michigan)

In article ,
Nad R wrote:

Tilling is a good way in my book for first time ground prepping. After that
no more tilling is needed ever. Be it for new lawn or garden.

"Double digging" is certainly to be recommended for a new garden, as it
speeds up the development of the bed, but it isn't necessary otherwise.
Rototillers create a hardpan, a layer of compacted soil, at the bottom
of the tilled zone. This may be acceptable for lawns, but for gardens it
is advised to break up this compacted zone. Insert a broad fork or
digging fork deeply into the soil at 6� intervals to break up any
compaction and to allow air and water below the depth of tillage.
Breaking this up with a fork permits the roots of plants to grow deeper
than the tilled area, and also allows plants to find water and nutrients
deep in the soil. Loosening allows for better percolation of rain water
and irrigation.
--



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

Symptom Fault Action to be Taken

Everything has The pub is Panic.
gone dark closing

--

"For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is
now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of
conception until death." - Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962

In 1992, 2.2 billion pounds of pesticides were used in this country -
eight pounds for every man, woman, and child.
--


Are you better off than you were 30 years ago? 10 years ago? 1 year ago?

Thank Reaganomics/Thatcherism, a.k.a. Voodoo economics :O(
--
- 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

Nad R wrote:
Tilling is a good way in my book for first time ground prepping.
After that no more tilling is needed ever. Be it for new lawn or
garden.

I agree breaking ground is the only time I have ever used motorised
equipment or dug more than 10cm down, normally I rake in manures etc once or
twice a year. I just don't see the need for all this digging.

I have no idea what is achieved by frequent tilling, I suppose it gives a
feeling of neatness and uniformity to see all that fluffy soil so regularly
disturbed. In a garden you will grow much more for your efforts if you
spend less time on neatness and uniformity.

David

Billy wrote:

....

i've had mixed results with
rototilling.

the most recent round was last summer
when i killed off an invasive plant
species and then leveled a large area
(to eliminate a gully that was forming).

the tilling did help break the soil up
making raking and leveling a much easier
task. it also provided a nice fluffy
seedbed for the spiral design i planted
(too fluffy, i should have firmed it up
a bit before seeding it in).

8 months later... the seedlings have
crowns 3-5cm above the soil. i'm not
sure how the deer and bunnies will crop
them, but i'm hoping not too low. and
i'm also wondering how they will do if
we get a cold snap without snow cover.
if that will freeze-dry the crowns and
force them to start over from below.

last winter we had good snow cover and
i didn't lose much of anything. we'll
see how the next winter goes.

the major negative from the tilling
was the spread of a different invasive
plant species seeds through the area.
i now have about 20-30 more hours of hand
weeding to get it out and then consistent
weeding to keep it out (probably for a
few years before it will be gone).
luckily i've done this before for this
species so i know it can be done. i won't
resort to spraying again. most of the
seedlings are still alive under the
smothering growth, they just aren't going
to perform as well as i'd like until i
free them up.

the 9 hours of weeding i've already done
is looking nice as the rains have perked
the seedlings up. now a few more days of
sunshine to dry things out so i can finish
the rest. the plants need to get some
more growth on to be self-shading before
the hot and dryer period starts up.

the clay is about as compacted as it
was before i tilled. tilling didn't
accomplish much there. once the worms
finished up all the rotted organic
material from before i'm not seeing much
activity, except in the pathway where
i'm piling the weeds.

the next big project is to terrace the
red patch, i'm turning it into a mixed
garden. i won't till it because it has
hundreds of perennials already that i want
to leave in place as much as possible.
i hope i can start that tomorrow or the
next day. even if i can only get the
top few levels done that would be a big
help and a nice start.

i can't think of any other gardens
i would have to till. the biggest garden
i normally spade wouldn't do as well if i
tilled. i need the larger clumps of soil
to pile up for a long mound i make to
plant the cosmos on. it being a low spot
i use the trench to catch water and the
mound to keep the cosmos high, dry and
the roots happy. if it were tilled the
soil would run down faster and the cosmos
would fall over in the wind.

my other previous uses of tilling has
been mostly to mix amendments. for larger
areas now i've just mixed it by hoe in
the wheelbarrow and then spread it out.
for smaller already established gardens
i don't do that any more. if something
needs to be added, i put it in the mulch
and the worms, rain and gravity do their
thing to incorporate it. peaceful that
way...


songbird

In article ,
songbird wrote:

Billy wrote:

...

i've had mixed results with
rototilling.

the most recent round was last summer
when i killed off an invasive plant
species and then leveled a large area
(to eliminate a gully that was forming).

the tilling did help break the soil up
making raking and leveling a much easier
task. it also provided a nice fluffy
seedbed for the spiral design i planted
(too fluffy, i should have firmed it up
a bit before seeding it in).
You mean you should have rolled it?

8 months later... the seedlings have
crowns 3-5cm above the soil.
What kind of seedlings?

i'm not
sure how the deer and bunnies will crop
them, but i'm hoping not too low. and
i'm also wondering how they will do if
we get a cold snap without snow cover.
if that will freeze-dry the crowns and
force them to start over from below.

last winter we had good snow cover and
i didn't lose much of anything. we'll
see how the next winter goes.

the major negative from the tilling
was the spread of a different invasive
plant species seeds through the area.
You will get that from spading the soil as well.

i now have about 20-30 more hours of hand
weeding to get it out and then consistent
weeding to keep it out (probably for a
few years before it will be gone).
luckily i've done this before for this
species so i know it can be done. i won't
resort to spraying again. most of the
seedlings are still alive under the
smothering growth, they just aren't going
to perform as well as i'd like until i
free them up.

the 9 hours of weeding i've already done
is looking nice as the rains have perked
the seedlings up. now a few more days of
sunshine to dry things out so i can finish
the rest. the plants need to get some
more growth on to be self-shading before
the hot and dryer period starts up.

the clay is about as compacted as it
was before i tilled. tilling didn't
accomplish much there.
You didn't blend in sand, and organic material? Are we talking lawn,
ornamentals, or veggies?

once the worms
finished up all the rotted organic
material from before i'm not seeing much
activity, except in the pathway where
i'm piling the weeds.
Do mean that you're not seeing worms, or not seeing the benefit of the
worms? Could it be the vermicide that you committed with the rototiller?
When you dig, do you find earthworms? (How many, and what size?)

the next big project is to terrace the
red patch, i'm turning it into a mixed
garden. i won't till it because it has
hundreds of perennials already that i want
to leave in place as much as possible.
i hope i can start that tomorrow or the
next day. even if i can only get the
top few levels done that would be a big
help and a nice start.

i can't think of any other gardens
i would have to till. the biggest garden
i normally spade wouldn't do as well if i
tilled. i need the larger clumps of soil
to pile up for a long mound i make to
plant the cosmos on. it being a low spot
i use the trench to catch water and the
mound to keep the cosmos high, dry and
the roots happy. if it were tilled the
soil would run down faster and the cosmos
would fall over in the wind.

my other previous uses of tilling has
been mostly to mix amendments.
When soil is first prepped for a garden, rototilling, and double digging
make sense, because it will speed up the development of the soil (still
the hardpan problem created by the rototiller still needs to be
addressed. After the garden is established, both (rototilling, and
double digging) just undo the work that the worms, fungi, and other
members of the soil ecosystem have done.
--

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
(Available at a library near you.)

p 74
The earthworm grabs a leaf chunk and slithers into its burrow. With its
rasping mouthparts, the worm pulverizes the leaf fragment, sucking in
soil at the same time. The mixture churns its way to the worm's gizzard,
where surging muscles grind the leaf and soil mixture into a fine paste.
The paste moves deeper into the earthworm's gut. Here bacteria help with
digestion, much as our own gut flora helps us process otherwise
unavailable nutrients from our food. When the worm has wrung all the
nutrients from the paste, it excretes what remains of the leaf and soil,
along with gut bacteria caught in the paste. These worm castings coat
the burrow with fertile, organically enriched earth. Before long, hungry
bacteria, fungi, and microscopic soil animals will find this cache of
organic matter and flourish in walls of the burrow, adding their own
excretions and dead bodies to the supply.

Fueled by the leaf's nutrients, the worm tunnels deeper into the ground,
loosening, aerating, and fertilizing the soil. Rain will trickle down
the burrow, threading moisture deeper into the earth than previously.
The soil will stay damp a little longer between rains. In spring, a
growing root from the oak tree will find this burrow, and, coaxed by the
easy passage and the tunnel's lining of organic food, will extend deep
enough to tap that stored moisture. The worm, with its fertile castings
and a burrow that lets air, water, and roots penetrate the earth, will
have aided the oak tree and much of the other life in the soil. Worms
are among the most beneficial of soil animals: They turn over as much as
twenty-five tons of soil per acre per year, or the equivalent of one
inch of lopsoil over Earth's land surface every ten years.

p 75

Soil invertebrates such as worms and mites don't really alter the
chemical composition of the leaf‹their job is principally to pulverize
litter. Their scurrying and tunneling also mixes the leaf particles with
soil, where the fragments stay moist and palatable for others. In some
cases, the animals' gut microbes can break down tenacious large
molecules such as chitin, keratin, and cellulose into their simpler
sugarlike components. The real alchemy‹the chemical transformation of
the leaf into humus and plant food‹is done by microorganisms.

As the soil animals reduce the leaf to droppings and microscopic
particles, a second wave of

p.76
bacteria, fungi, and other microbes descends on the remains. Using
enzymes and the rest of their metabolic chemistry sets, these microbes
snap large
molecules into small, edible fragments. Cellulose and lignin, the tough
components of plant cell walls, are cleaved into tasty sugars and
aromatic carbon rings. Other microbes hack long chains of leaf protein
into short ammo acid pieces. Some of these microbes are highly
specialized, able to break down only a few types of molecules, but soil
diversity is immense‹a teaspoon of soil may hold 5,000 species of
bacteria, each with a different set of chemical tools. Thus, working
together, this veritable orchestra of thousands of species of bacteria,
fungi, algae, and others fully decompose not only our sample leaf but
almost anything else it encounters.

Besides breaking down organic matter, these microbes also build up soil
structure. As they feed, certain soil bacteria secrete gums, waxes, and
gels that hold tiny particles of earth together. Dividing fungal cells
lengthen into long fingers of hyphae that surround crumbs of soil and
bind them to each
other. These miniclumps give microbially rich soil its good "tilth": the
loose, crumbly structure that gardeners and farmers strive for. Also,
these gooey microbial by-products protect soil from drying and
allow it to hold huge volumes of water. Without soil life, earth just
dries up and blows away or clumps together after a rain and forms
clay-bound, root-thwarting clods.

In a sense, humus is the end of the road for organic matter: By the time
our leaf's remains have reached the humus stage, decomposition has
slowed to a snail's pace. Since organisms can't easily break down humus,
it accumulates in the soil. It will eventually decompose, but in healthy
soil, freshly composting debris arrives at least as fast as the old
humus is broken down, resulting in a slow turnover and constant buildup
of humus.

When pushed, soil organisms can decompose humus, but only grudgingly and
usually if there is nothing else to eat. If humus levels are dropping,
it's a sign that the soil is in very bad shape. It means that all of the
easily digestable organic matter is gone, and the inhabitants are, in
effect, burning down the house to keep warm. Humus is critical to soil
health; thus, wise gardeners keep their soil rich in humus. For now
we'll see why; later we'll learn how.

Of all the ingredients of soil, humus is by far the best at holding
moisture and will absorb four to six times its weight in water.
---

Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web
Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis
http://www.amazon.com/Teaming-Microb...l/dp/088192777
5/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206815176&sr= 1-1
(Available at a library near you.)

Ch. 1

Worms, together with insect larvae and moles and other burrowing
animals, move through the soil in search of food and protection,
creating path-ways that allow air and water to enter and leave the soil.
Even microscopic fungi can help in this regard (see chapter 4). The soil
food web, then, in addition to providing nutrients to roots in the
rhizosphere, also helps create soil structu the activities of its
members bind soil particles together even as they provide for the
passage of air and water through the soil.
----

Which is to say that mulch makes the soil. Turning the soil will kill
it. Aerating the soil will cause a bloom of bacteria which will feed on
the humus in the topsoil. The food runs out, the bacteria die releasing
their contents into the soil to feed the plants. Unless it is replaced,
eventually the humus runs out, and you have barren soil.

The plow was the beginning of global warming.

for larger
areas now i've just mixed it by hoe in
the wheelbarrow and then spread it out.
for smaller already established gardens
i don't do that any more. if something
needs to be added, i put it in the mulch
and the worms, rain and gravity do their
thing to incorporate it. peaceful that
way...
Much more :O)



songbird
"A weed is a plant that is not only in the wrong place, but intends to
stay."
- Sara Stein, author of 'My Weeds: A Gardener's Botany'
--
- Billy

Bush's 3rd term: Obama plus another elective war
Bush's 4th term: we can't afford it

America is not broke. The country is awash in wealth and cash.
It's just that it's not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the
greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks
and the portfolios of the uber-rich.
http://theuptake.org/2011/03/05/michael-moore-the-big-lie-wisconsin-is-broke/

In article
,
Billy wrote:

In article ,
songbird wrote:

Billy wrote:

Oops, besides tilling, the "N" in NPK also stimulates microorganisms to
devour the organic material (carbon) in the soil. The best balance of
carbon to nitrogen is the 25/1 ration, I've been yammering on about.
The up-shot of it all is that your soil will be better aerated, and will
drain better if the tunneling by insects, and worms isn't destroyed with
a shovel, or that "vermicidal apocalypse" called the rototiller. But,
hey, if someone doesn't want to preserve aerated and better draining
soil, it's no skin off my nose.

...

i've had mixed results with
rototilling.

the most recent round was last summer
when i killed off an invasive plant
species and then leveled a large area
(to eliminate a gully that was forming).

the tilling did help break the soil up
making raking and leveling a much easier
task. it also provided a nice fluffy
seedbed for the spiral design i planted
(too fluffy, i should have firmed it up
a bit before seeding it in).
You mean you should have rolled it?

8 months later... the seedlings have
crowns 3-5cm above the soil.
What kind of seedlings?

i'm not
sure how the deer and bunnies will crop
them, but i'm hoping not too low. and
i'm also wondering how they will do if
we get a cold snap without snow cover.
if that will freeze-dry the crowns and
force them to start over from below.

last winter we had good snow cover and
i didn't lose much of anything. we'll
see how the next winter goes.

the major negative from the tilling
was the spread of a different invasive
plant species seeds through the area.
You will get that from spading the soil as well.

i now have about 20-30 more hours of hand
weeding to get it out and then consistent
weeding to keep it out (probably for a
few years before it will be gone).
luckily i've done this before for this
species so i know it can be done. i won't
resort to spraying again. most of the
seedlings are still alive under the
smothering growth, they just aren't going
to perform as well as i'd like until i
free them up.

the 9 hours of weeding i've already done
is looking nice as the rains have perked
the seedlings up. now a few more days of
sunshine to dry things out so i can finish
the rest. the plants need to get some
more growth on to be self-shading before
the hot and dryer period starts up.

the clay is about as compacted as it
was before i tilled. tilling didn't
accomplish much there.
You didn't blend in sand, and organic material? Are we talking lawn,
ornamentals, or veggies?

once the worms
finished up all the rotted organic
material from before i'm not seeing much
activity, except in the pathway where
i'm piling the weeds.
Do mean that you're not seeing worms, or not seeing the benefit of the
worms? Could it be the vermicide that you committed with the rototiller?
When you dig, do you find earthworms? (How many, and what size?)

the next big project is to terrace the
red patch, i'm turning it into a mixed
garden. i won't till it because it has
hundreds of perennials already that i want
to leave in place as much as possible.
i hope i can start that tomorrow or the
next day. even if i can only get the
top few levels done that would be a big
help and a nice start.

i can't think of any other gardens
i would have to till. the biggest garden
i normally spade wouldn't do as well if i
tilled. i need the larger clumps of soil
to pile up for a long mound i make to
plant the cosmos on. it being a low spot
i use the trench to catch water and the
mound to keep the cosmos high, dry and
the roots happy. if it were tilled the
soil would run down faster and the cosmos
would fall over in the wind.

my other previous uses of tilling has
been mostly to mix amendments.
When soil is first prepped for a garden, rototilling, and double digging
make sense, because it will speed up the development of the soil (still
the hardpan problem created by the rototiller still needs to be
addressed. After the garden is established, both (rototilling, and
double digging) just undo the work that the worms, fungi, and other
members of the soil ecosystem have done.
--

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
(Available at a library near you.)

p 74
The earthworm grabs a leaf chunk and slithers into its burrow. With its
rasping mouthparts, the worm pulverizes the leaf fragment, sucking in
soil at the same time. The mixture churns its way to the worm's gizzard,
where surging muscles grind the leaf and soil mixture into a fine paste.
The paste moves deeper into the earthworm's gut. Here bacteria help with
digestion, much as our own gut flora helps us process otherwise
unavailable nutrients from our food. When the worm has wrung all the
nutrients from the paste, it excretes what remains of the leaf and soil,
along with gut bacteria caught in the paste. These worm castings coat
the burrow with fertile, organically enriched earth. Before long, hungry
bacteria, fungi, and microscopic soil animals will find this cache of
organic matter and flourish in walls of the burrow, adding their own
excretions and dead bodies to the supply.

Fueled by the leaf's nutrients, the worm tunnels deeper into the ground,
loosening, aerating, and fertilizing the soil. Rain will trickle down
the burrow, threading moisture deeper into the earth than previously.
The soil will stay damp a little longer between rains. In spring, a
growing root from the oak tree will find this burrow, and, coaxed by the
easy passage and the tunnel's lining of organic food, will extend deep
enough to tap that stored moisture. The worm, with its fertile castings
and a burrow that lets air, water, and roots penetrate the earth, will
have aided the oak tree and much of the other life in the soil. Worms
are among the most beneficial of soil animals: They turn over as much as
twenty-five tons of soil per acre per year, or the equivalent of one
inch of lopsoil over Earth's land surface every ten years.

p 75

Soil invertebrates such as worms and mites don't really alter the
chemical composition of the leaf‹their job is principally to pulverize
litter. Their scurrying and tunneling also mixes the leaf particles with
soil, where the fragments stay moist and palatable for others. In some
cases, the animals' gut microbes can break down tenacious large
molecules such as chitin, keratin, and cellulose into their simpler
sugarlike components. The real alchemy‹the chemical transformation of
the leaf into humus and plant food‹is done by microorganisms.

As the soil animals reduce the leaf to droppings and microscopic
particles, a second wave of

p.76
bacteria, fungi, and other microbes descends on the remains. Using
enzymes and the rest of their metabolic chemistry sets, these microbes
snap large
molecules into small, edible fragments. Cellulose and lignin, the tough
components of plant cell walls, are cleaved into tasty sugars and
aromatic carbon rings. Other microbes hack long chains of leaf protein
into short ammo acid pieces. Some of these microbes are highly
specialized, able to break down only a few types of molecules, but soil
diversity is immense‹a teaspoon of soil may hold 5,000 species of
bacteria, each with a different set of chemical tools. Thus, working
together, this veritable orchestra of thousands of species of bacteria,
fungi, algae, and others fully decompose not only our sample leaf but
almost anything else it encounters.

Besides breaking down organic matter, these microbes also build up soil
structure. As they feed, certain soil bacteria secrete gums, waxes, and
gels that hold tiny particles of earth together. Dividing fungal cells
lengthen into long fingers of hyphae that surround crumbs of soil and
bind them to each
other. These miniclumps give microbially rich soil its good "tilth": the
loose, crumbly structure that gardeners and farmers strive for. Also,
these gooey microbial by-products protect soil from drying and
allow it to hold huge volumes of water. Without soil life, earth just
dries up and blows away or clumps together after a rain and forms
clay-bound, root-thwarting clods.

In a sense, humus is the end of the road for organic matter: By the time
our leaf's remains have reached the humus stage, decomposition has
slowed to a snail's pace. Since organisms can't easily break down humus,
it accumulates in the soil. It will eventually decompose, but in healthy
soil, freshly composting debris arrives at least as fast as the old
humus is broken down, resulting in a slow turnover and constant buildup
of humus.

When pushed, soil organisms can decompose humus, but only grudgingly and
usually if there is nothing else to eat. If humus levels are dropping,
it's a sign that the soil is in very bad shape. It means that all of the
easily digestable organic matter is gone, and the inhabitants are, in
effect, burning down the house to keep warm. Humus is critical to soil
health; thus, wise gardeners keep their soil rich in humus. For now
we'll see why; later we'll learn how.

Of all the ingredients of soil, humus is by far the best at holding
moisture and will absorb four to six times its weight in water.
---

Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web
Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis
http://www.amazon.com/Teaming-Microb...l/dp/088192777
5/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206815176&sr= 1-1
(Available at a library near you.)

Ch. 1

Worms, together with insect larvae and moles and other burrowing
animals, move through the soil in search of food and protection,
creating path-ways that allow air and water to enter and leave the soil.
Even microscopic fungi can help in this regard (see chapter 4). The soil
food web, then, in addition to providing nutrients to roots in the
rhizosphere, also helps create soil structu the activities of its
members bind soil particles together even as they provide for the
passage of air and water through the soil.
----

Which is to say that mulch makes the soil. Turning the soil will kill
it. Aerating the soil will cause a bloom of bacteria which will feed on
the humus in the topsoil. The food runs out, the bacteria die releasing
their contents into the soil to feed the plants. Unless it is replaced,
eventually the humus runs out, and you have barren soil.

The plow was the beginning of global warming.

for larger
areas now i've just mixed it by hoe in
the wheelbarrow and then spread it out.
for smaller already established gardens
i don't do that any more. if something
needs to be added, i put it in the mulch
and the worms, rain and gravity do their
thing to incorporate it. peaceful that
way...
Much more :O)



songbird
"A weed is a plant that is not only in the wrong place, but intends to
stay."
- Sara Stein, author of 'My Weeds: A Gardener's Botany'

"Tickle the earth with a hoe, it will laugh a harvest."
- Mary Cantell
--
- Billy

Bush's 3rd term: Obama plus another elective war
Bush's 4th term: we can't afford it

America is not broke. The country is awash in wealth and cash.
It's just that it's not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the
greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks
and the portfolios of the uber-rich.
http://theuptake.org/2011/03/05/michael-moore-the-big-lie-wisconsin-is-broke/

Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:

...

i've had mixed results with
rototilling.

the most recent round was last summer
when i killed off an invasive plant
species and then leveled a large area
(to eliminate a gully that was forming).

the tilling did help break the soil up
making raking and leveling a much easier
task. it also provided a nice fluffy
seedbed for the spiral design i planted
(too fluffy, i should have firmed it up
a bit before seeding it in).


You mean you should have rolled it?

dude, whitespace, it helps, thanks.

or packed it down a little.


8 months later... the seedlings have
crowns 3-5cm above the soil.

What kind of seedlings?

birdsfoot trefoil, alfalfa and
maybe delphiniums (haven't seen
them yet, but i've not gotten that
far in the weeding).


i'm not
sure how the deer and bunnies will crop
them, but i'm hoping not too low. and
i'm also wondering how they will do if
we get a cold snap without snow cover.
if that will freeze-dry the crowns and
force them to start over from below.

last winter we had good snow cover and
i didn't lose much of anything. we'll
see how the next winter goes.

the major negative from the tilling
was the spread of a different invasive
plant species seeds through the area.

You will get that from spading the soil as well.

somewhat, but i don't think as badly.
for one thing i sure wouldn't have moved
as much soil around if i'd spaded it.
that would have kept the weed seeds more
in one location. of course, if i'd known
they were there i'd have done things
differently... they didn't sprout until
late fall, by then it was too wet to
weed them out and i sure didn't want to
spray weed killer again to start over.
these can be hand weeded with some
persistent effort, so i'll do that. i
needed a new weed project anyways now
that i got it out of the the front (joke).


i now have about 20-30 more hours of hand
weeding to get it out and then consistent
weeding to keep it out (probably for a
few years before it will be gone).
luckily i've done this before for this
species so i know it can be done. i won't
resort to spraying again. most of the
seedlings are still alive under the
smothering growth, they just aren't going
to perform as well as i'd like until i
free them up.

the 9 hours of weeding i've already done
is looking nice as the rains have perked
the seedlings up. now a few more days of
sunshine to dry things out so i can finish
the rest. the plants need to get some
more growth on to be self-shading before
the hot and dryer period starts up.

the clay is about as compacted as it
was before i tilled. tilling didn't
accomplish much there.

You didn't blend in sand, and organic material? Are we talking lawn,
ornamentals, or veggies?

i'd already spent my budget for the
next few years redoing the enclosed
tulip gardens (many feet of trenching,
many tons of pea gravel, sand, and then
topsoil and sand mixed to raise it a
foot and a half). so no, no extra organic
or sand added. this is meant to be a
test plot to see what will happen when
legumes are the top dog in clay.

we're talking about what was left of an
old farm field that had scrubby weeds
growing on top of it and a mix of perennials
we've let run around back there for years
(yarrows, clovers, hollyhocks, geraniums,
two kinds of flax, wild strawberries,
butterfly weed, milkweed, grasses, hedge
mustard, pigweed (invasive and hard to
get out of clay once it gets going) and
many others i've never figured out names).
sometimes we've weeded it, sometimes we've
burned stuff there and other times we just
let it go.

until last year when i wanted to reshape it
to get rid of a gully that was forming and i
put in an overflow drain tube for the horseshoe
pathway (a third line of overflow area for
when we get more than two inches of rain in a
short period of time). also i wanted to reseed
it with legumes to liven things up and give the
bunnies and deer a different place to mingle
instead of 25 ft from where i'm sleeping.

all three are ornamentals, but the delphiniums
are poisonous, i'm doubtful they even sprouted,
but won't know until i get back to weeding.

the clovers and stray alfalfa seedlings i'm
weeding out of the birdfoot trefoil (the whole
area is planted in a spiral pattern, trefoil
for the border, to the right of the pathway --
alfalfa to the left). and when i get to the
alfalfa i'll take the stray birdsfoot trefoil
out too. some i'm harvesting into a small
container and drying them to feed to the worms
(extra green stuff). it is young and has no
flowers or seeds yet, so it's perfect green
manure. eventually when the worms are done
with it it's going back onto a veggie garden
someplace. the rest of the weeds i'm piling
on the pathway so the worms can feast (they
are too).


once the worms
finished up all the rotted organic
material from before i'm not seeing much
activity, except in the pathway where
i'm piling the weeds.

Do mean that you're not seeing worms, or not seeing the benefit of the
worms? Could it be the vermicide that you committed with the rototiller?
When you dig, do you find earthworms? (How many, and what size?)

when i tilled last summer it was very dry.
i didn't see a single worm the entire area.
so i know i didn't harm many of them -- they
were down deeper. later on when the rains
came back i saw a lot of worm activity as
they finished off all the decayed material
that was mixed in.

now they are still around, but not as much as
last fall, i'm hoping they'll improve once the
seedlings shade the soil more and start providing
leaves for them to munch on. i'll probably be
hand thinning or weeding all summer off and
on so that should help encourage them too.

i know that the leveling and last round of
drainage i put in will help them a lot too
because now they won't be drowned in large
areas (unlike before).

when i was digging last fall to move some
rhubarb along the edge of the new patch it
had plenty of worms. i'm sure things will
pick up if the worms under the decaying weeds
in the pathway is any sign.


the next big project is to terrace the
red patch, i'm turning it into a mixed
garden. i won't till it because it has
hundreds of perennials already that i want
to leave in place as much as possible.
i hope i can start that tomorrow or the
next day. even if i can only get the
top few levels done that would be a big
help and a nice start.

i can't think of any other gardens
i would have to till. the biggest garden
i normally spade wouldn't do as well if i
tilled. i need the larger clumps of soil
to pile up for a long mound i make to
plant the cosmos on. it being a low spot
i use the trench to catch water and the
mound to keep the cosmos high, dry and
the roots happy. if it were tilled the
soil would run down faster and the cosmos
would fall over in the wind.

my other previous uses of tilling has
been mostly to mix amendments.

When soil is first prepped for a garden, rototilling, and double digging
make sense, because it will speed up the development of the soil (still
the hardpan problem created by the rototiller still needs to be
addressed. After the garden is established, both (rototilling, and
double digging) just undo the work that the worms, fungi, and other
members of the soil ecosystem have done.

no new prepping going on here now.
i got too many other fish to fry (as
soon as it gets dry enough to get a
fire going)...


....
for larger
areas now i've just mixed it by hoe in
the wheelbarrow and then spread it out.
for smaller already established gardens
i don't do that any more. if something
needs to be added, i put it in the mulch
and the worms, rain and gravity do their
thing to incorporate it. peaceful that
way...

Much more :O)

the experiments continue... ha. no
shortage of things to keep me busy here.

i see that Amy Stewart has a new book on
bugs out. or i should say i heard as i was
listening to her being interviewed on the
radio.

i didn't know that tapeworm larvae can
move around the body (and can even get into
the brain and are a big cause of epilepsy
around the world). how's that for an
unsettling thought? that your noodscape can
be gnawed by a vagrant tapeworm...


songbird