"nswong" wrote in news:2kmu92F40g95U2@uni-
berlin.de:

Hi Salty Thumb,

I start learnning agriculture by year 2001, that is after I went back
to my hometown and deal with my land.

In my learnning progress, I do read a lot. Most of the articles I read
are contrary with other articles. And it's hard to test it up who are
correct.

I do read before from some articles that talk about the views bring up
by you. But for going to sustainable and without bring in external
input(landscape fabric), I tend to remember those comment that say bad
words to landscape fabric. g

I'm not reach the level to able to tell which one are correct by now,
but will grad to find it out if it does not cost too much of effort.
Since I will not going to use landscape fabric, if you can share your
personal experience with me(not those you read from), I'm grateful to
this. :-)

Here are the previous times I have babbled about landscape fabric:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...=be1qe0%24e9q%
241%40plonk.apk.net

http://groups.google.com/groups?
q=landscape+fabric+chives&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&selm=%
25HD4c.99646%246K.92016%40nwrddc02.gnilink.net&rnu m=1

I don't think it is a matter of what is 'correct' but what is the best
solution to a given problem. I'm also not an expert to say for sure, but
for your operation, extensive mulch seems a better idea, and more
practical. I don't generate enough vegetation to be able to supply
myself with mulch or significant amounts of compost, so I use newspaper
or fabric. Since I do not add amendments, I find fabric better suited.
Additionally, were I to add amendments, I find sliding large pine bark
nuggets aside and lifting the fabric (feeder roots smeeder roots) an
easier procedure than raking aside mulch that is possibly conmingled with
newspaper and soil debris. If I were to use short term mulch (i.e. not
as long lasting as large pine bark nuggets), newspaper might be a better
idea, as I could just mix everything together and enrich the soil
structure by doing so. With the fabric, aesthetically, I do not have to
use as much nugget mulch to cover what could be unsightly newspapers.

Having reviewed some of the older messages about landscape fabric, if
you're going to grow vegetation that will eventually spred over a flower
bed (making removal of landscape fabric more difficult), it really
doesn't make sense to use long term weed suppression, as once
established, theoretically, the vegetation should be effective in
limiting weed growth to acceptable levels. Certainly in this case you
would want to use something that degrades, replacing as necessary until
the relevant plant is established and doing its own weed control, the
exception being if said vegetation will die back in the winter, in which
case you can plan your amending accordingly and/or resign yourself to
using short term suppression or other methods.

I'm going off to my land now, will reply you when I'm back.

Okay.

"Doug Kanter" wrote in
:

Jay, I've asked you a number of times how much work to expect to do on
your garden on a weekly or monthly basis, but you haven't responded.
Would you care to do that now?

Don't let him make you use up all your macaroni minutes.

[for those fortunate not to have TV
http://www.sprinttvads.com/flashcheck.html?movieID=001, under Archive-
Macaroni]

"Salty Thumb" wrote in message
...

Here are the previous times I have babbled about landscape fabric:


http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...dm=be1qe0%24e9
q%
241%40plonk.apk.net

[Message start]

Salty, have you personally *used* landscape fabric and had the desired
results, or did you just see it on TV? Landscape fabric is from hell.
Tree feeder roots grow up through it. Turfgrass encroaches over the
edges and then sends roots down through it. Weeds will germinate in
whatever covers it, and eventually send roots down through it also
unless you pull them promptly. When you change your mind and decide
to
yank out the fabric a year or two later, it will be stuck fast by
several inches of decomposed mulch/grass/weed gunk and a million
infinitesimal feeder roots occupying every individual pore in the
fabric, forcing you to dig it out.

This has been my personal experience, plus the local gardening
columnists and extension agents agree with me, as well as a lot
of people in this newsgroup.

- Alex

[Message end]

I'm more with Alex. g

http://groups.google.com/groups?
q=landscape+fabric+chives&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&scoring=d&selm=%
25HD4c.99646%246K.92016%40nwrddc02.gnilink.net&rnu m=1

[Message start]

From: Salty Thumb

I can live with the onion thingies, so I still stand by my
recommendation.
People who can garden their way out of bank vault probably won't want
to
use landscape fabric, but if you're an average lazy guy, it's good
stuff.

[Message end]

For those really lazy guy, that neglect a corner of garden and let
small bush or tree grow on top of the landscape fabric, I can't
imagine how they will going to separate the landscape fabric from the
mulch(humus) on top, soil below, and plant in between. g

I don't think it is a matter of what is 'correct' but what is the
best
solution to a given problem.

I'm agree with you that there is no single way for every situation.

But 'correct' here I'm refer to the claim are true to the fact.

I'm also not an expert to say for sure, but
for your operation, extensive mulch seems a better idea, and more
practical.

This still need another few years to test it out when some new need
come in. Maybe by the time another alternative fit better than mulch.
I'm also looking at live mulch(ground cover) now.

I don't generate enough vegetation to be able to supply
myself with mulch or significant amounts of compost, so I use
newspaper
or fabric.

I test out that Perennial peanut(Arachis) work well as live mulch
here.

It grow low, can grow under shading, not appear to compete with crop
plant, do suppress weed germinate from seed, decaying dead root do
provide organic matter and nutrient. It make available by exchange
carbon for N and P with bacterial(N) and fungus(P).

Weed that grow through the live mulch can be weeded by handheld string
trimmer or sickle.

Additionally, were I to add amendments, I find sliding large pine
bark
nuggets aside and lifting the fabric (feeder roots smeeder roots) an
easier procedure than raking aside mulch that is possibly conmingled
with
newspaper and soil debris.

I don't see the need to raking aside mulch, I will just top dressing
the amendments.

If I were to use short term mulch (i.e. not
as long lasting as large pine bark nuggets), newspaper might be a
better
idea, as I could just mix everything together and enrich the soil
structure by doing so.

As long as you don't over mulch, the mulch will find it way to soil by
critter live in it.

Having reviewed some of the older messages about landscape fabric,
if
you're going to grow vegetation that will eventually spred over a
flower
bed (making removal of landscape fabric more difficult), it really
doesn't make sense to use long term weed suppression, as once
established, theoretically, the vegetation should be effective in
limiting weed growth to acceptable levels. Certainly in this case
you
would want to use something that degrades, replacing as necessary
until
the relevant plant is established and doing its own weed control,

I think people call this vegetation as ground cover or live mulch
depend on situation.

the
exception being if said vegetation will die back in the winter, in
which
case you can plan your amending accordingly and/or resign yourself
to
using short term suppression or other methods.

I will suggest using plant debris for supplement in this situation.

Regards,
Wong

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

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

"nswong" wrote in news:2l7avjF97tkbU2@uni-
berlin.de:

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

Diamonds (?) do not contain any biologically accessible carbon.

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

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

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.

Many forms of N are water soluable and is leached away by water without
any interaction with C, mulch or newspaper. You may actually get
additional N during rain.

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

Cellulose is broken down by actinomycetes.

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.

Despite the name and superficial resemblance, actinomycetes are
prokaryotic bacteria, phylum actinobacteria. (Fungi are all eukaryotic.)

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

'soil life'

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).

Panty hose is something women wear on their legs. I do not know why.

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

Yes, I have heard that, too. I think there was a Clemson or other
Southern US university study. I am waiting for them to come out with a
UV resistant landscape fabric version. g

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..._)...

It is not necessary, I do not think the orginal poster is concerned with
those things. Have you read the sci.bio.agriculture group?

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.

They also prefer to avoid becoming lunch.

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.

If you read the link I posted earlier, it classifies earthworms in 3
groups. One of them i don't remember and is probably not relevant. The
other two are nightcrawlers and regular earthworms. It said that
nightcrawlers have permanent burrows, these are the ones you are talking
about that come out at night to feed on plant debris. Another link I
provided gave the population density for a certain species at some test
location as 0-7 per sq. meter. At this rate, and the size of my flower
bed, I think any detrimental effect by landscape fabric is minimal. I
think, since it is a worm, eventually it will reproduce at a sufficent
rate to exploit any available opening. The other kind of earthworm does
not live in static burrows and only comes out during times of rain. I
would guess that being subterranean, they would also be minimally
affected by landscape fabric.

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.

I don't think plant roots are impermeable to water. I don't know how a
chunk of clay is going to get into my flower bed. It has been several
years and I have no problems with water blockage. Even if some clay or
other amendment (as below) were spread over the fabric, water is a very
effective solvent and while the clay or amendment is not guarranteed to
pass, the water certainly will.

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.

You can try this experiment: Cover some soil with newspaper. Time how
long it takes to develop an opening. It takes over 2 months in a
temperate climate. Any holes that develop are not from macroscopic
organisms. Plants will grow through, but those opening are not available
to macroscopic organisms (being blocked by the plant). Gradually, in wet
areas of the paper, actinomycetes or other microscopic organisms will
weaken the newspaper until a hole forms or mechanical action (wind,
water, etc) hastens the break down. I will be surprised if you can come
up with any large organism (other than termites, paper wasps and people)
that will deliberately make a hole in the newspaper. To be fair, cover
half the newspaper with organic mulch (I have not tried this) and see
what happens. You can cover the other half with a banana leaf or
something if you are worried about sun effects on organisms (you can take
the leaf off when it rains or artifically add water to simulate tho
condition). I predict the only difference is that mulch side will have
accelerated decomposition (1 month to first hole vs. 2 months).

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.

It's not just the size of the hole but also any electrical or chemical
effects that may cause what ever you are adding to clump together
(similar to hard water calcification of drain pipes on a smaller scale).
Also, the landscape fabric regardless of the holes may be semi-porous to
water. That is not necessarily true for the solute. [by 'hole' in this
case, I'm refering to the factory made approx. millimeter sized openings
uniformly distributed over fabric area, not the openings made by users to
plant through.]

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

Your peanut groundcover is more likely to grow to 2 meters tall and start
dancing around with a top hat, cane and monocle.

"nswong" wrote in news:2l7av9F97tkbU1@uni-
berlin.de:

For those really lazy guy, that neglect a corner of garden and let
small bush or tree grow on top of the landscape fabric, I can't
imagine how they will going to separate the landscape fabric from the
mulch(humus) on top, soil below, and plant in between. g

I find the idea that anyone wuuld let a tree or bush grow on and through
landscape fabric ridiculous. I neglect my flower beds for months because
they don't need maintenance. After several months, I get a handful of
large weeds (hand sized or smaller) that are easily removed. In any
event, if someone were to let a tree or shrub grow through the landscape
fabric and the plant does not come out easily, it should be a simple
matter to slide the mulch aside, cut a circle in the fabric around the
bush and pry it out with a mattock, then cut another piece of fabric to
patch the hole or plant something else in the opening. Aside from that,
I suggested landscape fabric for use in a flower bed, not the corner of a
garden. If you've got particularly invasive plants around your flower
bed, you've got bigger problems that neither landscape fabric nor mulch
will solve.

I don't think it is a matter of what is 'correct' but what is the best
solution to a given problem.

I'm agree with you that there is no single way for every situation.

But 'correct' here I'm refer to the claim are true to the fact.

No matter how correct your facts are, if they aren't applicable, then it
does not matter if they are true or not.

I'm also not an expert to say for sure, but
for your operation, extensive mulch seems a better idea, and more
practical.

This still need another few years to test it out when some new need
come in. Maybe by the time another alternative fit better than mulch.
I'm also looking at live mulch(ground cover) now.

At this point I'm not sure what you are referring to.

I don't generate enough vegetation to be able to supply myself with
mulch or significant amounts of compost, so I use newspaper or fabric.

I test out that Perennial peanut(Arachis) work well as live mulch
here.

It grow low, can grow under shading, not appear to compete with crop
plant, do suppress weed germinate from seed, decaying dead root do
provide organic matter and nutrient. It make available by exchange
carbon for N and P with bacterial(N) and fungus(P).

Weed that grow through the live mulch can be weeded by handheld string
trimmer or sickle.

Additionally, were I to add amendments, I find sliding large pine bark
nuggets aside and lifting the fabric (feeder roots smeeder roots) an
easier procedure than raking aside mulch that is possibly conmingled
with newspaper and soil debris.

I don't see the need to raking aside mulch, I will just top dressing
the amendments.

For a flower bed that needs to be visually appealing, I think it is
important to put amendments under the mulch. Depending on nitrogen
content, you may also want to bury them to avoid volatilization.

If I were to use short term mulch (i.e. not as long lasting as large
pine bark nuggets), newspaper might be a better
idea, as I could just mix everything together and enrich the soil
structure by doing so.

As long as you don't over mulch, the mulch will find it way to soil by
critter live in it.

Having reviewed some of the older messages about landscape fabric, if
you're going to grow vegetation that will eventually spred over a
flower bed (making removal of landscape fabric more difficult), it
really doesn't make sense to use long term weed suppression, as once
established, theoretically, the vegetation should be effective in
limiting weed growth to acceptable levels. Certainly in this case you
would want to use something that degrades, replacing as necessary
until the relevant plant is established and doing its own weed
control,

I think people call this vegetation as ground cover or live mulch
depend on situation.

When I wrote that i wasn't thinking of groundcovers as much as a low
shrub with wide sunblocking canopy. I don't know if that qualifies as a
'groundcover'. The problems I have with groundcovers (such a creeping
groundcover), aside from ignorance and cheapness, is there is a potential
to create a diverse microcosm in your flower bed. So in addition to
'soil critters' you have created another layer of habitat for whatever
insects or animals that move in and the other plants you have (barring
any symbiosis) will have to compete with the groundcover. If you don't
know what you are doing, there is the potential for many problems, hence
the need for 'people who can garden their way out of a bank vault'.

the
exception being if said vegetation will die back in the winter, in
which case you can plan your amending accordingly and/or resign
yourself to using short term suppression or other methods.

I will suggest using plant debris for supplement in this situation.

Any plant debris I have either goes in the garbage or compost pile for
the vegetable garden.

"Salty Thumb" wrote in message
...

I don't think it is a matter of what is 'correct' but what is the
best
solution to a given problem.

I'm agree with you that there is no single way for every
situation.

But 'correct' here I'm refer to the claim are true to the fact.

No matter how correct your facts are, if they aren't applicable,
then it
does not matter if they are true or not.

There is too much of alternative ways to do a work. I don't think I
can test all of them to find out which are the most applicable, what I
do are choose some of them that look like promising, and I need the
"correct facts" to pick those I'm going to test.

I'm also not an expert to say for sure, but
for your operation, extensive mulch seems a better idea, and more
practical.

This still need another few years to test it out when some new
need
come in. Maybe by the time another alternative fit better than
mulch.
I'm also looking at live mulch(ground cover) now.

At this point I'm not sure what you are referring to.

I'm refer to operation on my land. It's a small one, but the ways I
test on it are what I will do when on a large land. It will take a few
years to test before I really go to large scale.

For a flower bed that needs to be visually appealing, I think it is
important to put amendments under the mulch.

I agree with you, "for a flower bed".

The problems I have with groundcovers (such a creeping
groundcover), aside from ignorance and cheapness, is there is a
potential
to create a diverse microcosm in your flower bed. So in addition to
'soil critters' you have created another layer of habitat for
whatever
insects or animals that move in and the other plants you have
(barring
any symbiosis) will have to compete with the groundcover. If you
don't
know what you are doing, there is the potential for many problems,
hence
the need for 'people who can garden their way out of a bank vault'.

I agree. For a normal gardenner, it's not worth the effort of choosing
the right groundcover. But for a bigger operation, a right
groundcover do help to save cost.

Regards,
Wong

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

"Salty Thumb" wrote in message
...

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

Diamonds (?) do not contain any biologically accessible carbon.

Yes, "diamond" not diamon.

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.

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

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.

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.

Many forms of N are water soluable and is leached away by water
without
any interaction with C, mulch or newspaper. You may actually get
additional N during rain.

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.

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

Cellulose is broken down by actinomycetes.

I believe this process are rather slow. Do actinomycetes got the
ability of N fixation from air?

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

Despite the name and superficial resemblance, actinomycetes are
prokaryotic bacteria, phylum actinobacteria. (Fungi are all
eukaryotic.)

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

'soil life'

Thanks. :-)

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..._)...

It is not necessary, I do not think the orginal poster is concerned
with
those things.

You are right.

Have you read the sci.bio.agriculture group?

I do take a look there when I looking for agriculture newsgroup few
month ago. Forgetted why I decide not to subscribe this group. May be
due to the lack of traffic, or it's more on academic than practical.
Not sure.

Do you think it's good for me to looking information there?

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

They also prefer to avoid becoming lunch.

g

If you read the link I posted earlier,

I'm doing a research for X/HTML now for writing some program, will
read the link you provide later.

it classifies earthworms in 3
groups. One of them i don't remember and is probably not relevant.
The
other two are nightcrawlers and regular earthworms.

IIRC:
1. Litter dweller. Those live in the litter/mulch. E.g. red worm for
worm composting
2. Surface dweller. Those "regular earthworms" work their way most of
the time horizontally.
3. Burrower. Nightcrawler/dew worm.

Another link I
provided gave the population density for a certain species at some
test
location as 0-7 per sq. meter. At this rate, and the size of my
flower
bed, I think any detrimental effect by landscape fabric is minimal.

The reason of some place are 0 per sq. meter, the other are 7 per sq.
meter are due to the environment of that place.

I do believe that for a same place, a landscape fabric do reduce the
earthworm population by reduce the accessability to food for
earthworm.

I think, since it is a worm, eventually it will reproduce at a
sufficent
rate to exploit any available opening.

Yes, to a far lower population in the total area.

The other kind of earthworm does
not live in static burrows and only comes out during times of rain.
I
would guess that being subterranean, they would also be minimally
affected by landscape fabric.

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 don't think plant roots are impermeable to water. I don't know
how a
chunk of clay is going to get into my flower bed. It has been
several
years and I have no problems with water blockage. Even if some clay
or
other amendment (as below) were spread over the fabric, water is a
very
effective solvent and while the clay or amendment is not guarranteed
to
pass, the water certainly will.

It do reduce the infiltration, and causing run off when rain are
relative heavy.

You can try this experiment: Cover some soil with newspaper. Time
how
long it takes to develop an opening. It takes over 2 months in a
temperate climate.

Put other organic mulch on top of newspaper, it make difference.

Any holes that develop are not from macroscopic
organisms.

I believe soil life do included those like earthworm, groundbettle,
millipede, fungus...

Plants will grow through, but those opening are not
available
to macroscopic organisms (being blocked by the plant).

Plants roots will dead, especially feeder roots, after the dead roots
decay, tunnels are there. This applied to fungus as well.

I will be surprised if you can come
up with any large organism (other than termites, paper wasps and
people)
that will deliberately make a hole in the newspaper.

Here I do saw rat making big holes anywhere. ;-)

To be fair, cover
half the newspaper with organic mulch (I have not tried this) and
see
what happens. You can cover the other half with a banana leaf or
something if you are worried about sun effects on organisms (you can
take
the leaf off when it rains or artifically add water to simulate tho
condition). I predict the only difference is that mulch side will
have
accelerated decomposition (1 month to first hole vs. 2 months).

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.

It's not just the size of the hole but also any electrical or
chemical
effects that may cause what ever you are adding to clump together
(similar to hard water calcification of drain pipes on a smaller
scale).
Also, the landscape fabric regardless of the holes may be
semi-porous to
water. That is not necessarily true for the solute. [by 'hole' in
this
case, I'm refering to the factory made approx. millimeter sized
openings
uniformly distributed over fabric area, not the openings made by
users to
plant through.]

My point are, if the end result are nutrient in liquid form can be
filter/block, it's sure that it also will causing run off, and not
much water can get from rain for soil that is directly under the
landscape fabric. So why landscape fabric? ;-)

Sure, if the rain are long and light, it's another story.

Your peanut groundcover is more likely to grow to 2 meters tall and
start
dancing around with a top hat, cane and monocle.

g

Cheers,
Wong

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

"nswong" wrote in news:2le8s2Faloo7U1@uni-
berlin.de:

"Salty Thumb" wrote in message
...

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

Diamonds (?) do not contain any biologically accessible carbon.

Yes, "diamond" not diamon.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Many forms of N are water soluable and is leached away by water
without any interaction with C, mulch or newspaper. You may actually
get additional N during rain.

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.

I think the amount of N from rain is relatively minor, but I do think the
water and biological activity is important, otherwise the decay rate is
slow. If you have low N to start, then the decay rate will be low and
your plants have low N. 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.

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

Cellulose is broken down by actinomycetes.

I believe this process are rather slow. Do actinomycetes got the
ability of N fixation from air?

I think the speed is dependent on N availability, temperature and maybe
water availability. I don't think they can fixate N from air like legume
inhabiting bacteria (rhizobium, phylum proteobacteria) or others, so they
have to use other sources (otherwise, wood would decay quite quickly in
open air).

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

Despite the name and superficial resemblance, actinomycetes are
prokaryotic bacteria, phylum actinobacteria. (Fungi are all
eukaryotic.)

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'." _Five Kingdoms_, Margulis and Schwartz, p.98, 3rd ed
1997. [-mycetes = plural of Greek "mykes" = "fungus"]

The other important thing to know about actinomycetes is that they
decompose cellulose.

Have you read the sci.bio.agriculture group?

I do take a look there when I looking for agriculture newsgroup few
month ago. Forgetted why I decide not to subscribe this group. May be
due to the lack of traffic, or it's more on academic than practical.
Not sure.

Do you think it's good for me to looking information there?

I only checked a few times, and you are right, aside from the spam, the
traffic is light and usually very academic. But if I were using my land
for commercial interests, I would keep an eye on it.

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.

If you read the link I posted earlier,

I'm doing a research for X/HTML now for writing some program, will
read the link you provide later.

I see it probably doesn't say anything you don't already know.

it classifies earthworms in 3
groups. One of them i don't remember and is probably not relevant.
The other two are nightcrawlers and regular earthworms.

IIRC:
1. Litter dweller. Those live in the litter/mulch. E.g. red worm for
worm composting
2. Surface dweller. Those "regular earthworms" work their way most of
the time horizontally.
3. Burrower. Nightcrawler/dew worm.

Another link I
provided gave the population density for a certain species at some
test location as 0-7 per sq. meter. At this rate, and the size of my
flower bed, I think any detrimental effect by landscape fabric is
minimal.

The reason of some place are 0 per sq. meter, the other are 7 per sq.
meter are due to the environment of that place.

I do believe that for a same place, a landscape fabric do reduce the
earthworm population by reduce the accessability to food for
earthworm.

okay

I think, since it is a worm, eventually it will reproduce at a
sufficent rate to exploit any available opening.

Yes, to a far lower population in the total area.

I think if there is any population loss for type #3 in my case it is
neglibile. The total area of my flower bed is not large and assume the
original poster's is more or less the same. Additionally, one dimension
is significantly shorter than the other, so migration is not severely
affected. This is also assuming the normal population is in the 0-7 per
sq. meter range.

The other kind of earthworm does not live in static burrows and only
comes out during times of rain. I would guess that being subterranean,
they would also be minimally affected by landscape fabric.

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.

I don't think plant roots are impermeable to water. I don't know how
a chunk of clay is going to get into my flower bed. It has been
several years and I have no problems with water blockage. Even if
some clay or other amendment (as below) were spread over the fabric,
water is a very effective solvent and while the clay or amendment is
not guarranteed to pass, the water certainly will.

It do reduce the infiltration, and causing run off when rain are
relative heavy.

I have not noticed this, but there is a gutter above the flower bed that
blocks most water flow. But even when the gutter was removed I did not
notice any pooling.

You can try this experiment: Cover some soil with newspaper. Time
how long it takes to develop an opening. It takes over 2 months in a
temperate climate.

Put other organic mulch on top of newspaper, it make difference.

Now, if that is true, then won't the weed blocking effect of the
newspaper be mitigated? It seems to be of marginal benefit when being
used in an active flower bed. You would have to rely on the soil biota
(which would occur with or without the newspaper) for suppression after
the newspaper decays. 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).

Any holes that develop are not from macroscopic organisms.

I believe soil life do included those like earthworm, groundbettle,
millipede, fungus...

I only noticed bacterial decay when I tried, but I did not cover with
organic mulch.

Plants will grow through, but those opening are not available to
macroscopic organisms (being blocked by the plant).

Plants roots will dead, especially feeder roots, after the dead roots
decay, tunnels are there. This applied to fungus as well.

Yes, but this takes time.

I will be surprised if you can come up with any large organism (other
than termites, paper wasps and people) that will deliberately make a
hole in the newspaper.

Here I do saw rat making big holes anywhere. ;-)

okay, "and rats"

To be fair, cover
half the newspaper with organic mulch (I have not tried this) and see
what happens. You can cover the other half with a banana leaf or
something if you are worried about sun effects on organisms (you can
take the leaf off when it rains or artifically add water to simulate
tho condition). I predict the only difference is that mulch side
will have accelerated decomposition (1 month to first hole vs. 2
months).

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?

It's not just the size of the hole but also any electrical or chemical
effects that may cause what ever you are adding to clump together
(similar to hard water calcification of drain pipes on a smaller
scale). Also, the landscape fabric regardless of the holes may be
semi-porous to water. That is not necessarily true for the solute.
[by 'hole' in this case, I'm refering to the factory made approx.
millimeter sized openings uniformly distributed over fabric area, not
the openings made by users to plant through.]

My point are, if the end result are nutrient in liquid form can be
filter/block, it's sure that it also will causing run off, and not
much water can get from rain for soil that is directly under the
landscape fabric. So why landscape fabric? ;-)

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 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.

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.

"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

"nswong" wrote in news:2lo7pjFfd8kmU1@uni-
berlin.de:

"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.

okay, sure, I can go along with the concept that carbon locked in
cellulose and lignin usually do not as easily participate in reactions as
other forms.

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.

okay

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.

I think the difference between slow release fertilizers and cellulose is
that the coatings on slow release fertilizers are designed to degrade
mechanically or chemically (wind/water action, soil chemistry or natural
instability) and not by biological effect. The speed at which cellulose
decays can be accelerated or decelerated by the presence or absense of
nitrogen (and water). I don't think that is true of slow release
fertilizers. So while wood is usually a 'slow release form', with the
addition of nitrogen in a biologically active situation it ceases to be
'slow release'. Similar degradation does not occur with the fertilizers
in the time scale of normal (non-compost) bed, because quite frankly,
normal bacteria don't have much to gain by decomposing artifical
fertilizer pellets. To put another way, if the carbon is milk and
nitrogen is cookies, when the bacteria see the two together, they are
going to eat regardless of any ideas about 'slow release'.
..
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.

I think this is still dependent on the presense of nitrogen to make
proteins with energy supplied from the carbons.

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

Okay, but I'm not saying the starch in flour isn't different from the
cellulose in newspaper. I'm saying newspaper and sawdust probably have
similar nitrogen leaching effects due to the cellulose content. Do the
same experiment with sawdust and compare to the flour. Even if you shred
the newspaper or stick it in a blender, I think you will find them both
more similar to each other than to the flour.

[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.

I think yellow leaves are a sign of nitrogen deficiency. My explanation
is the soil organisms are using the nitrogen and the very accessible
carbon in the flour (which also easily washes down into the soil). So
it's not really the carbon, it's the hungry soil organisms that see the
carbon but also need nitrogen to digest it, leaving little nitrogen for
plants and then the leaves turn yellow. The plant may also not like some
of the gluten in the flour. The cotton is cellulose and less accessible
than flour, but that doesn't mean it wont't cause some nitrogen
deficiency by intercepting nitrogen that would normally wash through the
soil.

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.

yea, but not all forms of nutrients are exclusive, the set of resources
required by bacteria is less than that of plants, so it is less likely
that deficiency in one will limit the population. (For example bacteria
may only need C, N, H20, and plants need H20, CO2, N, Fe, P, K, so
limiting Fe will not limit bacterial population, but will limit plant
population). Also, discounting the presence of legumes, your plants are
not going to have a nitrogen generating source below the soil. The
nitrogen will wash down from above and the bacteria in the top layer will
have first access.

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.

If I were in your situation, I would probably do the same + the living
mulch or cover crop you mentioned earlier. The only difference is I may
worry about weeds resprouting from roots, so I may dig them out instead
of cutting them if it is not too time consuming. Maybe also some
research into plants that are alleopathic to the weeds.

"Salty Thumb" wrote in message
news
Okay, but I'm not saying the starch in flour isn't different from
the
cellulose in newspaper. I'm saying newspaper and sawdust probably
have
similar nitrogen leaching effects due to the cellulose content. Do
the
same experiment with sawdust and compare to the flour. Even if you
shred
the newspaper or stick it in a blender, I think you will find them
both
more similar to each other than to the flour.

Okay. g

Also, discounting the presence of legumes, your plants are
not going to have a nitrogen generating source below the soil.

There is bacterial that exist in soil freely that can use carbon as
energy to fix N without work with legume, and release the N to plant
available form when they die and decay. :-)

If I were in your situation, I would probably do the same + the
living
mulch or cover crop you mentioned earlier. The only difference is I
may
worry about weeds resprouting from roots, so I may dig them out
instead
of cutting them if it is not too time consuming. Maybe also some
research into plants that are alleopathic to the weeds.

Yes, it's not cost effective to remove the weeds root.

BTW: I do enjoy to read your posting, but it become a stress for me to
reply you. I read quite fast, it take not more than 10 minute to read
your post. But I write slow, it take nearly 2 hours to reply you. I
hope next time we talk again it will be some simpler one. :-)

Regards,
Wong

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