3
May
Posted by Jim Rich in No-Till Gardening, Organic Gardening, Soil. Tagged: fertilizing, gardening tips, No-Till Gardening, soil health. Leave a Comment
Fertilizers and amendments vs healthy humus for feeding your plants…
“Healthy soil produces healthy food.” Few would argue that fact. Nonetheless we
can’t ignore economics and today’s cash crops often result from soil that is far short of being healthy by applying certain chemicals and/or soil amendments.
Let’s look at the downside of applying fertilizers in a concentrated form. Such fertilizers, which are costly, are commonly water soluble and taken up by the plant to meet its water needs. To keep up with transpiration plants must drink water ‘day and night, much like our breathing’, as one writer put it. So these plants with the nutrients dissolved and administered via water are constantly being fed.
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3
Apr
Posted by Jim Rich in Gardening in the Tropics, No-Till Gardening, Organic Gardening, Soil. Tagged: gardening tips, No-Till Gardening, soil health. 3 Comments
For those who have a bit of lawn – treasure it. Lawns are our hedge from the tilling machines that destroy our soils.
When it is desired to convert some areas in lawn to grow vegetables it is of course necessary to first kill the grass, which commonly takes a long time (an entire season). But I have found a way that requires only a month or so to ready the soil for planting. It is similar to the Lasagna garden of permaculture lore, except simpler.
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14
Jan
Posted by Jim Rich in Gardening in the Tropics, No-Till Gardening, Soil. Tagged: cover crops, gardening tips, No-Till Gardening, perennials, soil health. 1 Comment
No-till without perennials is a non-starter since perennial roots are the primary soil builders and soil preservers – which Nature accomplishes effortlessly and with great economy. Perennial cover crops can be used in rotation to good effect, but then the land is tied up for long periods of time. 
I’ve been experimenting with using the garden paths in rotation with the garden beds. This means having wide paths (4 ft in my case) and having them seeded with a polyculture composed of weeds, grass and an annual clover. Kentucky 31 fescue is the grass of my choice, since it is a bunch grass which avoids the labor of constant edging and provides open spaces for the annual clover and weeds, as well as facilitates in soil breathing.
It is understood that with constant mowing such paths do not root as deeply as would perennials used directly in the garden beds, but this can be manipulated by letting the grass grow during the last couple of months before switching to a garden bed. To provide the most stable humus it is best to let the grass and company go to seed.
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6
Jan
Posted by Jim Rich in Conservation, No-Till Gardening, Organic Gardening, Reports, Soil. Tagged: biochar, COP-15, No-Till Gardening, soil conservation, soil health. Leave a Comment
Oft-times it seems that Life is made in the form of a problem waiting for a solution or ‘fix’. Agriculture becomes a problem whenever the soil becomes infertile and crop production declines. This decline occurs when the soil is tilled and its humus content oxidized. After ten thousand years of tilling virtually all the arable land world-wide, the soils have became seriously infertile. The first major ‘fix’ to this problem was a chemical one but while it boosted yields the soil’s inherent fertility was diminished. Alarmed by the realization that chemical agriculture ultimately results in soil collapse, where additional inorganic fertilization no longer have an effect, organic agriculture arose. It has proved to be a valiant attempt in bringing the inherent fertility of soil back to life but it is only a partial restoration of damaged soil. Unless organic agriculture adopts a practice of non-tillage, full soil restoration can never occur as it does not address the root cause of soil decline which is over-aerification via tilling.
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28
Oct
Posted by Jim Rich in Conservation, Gardening in the Tropics, No-Till Gardening, Soil. Tagged: cover crops, green manure, No-Till Gardening, soil conservation, soil health. Leave a Comment
Though cover-cropping is a common practice of organic 
gardeners, what is still to be learned is how much can cover-cropping be reduced once the soil is charged with stable humus. Since research is non-existent on this matter each gardener must do their own experimenting.
First, of course, the soil must have a surfeit of stable humus. This reminds me of what I learned as a teenager about farming in the Midwest, before tractors ploughed under the tall grass. Photos showed that on virgin tall grass prairies the grass grew tall enough to hide a man on a horse. When a piece of tall grass prairie was re-established after the land had been ploughed for several decades, the grass could grow only tall enough to hide a person. In other words the soil never could regain its original fertility. Some time later it was learned that forests, the premier stable humus producers pre-dated the tall grass (and mid-grass) prairies. This gave me a clue as to the importance of building stable humus in our garden soils.
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25
Oct
Posted by Jim Rich in Conservation, No-Till Gardening, Organic Gardening, Soil. Tagged: green manure, No-Till Gardening, perennial grasses, soil conservation, soil health. 1 Comment
The world is in trouble (so what else is new?) It has been calculated that in the past forty years one-third of the world’s arable 
land has been lost to erosion. Even in the distant past, before chemical agriculture degraded our soils, there was great soil loss resulting in the demise of whole civilizations – Greek and Mayan civilizations come to mind. The chemical revolution was able to keep crop production high, even with our inherently infertile soils, but how much longer this will be possible is now open to serious question. For one thing we are running out of a critical fertilizer element - phosphorous. But aside from that sobering reality, each year twenty million acres of agricultural land are removed from production due to soil collapse where even a chemical “fix” gets no response. A veritable bursting bubble in agriculture is occurring in many parts of the world.
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14
Oct
Posted by Jim Rich in Conservation, Gardening in the Tropics, No-Till Gardening, Organic Gardening, Soil. Tagged: gardening tips, mulch, No-Till Gardening, soil health. Leave a Comment
There are different ways people are drawn to no-till gardening. One person called no-till a lazy person’s way of gardening, stressing its no digging and no weeding aspects. For me, however, both digging (rototilling) and mindless weeding have been some of the most gratifying parts of gardening!
My attraction to no-till gardening developed as I studied the soil, becoming aware of the fact that soil is a highly structured and organized living community which is harmed by our tilling machines. In truth humans are also a part of that living community, harming ourselves by these practices, eventually creating a dark destiny for future generations. So it has become uncomfortable for me to dig in the soil, a sort of paranoia or fear of digging!
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6
Oct
Posted by Jim Rich in Gardening in the Tropics, Soil. Tagged: No-Till Gardening, soil health, water run off. Leave a Comment
Much of the refreshing rains that we enjoy becomes salt water as it is carried down rivers into the ocean. At the present time there is an increasing shortage of fresh water in many parts of the world. One ‘solution’ being pursued is to build desalinization plants, which requires a great deal of ever expensive energy and leaves mountains of salt to be disposed. A serious address of the situation would be to stop the movement of fresh water to salt water (run-off). Continue reading
6
Oct
Posted by Jim Rich in Conservation. Leave a Comment
I’ve talked to people who would like to buy food grown organically 
but can’t afford the extra cost, and it’s not likely to change with the economic crunch getting worse. All food will cost more but there is another side that I want to address. Continue reading
24
Sep
Posted by Jim Rich in Updates. Tagged: No-Till Gardening. 1 Comment
Here you will find information about my experiments with No Till Gardening on the tropical island of Kauai.
Check back soon for updates.
can’t ignore economics and today’s cash crops often result from soil that is far short of being healthy by applying certain chemicals and/or soil amendments.
