Mulch gardening
We have very sandy soil formed from a glacial sandbar. The soil is very well drained, yet it has enough clay to be sticky or hard as a brick.
Mulch gardening as we practice is a way to build soil by adding organic that will compost. We combine this with what dad calls trench gardening; bury brush, rotten logs, leaves... below the topsoil. This creates a sponge that holds water and tends to produce really good growth.
We used leaves beginning in the mid 80's. Today we use shredded newspaper and mail for lack of leaves. Sometimes we use straw/hay depending on the opportunity. Put this around and between the crop to prevent weeds and hold moisture. You can also walk on this when it is damp. Leaves can be a foot deep. Shredded paper should just cover the ground as it tends to mat down We went from flat soil to good soil in a few years.
When available, use animal manure. We have used poultry, sheep, cow and horse manure. Try to match the N with the organic.
Compost at every opportunity; you can have too much and more easily have too little.
I would like to see the organic part of solid waste used to bolster soil fertility. Most states lack Iowa's humus and even Iowa sometimes has poor soil.
Edited 6/9/2009 1:16 am ET by heins
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(post #12584, reply #1 of 1)
Because few people for many years have been putting organic matter back into the soil most all soils in the USA, according to the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service, do not have adequate levels of organic matter. I can remember back in the 1940's people diligently raking up the leaves that fell form the trees and burning them, the sky would be dark and gray for days in the fall from the smoke from burning those leaves and people still do that today, wasting a very valuable resource and contributing to the pollution of the air we breath.
Using those leaves to help build up the needed organic matter makes much more economic and ecological sense than spending money on peat moss. Recycling the kitchen waste could reduce what goes into landfills by about 20 percent, just as prohibiting putting yard waste into landfills has reduced the amount of waste dumped every year by 50 percent. If people only realized the amount of nutrients they were removing from their property each year when that yard waste was trucked off and what it costs them to put back a small part of what their plants needed they would not do that. Garden writers today should not be telling people to clean up the garden and throw those valuable waste away and instead should be encouraging people to compost.
Cities, towns, townships, and Homeowners Associations that have ordinances, or covenants, that prohibit recycling and composting should rescind those and encourage recycling and composting.
West central Michigan along the lake shore
A sign of a good gardener is not a green thumb, rather it is brown knees.
West central Michigan along the lake shore
A sign of a good gardener is not a green thumb, rather it is brown knees.