Let's Talk Soils!

[reed]

A very long time ago tobacco plants were grown in beds. Big heaps of brush were piled up and burned, the ashes raked down and the seeds sown under canvas. We always reserved a corner for tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, every thing was started that way and at the same time. Then we just pulled the starts up to set out, it worked fine. I did the same thing for a long time minus the burning and tobacco. I switched to containers such as flower pots cause they are easier to handle and fit easily in my cold frames. Plus now I only grow a few more than I actually need, I might put just ten of one kind spaced in a medium sized pot.  I make my own non-sterile starting mix.

A well prepared in the ground bed works just as well as long as it is loose enough that they pull easily. I pull and replant immediately and generally do it in late afternoon or evening. If it is dry I did a deep hole and fill with water, maybe a couple of times till it slows down on soaking in. Then I back fill with dry dirt and make a smaller hole to set the plant, add just a little more water, and finish with more dry dirt. Tomatoes are on their own water wise after that but they may get some mulch later on.

Anyway "pulled" plants in my experience do as well or better than those grown in little cells or small cups. I think it might be because they actually have a few less roots and certainly less deformed roots so it's easier to just grow new ones and take off. 

[William Schlegel]

http://www.montanagrow.com/

So I went in one of the local feed stores today to price out their organic fertilizers and I saw containers of this silica stuff for sale. Huh I said. The packages said it improves soil structure. Silica...

I didn't buy any, but it made me curious. The smallest size package was a single pound of the material. Thought about it for a little test. OMRI listed it said.

[Lauren]

A couple years ago I started dry gardening. Most of my soil is sand and rock, so I covered it over with a good six inches of wood chips and then did the same the following spring.

This spring I was digging out a section, I pulled back a section of the woodchips and the soil underneath was actually soil for about three inches. Then it went back to being sand. A very distinct visual difference. So apx two years with wood chips over the top = 3 inches of good soil.

[William Schlegel]

It has been a few years since I buried some wood in a couple mounds. Thinking about digging into them sometime to see how the wood is decomposing.

My latest pile of sawdust has decomposed quite a bit and may not be quite as intense a carbon source now. The oldest pile bases are finally almost gone.

I bought quite a bit of sand last year and couldn't spread it all. So I guess I'll keep working on spreading it this year. Sand beds seem to work fairly well for me for effectively making my soil deeper. Though in a few spots it hasn't worked well especially with the newer courser sand.

I don't have any great new ideas for building soil. With enough time and energy it can be done for free or cheap. With enough money the necessary ingredients can be purchased.

Of my six main gardens only two are amended gardens. The best natural soils are back closer to the big hill. The land actually dips down there and more soil has accumulated naturally. The most problematic garden soil wise may be the one front garden that has never received any soil amendment to speak of.

[reed]

I don't have any great new ideas either, but I can attest that at least in my garden some of the old ways work very well. Add organic stuff of whatever kind. Plant radishes, turnips, and chard other rooty things and let them rot in the ground. Weeds too, dandelions, dock and so on. And don't use a tiller. I was shocked how fast my soil improved when I stopped tilling.

[Steph S]

I seeded various radishes, turnips, other brassicas, mustard, root parsley and buckwheat as cover crops after garlic this year.  We ate the turnips and some radishes, and voles ate all the buckwheat, but otherwise I'm looking forward to see how well that helps for next spring.
Did a sheet compost on my old veggie garden, which is so infested with wireworm, it needs more organic matter and I needed to make the gardens near the house vole unfriendly so I mowed pretty hard instead of leaving most of the straw until spring.

Silica:  I've read that silica will make your tomato stems and other stems stronger. 

I'm putting more effort into managing the forest instead of letting it be.  Many many dead sticks, which I'm cutting to let the light in and am laying them on the ground to slowly rot but also to help retain moisture for those big healthy trees that are standing.  Need to open up planting spots for some nut pine as well.
If I had the resources, I would like to heap some soil over the brush and sticks that are down, and plant some deciduous trees into that.   Fir sticks break down pretty quickly, and most of the dead stuff is var,but adding soil might speed that up too.  Any spruce I will use for fence or trellis or other built structure, as it lasts really well. There is literally no dirt here except for patchy clay, the trees have made a thin layer of duff over decades to centuries and that's all there is, in a lot of places.