calliandra
Well-Known Member
A bit over a year ago, I set out to transfer sustainable outdoor gardening practices into my first grow closet. The journey bumped me into the Soil Food Web, which in turn reminded me of the concepts Herwig Pommeresche applies in his cycle-of-living-matter way of gardening. Applying both to my grows showed such immense success that I am now thrown back into the outdoors, to begin a new round of exploration with a new perspective.
The major focus of my outdoor gardening has been - and continues to be - the soil. For the past few years, I've been recovering the derelict soil of a veggie patch almost exclusively with resources from the garden system it's in.
Retrospectively, I was managing succession, but not really accelerating it with my chosen methods of selective weeding, mulch, chop and drop, greencovers, and minimal disturbance aeration with a digging fork. The heavy clay soil, which initially would've made great brick material, did improve, but pest pressure (mainly spanish slugs) as well as fungi on the roses, the cherry tree, and a few others show me that all is still far from well.
It was time to step up the speed a bit, and boost the organic content of the soil along with the microherd by adding high carbon plant matter, living matter, and eventually, compost to the usual summer mulching with high nitrogen.
So last fall, inspired and egged on by the infamous @greasemonkeymann, I turned the garden into a leaf-analogue of those corpse decaying parks, setting up different scenarios of decomposition -
And for discussing the conundrums that arise in the process!
The major focus of my outdoor gardening has been - and continues to be - the soil. For the past few years, I've been recovering the derelict soil of a veggie patch almost exclusively with resources from the garden system it's in.
Retrospectively, I was managing succession, but not really accelerating it with my chosen methods of selective weeding, mulch, chop and drop, greencovers, and minimal disturbance aeration with a digging fork. The heavy clay soil, which initially would've made great brick material, did improve, but pest pressure (mainly spanish slugs) as well as fungi on the roses, the cherry tree, and a few others show me that all is still far from well.
It was time to step up the speed a bit, and boost the organic content of the soil along with the microherd by adding high carbon plant matter, living matter, and eventually, compost to the usual summer mulching with high nitrogen.
So last fall, inspired and egged on by the infamous @greasemonkeymann, I turned the garden into a leaf-analogue of those corpse decaying parks, setting up different scenarios of decomposition -
- spread thick on the veggie beds,
- piled and trampled in the pathways,
- piled loosely,
- linden only, linden mixed with maple, totally mixed leaves,
- compacted into a 1m high fence tower, untarped
- a pile of chipped plant stalks mixed with leaves, left untarped
- and attempted starting a thermal pile, which however broke down under the stress of user error paired with very cold weather. But tarped nevertheless.
That stuff has been going into my wormbin, and will make up the "browns" part of the thermal compost I am going to make as soon as there are enough greens around (so May, possibly a bit later or earlier, depending on the weather).
And for discussing the conundrums that arise in the process!