So who here is growing in true organic living soil?

Another friendly public service announcement to get a worm bin going. Best thing you can do

Also- My Bocking 14 Comfrey arrived today. Grows like crazy and is super good for other plants.Buy it once- keeps growing year after year.

Rrog said:

Another friendly public service announcement to get a worm bin going. Best thing you can do

Also- My Bocking 14 Comfrey arrived today. Grows like crazy and is super good for other plants.Buy it once- keeps growing year after year.

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Propagates very nicely through root-division too. Just wait till it's big, dig up, divide into 2 or 4, repeat whenever needed. Perfect phase 1 recovery plant for depleted soils along with nettles (ouch) and clover.

Thanks Ham- That's a good tip! The outside soil is very sandy. Building it up will take a while...

Rrog said:

Thanks Ham- That's a good tip! The outside soil is very sandy. Building it up will take a while...

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Sandy soil, I can help with that bro OK so first thing to do is have a look at your land, identify your highest point. This is where you need to work from. Next what you need to do is allow weeds to grow a bit, along with your grasses etc. Failing the presence of weeds, some alfalfa sown in will work a treat. You need to allow these plants to grow up to halfway between your ankle and your knee. You need sticks, not only leaves.
When at a good height, mow it all down to just above the ground. The important part here is to then make sure your plants you chopped down (leaving roots in soil) are arranged with the sticks lying diagonally ACROSS your runoff-direction. So if you are looking from a lower point UP to your highest point, sticks need to be arranged left to right in straight lines. Once again, allow whatever germinates there to germinate, there is NO such thing as a weed during this process, you are allowing pioneering plants to do their thing.
An alfalfa mulch just after cutting down of pioneer plants will speed things up a lot here too. Any kind of mulch will do really. The thicker the better, in a good thick mulch you will be able to see the fungal strands in the layer between your mulch and your soil. You don't want to use compost for this, but composting plants instead. As the humus forms, soil and humus will be stuck together by the fungal strands. And in the layer immediately sub-soil, you know that your soil microbes are sliming it up, sticking sand particles and humus together.
This is also the point where introducing earth worms is immensely beneficial. Make sure you get a genus that can survive in the humus layer, there won't be much for them sub soil yet. With indoor gardening our allies are microbes alone, but outside we have many bigger bugs that work for us. Worms are number one.

You can repeat this cycle over a few years even. But you will notice benefits in your soil very soon. After the first recovery cycle, you will already have altered the colour of the top layer immensely.

From cycle no1, already start planting your nitro-fixers. Comfrey is great, alfalfa is miraculous. And get some food in there, legumes in particular. Also get tomatoes and a few other things that can grow out tall above your pioneer plants. If lawn is dominating, as grasses tend to do, this can be easily remedied: Cut down the lawn, mulch using newspaper and THICK layers of organic matter like grass clippings. Your pioneer-plants will grow out of this mulch. The newspaper will degrade in a few months no hassle.

As long as NO ORGANIC MATTER is removed from the rehabilitation area, and always dropped right back where it was cut from, the first year should produce all the top-soil you could need. Continuing this practice of adding organic matter on top will build your soil with every go. I have beds that are now a few feet higher than they were when I started. I have turned pretty dead clay soil into something miraculous in this way.

Here is some info that you might find very handy, and if you don't know the site then prepare to get lost on it for a while, I know it will be right up your alley brother

http://www.theecologist.org/green_green_living/gardening/451581/a_beginners_guide_to_permaculture_gardening.html

EDIT: I forgot to add, a nice fruit-tree planted at beginning of soil rehab is a good idea. This creates a few sub-soil 'layers' of activity. And you will also be starting your canopy, to help create your micro climate....

Sweet post Hamish. You are on this. Props bro.

• You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Mad Hamish again.
  
  
  
  

Rrog, your inbox is full

Justicia Gendarussa

Anyone ever heard of this plant, or worked with it at all?

st0wandgrow said:

Justicia Gendarussa

Anyone ever heard of this plant, or worked with it at all?

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love to get some info on this myself. Both my daughter and myself have pretty bad asthma and am always looking for safe natural ways of controlling it

all my soil is a worm farm...worms do most of my work for me...mostly i just feed the worms...been growing this particular soil for about 8 years now and it just gets better every year...
good subject, thanks

mrbungle79 said:

love to get some info on this myself. Both my daughter and myself have pretty bad asthma and am always looking for safe natural ways of controlling it

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I will give you a plant if you want it. This is another one I'm being given in September, just don't know shit about it???

Mailbox is empty- thanks

Hamish- Man thanks so much for this info. I'm flattered you took the time to write that for me.

I was going to plant rye and till it under while green. Right about the time you suggested to mow it and arrange the twigs. Tilling it under has been the mainstream recommendation, and although I'm a no-till guy, I figured I was getting some biomass into the (very) sandy loam. It's pretty sandy. You would suggest not tilling at all in this process, then. I have a farmer who would do the plow / plant / till. So I'm limited to farm equipment.

Love a cut of yhat too. There are a several different plants that are supposed to be good for asthma. I plan on doing a separate nigella sativa (black cumin) garden specifically because the benefits for asthmatics and overall health benefits

You guys are awesome, thank you again for all your help and info.

Im going to add another 40 lbs or so of worm castings and another bag of vermiculite , some crab meal , mix it wet it down a bit and let it cook. So far everything is mixed up using the tarp every other day, its really easy that way.
Im also going to start that worm farm.
Ive got about 3 bushels of apples i cut up sitting in one can, mixed with some peat.
I need to get some more kelp, by the time we got it home and dried it out we only had about a stinking cup.

SomeAC- that sounds just fabulous! Very very cool on the worm bin. We can't all be wrong about the fresh VermiCompost.

Hamish, I love the clover / legume idea. Alfalfa for the same N-fix. Alfalfa also with the hormones... yikes! Some of the soil isn't bad and there are hardwoods. The other half is very sandy, hence the rye recommendation there. There's a light grass there so maybe alfalfa rather than rye. Maybe there's enough humus to support it.

Rrog said:

Mailbox is empty- thanks

Hamish- Man thanks so much for this info. I'm flattered you took the time to write that for me.

I was going to plant rye and till it under while green. Right about the time you suggested to mow it and arrange the twigs. Tilling it under has been the mainstream recommendation, and although I'm a no-till guy, I figured I was getting some biomass into the (very) sandy loam. It's pretty sandy. You would suggest not tilling at all in this process, then. I have a farmer who would do the plow / plant / till. So I'm limited to farm equipment.

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Yup, I recommend a zero-till method. There is a guy out my side that has been running zero-till grain crops on a massive scale and even won himself some awards in the process. Instead of a plough, sow, harvest, it will be a mulch, sow, harvest instead. So if you have to combine this basic permaculture system with the knowledge you already have about microbial gardening, it would go mulch, INNOCULATE, sow, harvest

OK so let's say ploughing IS needed. There is a whole other way of doing this. You need 2 pigs and a pen that is designed to move, along with 5 chickens in a moveable chicken dome. First you spread some mulch on the area your pigs are about to come onto, and innoculate with Lacto B. The pigs get moved onto this patch, it will take them a day or two max to get the soil worked over. Then they move along to the next mulched patch, and your chicken-dome gets moved over the pigs' old range. The chickens will then further loosen the top fine layers and add some super-potent fertilizer to boot. And the chickens will take care of any unwanted seeds left over from your pig-food. Once they have moved on, your soil should be incredibly potent. A final mulch and then legumes and I can guaranteed near-perfect plants leaving behind a very well-structured soil.

Permaculture is the way forward. If you can get some old Oyster-Mushroom cakes to add to the soil in the last phase, this would probably be the best thing you could do for the soil. Mushroom Compost is a by-product of mushroom farming and comes pretty cheap if you know where to go find some.

The above is probably the fastest way to get your soil recovering. Just remember that is will always be sandy, this process can not add clay particles. But it will become a silty loam, by far the best and fastest of soils to grow in. And as you continue the practice of building the soil with organic matter, it will continue improving. I have seen these methods at work and employ them myself, I have no need for pig-and-chicken tractors in my small garden, though, but I will be starting some up in the coming months to convert a nice big piece of depleted grazing into good gardens for my mum's farm. I promise to take and show pics, but this is still a month or what away from now...

Always AMPED to help out far as these things go, Rrog! Just happy I can put some useful info down in a thread that has served me more than I can ever express. Seriously, mate, some real game-changing info on this thread of yours!

Mad Hamish said:

Yup, I recommend a zero-till method. There is a guy out my side that has been running zero-till grain crops on a massive scale and even won himself some awards in the process. Instead of a plough, sow, harvest, it will be a mulch, sow, harvest instead. So if you have to combine this basic permaculture system with the knowledge you already have about microbial gardening, it would go mulch, INNOCULATE, sow, harvest

OK so let's say ploughing IS needed. There is a whole other way of doing this. You need 2 pigs and a pen that is designed to move, along with 5 chickens in a moveable chicken dome. First you spread some mulch on the area your pigs are about to come onto, and innoculate with Lacto B. The pigs get moved onto this patch, it will take them a day or two max to get the soil worked over. Then they move along to the next mulched patch, and your chicken-dome gets moved over the pigs' old range. The chickens will then further loosen the top fine layers and add some super-potent fertilizer to boot. And the chickens will take care of any unwanted seeds left over from your pig-food. Once they have moved on, your soil should be incredibly potent. A final mulch and then legumes and I can guaranteed near-perfect plants leaving behind a very well-structured soil.

Permaculture is the way forward. If you can get some old Oyster-Mushroom cakes to add to the soil in the last phase, this would probably be the best thing you could do for the soil. Mushroom Compost is a by-product of mushroom farming and comes pretty cheap if you know where to go find some.

The above is probably the fastest way to get your soil recovering. Just remember that is will always be sandy, this process can not add clay particles. But it will become a silty loam, by far the best and fastest of soils to grow in. And as you continue the practice of building the soil with organic matter, it will continue improving. I have seen these methods at work and employ them myself, I have no need for pig-and-chicken tractors in my small garden, though, but I will be starting some up in the coming months to convert a nice big piece of depleted grazing into good gardens for my mum's farm. I promise to take and show pics, but this is still a month or what away from now...

Always AMPED to help out far as these things go, Rrog! Just happy I can put some useful info down in a thread that has served me more than I can ever express. Seriously, mate, some real game-changing info on this thread of yours!

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Awesome info. That is incredible.

I agree. Incredible. THanks once again. You like Allan, I assume?:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI

Chicken dome also known as a chicken tractor. We Use one to let chickens roam the backyard and and fertilize at the same time. Nothing better than making use of everything ya got already.

Some farmers up north doing this also. Quickly increases the soil's capacity to grow grass.