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Re: [compost_tea] Tilling and tea don't mix.



Hi Elaine:
 
I looked over Jeff's post and mine again.
 
Jeff's argument was 'we till because Jethro Tull said to'. Sorry, this is nonsense. Yeah, Tull's argument that plants eat fine soil particles was largely wrong, Bargyla's photos notwithstanding, but in point of fact before Jeff's post I doubt if you could have found more than a handful of active farmers who are even aware of Tull's theory, much less slavishly following it.
 
Farmers till for pragmatic reasons, mostly these two:
 
1) to destroy existing competitive vegetation, opening up space for their crops;
 
2) to allow high efficiency seeding and transplanting tools the ability to function in opened soil.
 
Coleman makes a number of other arguments, including the tendency of tillage to warm up soils in spring, and the benefit of incorporating in the top six inches or so such materials as rock phosphate, which otherwise will move very little into the active root zone if surface applied.
 
The 'pulverization' Tull describes we now call 'secondary tillage'. As a clay raised gardener, I can tell you that if you dig or till clay before it is sufficiently dry, you can get clods the size of small bricks, and if you don't break them up into smaller pieces while they are a bit moist, they will plague you for the rest of the growing season as physical obstacles to moving about the garden, tripping you and stopping your wheelbarrow! Providing sufficient size reduction of clods to allow passage of equipment and personnel, seeders and transplanters, is a good thing, and breaking up clods whilst mixing in organic matter makes it possible for the benefits of the organic matter to more quickly affect the now exposed innards of the clod. So at least, I think, there's a Goldilocks principle at work here, as elsewhere.
 
No-till gardening is not that difficult, and Ruth Stout describes it well enough for anyone to follow her simple advice and succeed. On a larger, but still small scale, it is also possible but not so easy for the smaller seeded crops, see http://www.seedballs.com/mcain.html
 
   But putting this to work on a field scale with the full spectrum of vegetable crops, especially in fields with high perennial weed pressure, is frankly a daunting prospect. There hardly seems an alternative to either tillage, or herbicides, to initially clean a field infested with things like quackgrass, for example (Agropyron repens, or now Eletrigia repens, I think)
 
Even Steve Groff doesn't grow every vegetable in his no-till system: www.cedarmeadowfarm.com
 
I haven't heard of a no-till way to grow carrots, for example, on a field scale.
 
Steel in the field still has its place.
 
http://wsare.usu.edu/docs/steel/p78-80.html
 
As long as that remains true, the real issue for this list should be, what role can tea play in helping soil recover from necessary tillage? How is tea as an additive to transplanting water, for example, or as a soil drench pre- or post- cultivation? Can I put tea into a hydromulch or hydroseeding application to get the microherd back into the picture?
 
Of course, if some agro-genius can tell me a tea method for making quackgrass pack its bags, and how to no-till grow carrots, I am all ears.
 
And, it is possible to grow some very nice vegetables using the rototiller, troybilt or other, if you add enough organic matter to rebuild the soil you are destroying by tilling, which is something the Rodales (pere et fils) always advocated.
 
As always, the TANSTAAFL priniciple is in full force and effect.
 
My contrary, but hopefully not nasty, two cents.
 
Frank Teuton
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2003 3:18 AM
Subject: Re: [compost_tea] Tilling and tea don't mix.

I believe Jeff L. was referring to Jethro Tull's "turn the soil to powder" tillage approach.  Tull believed that the soil had to be pulverized in order for the roots to eat the soil.  Not what roots do, so tilling until your soil is dust is not a good idea.  But Jeff is right that sometimes you need to till, if the soil is becoming too fungal for the plant you want to grow. 

Try to not come down nasty on people for saying things they never said, ok, Frank?  As you might guess, I'm a bit sensitive on that subject. 

Earthworms certainly mix soil, but they don't really till it.  The "tillage" that  earthworms perform is micro-tillage, and certainly nothing as distructive as human-size plows, disc, chisels, rippers, sub-soilers, etc. Worms are mini-aerators, and can enhance fungi as well as bacteria, given that you give your worms the right things to eat.


Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
www.soilfoodweb.com

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