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



Excellent response to no-till farming Frank.  Also consider the 
average homeowner who moves into a new subdivision.  The builders 
usually leave the new homeowner with clay subsoil once the home is 
completed and soil graded.  It is compacted subsoil that is 
essentially devoid of organic matter.  To get things off to a quick 
start it is necessary to incorporate organic matter INTO the subsoil 
that the homeowner is left with.  Lasagna composting will eventually 
work, however, it will take years.  

Oftentimes the clay subsoil is so dense that experts advise gardeners 
to use raised beds to grow veggies, etc.  

So, not only is tilling practical for large farming operations; it is 
needed to improve clay subsoils the average new home buyer is left 
with after construction is finished.


--- In compost_tea@yahoogroups.com, "Frank L Teuton" <fteuton@s...> 
wrote:
> 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 ----- 
>   From: soilfoodweb@a... 
>   To: compost_tea@yahoogroups.com 
>   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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