(Continued from Part 3.)
Mineralize the Soil
Many of our soils are depleted of trace elements and micronutrients from past agricultural use. If your land was ever farmed, it’s probably got some deficiencies. While a soil test is probably a good idea so you can see the bigger picture of certain elements you might need to add, you can also address the deficiencies with broad spectrum amendments. Because they are in mineral form they don’t tend to leach from the soil, so they are available for the soil life to break them down and transport to your plants when they need them. Some examples of broad spectrum amendments are azomite, volcanic rock dusts, and Sea-90 sea salt. A sea salt like Sea-90 will be faster acting, but shorter term impacts and can leach from the soil. A volcanic rock dust will take longer to take effect, but will have a longer lasting impact and will not leach from the soil. Broad spectrum rock dust and rock form minerals do not dissolve and leach away. The only way they are dissolved and bioavailable to the plants is through the action of microbes breaking them down in the soil with acids like carbonic acid.
Rock dust is a great way to rebuild your “savings account” of minerals in the soil that will be available to your plants when they are needed. Creating a dynamic biological engine in your soil can help balance nutrients over time, but remineralizing can certainly speed up the process. The downside is this can be a more expensive intervention if you are working at scale. As an example I’ll be spreading about 4lbs per 100 sq/ft of volcanic rock dust this year, which works out to about $130 for 1800 sq/ft of cultivated growing area. Do I need it? Probably not. Will it improve my soil, plant health, and yields? Most likely. Depending on the amount of rock dust you are adding you may not need to any more for years to come. Soil testing and growing results will help you know when a reapplication may be worth it.
Fix Soil Structure Imbalances
Is your soil all clay and too tight for water and air to penetrate? Is your soil all sand and it dries out too quickly? Is there a hardpan from prior agricultural plowing and water and roots can’t get through? These are soil structure issues that can cause problems. If you are dealing with a lot of clay, building up organic matter will loosen up the soil, and improve aeration and drainage. Adding some sand to loosen things up can also help. With sandy soils everything drains out too quickly or leaches out, but adding organic matter can help retain moisture and nutrients. You may also benefit from adding some clay or clay based amendments (like Montmorillonite clay).
Another low-cost additive is biochar. Biochar is essentially using charcoal to add carbon to the soil. The porous structure of the biochar absorbs and holds water and nutrients, especially negatively charged anions, such as boron and sulfur, that tend to leach from the soil. The micro pores in biochar also serve as luxury condos for all the microbes you are trying to raise in the soil. Biochar can benefit any soil type, and can be made at home for free with junk branches from typically yard cleanup. Archaeological digs in the Amazon have discovered areas with unusually dark fertile earth with higher levels of carbon called terra preta. The evidence seems to indicate these were either man made or man enhanced for agricultural uses in the otherwise very poor soils of the Amazon. You can find videos on youtube and articles online for how to make your own biochar. I usually mix biochar and a few lbs of rock dust into my compost during the last turn so they are fully incorporated when I later spread the compost on the gardens.
If you have a hard pan or deep subsoil compaction you’ll want to address it. A hardpan is a deeply compacted layer of soil that acts like an impermeable layer just below the uppermost soil layer. It prevents water and air from moving up and down through the soil, and plant roots can’t access the minerals deeper in the soil. When you have too much water it won’t drain, and when you have too little water the soil will dry out faster because there is no subsoil water wicking up through capillary action. Creation can fix a hardpan but it could take many years, and a lot of thistles (deep taproots break through the hardpan). On a small scale garden you can dig through the hardpan. Normally I avoid digging and disturbing the soil life, but as a one time task it will be worth it to break the hardpan. On a larger scale you’ll probably need a tractor with a subsoiler or chisel plow that will punch through the hardpan.
Principle #3: Work with Creation
The final principle of biological gardening is to work with creation. Become a student of your land. Take time observing, and “listening” to your plants and the environment. Where are plants thriving on your property? Why do the weeds in this thicket look so healthy? How can you recreate those conditions in your garden? Do you see some unhealthy plants, what do you think the problem is? What are the plants telling you they need? Some of these things you are going to learn over time through “failures.” However, I suggest you remove the term failure from your gardening vocabulary. I view every gardening season as a set of experiments, there are no failures, only results and data. Over time I develop a hypothesis, and run new experiments to see if I can replicate results. This has led to the theories and principles in this article that allow me to obtain consistent results in my garden. But there is so much complexity in the biological systems and plant options that I will never run out of things to learn or experiment with. Learning and experimenting are what make gardening fun for me.
I can’t really give you a bunch of all-encompassing rules for working with creation. It’s going to be different in every climate, soil type, and even year to year it will be different. It’s a learned skill over time. The essence of it is that you are always seeking to grow your plants in the same way they would grow in nature. You are simply building the conditions for soil life, and then step back and observe. As you gain more knowledge over time you will be able to stage mid-season interventions to correct imbalances and keep your plants healthy. Below are a number of examples of working with creation:
- Use the right plants for your climate and soil, left to itself creation will always put the right plant in the right ecosystem. I tried growing roselle (hibiscus) for years but could never get it to fruit. By the time daylight hours triggered fruiting it was too cold and the plants would die.
- Keep live roots in the ground for as much of the year as possible. Live roots feed the soil life and keep it vibrant. I typically harvest my onions and garlic in early July, but I plant bush beans down the middle of the beds 3-4 weeks before harvest. By the time I’m harvesting the onions and garlic the bush beans are starting to take off. This keeps your soil life active and your beds more productive.
- Trying to grow plants out of season or starting seeds too early doesn’t always lead to better results. One year when I was transplanting my tomatoes (12” tall), I noticed a volunteer tomato (2” tall) popping up in the greenhouse right where I was going to put a plant. I was pretty sure it was the same variety, and so I let it grow to compare against the plants I had painstakingly started indoors and tended for weeks. Within 3 weeks you couldn’t tell which ones were started early, and which one was the volunteer. It turns out creation knows when the seeds should sprout. While there are some plants I do start early indoors (ginger, turmeric, and sweet potatoes) I don’t bother starting tomatoes early indoors anymore. In colder growing zones you might get more benefit from starting them earlier indoors.
- “Pests and disease are nature’s report card that your plants aren’t doing well”-Dan Kittredge. If you have pest pressure from bacteria, fungi, and insects that is an indication your crops are healthy food sources for those organisms. Healthy plants create complex carbohydrates, complete proteins, complex fats, and secondary plant metabolites such as polyphenols. These substances are indigestible to bacterial, larval, fungal, and insect pathogens. Weak plants produce simple sugars, amino acids and fatty acids instead of complete proteins and fats, and minimal secondary plant metabolites. Pathogens look at these plants as lunch. Spraying pesticides won’t fix the problem, creation is telling you to fix the soil.
- Tillage-Don’t rototill just to till. Strategic use of power equipment to save fuel and labor. If the soil needs to be loosened and aerated tillage can be very valuable. The key question is, “Is this action helping the soil system improve?”
- You can’t operate your homestead scale garden like the industrial agricultural system and expect healthy plants, nutrient density, and high yields without massive external inputs. Tillage, bare soil, fertilizers, monocrops, and pesticides are the hallmarks of industrial agriculture.
- Don’t use fertilizers. Fertilizers are water soluble substances that feed plants directly, and bypass the microbes. When you feed plants with fertilizer they stop exuding sugars into the soil, and the microbes that were depending on the plants drastically die back reducing your soil life and the biological engine that unlocks the mineral nutrients your plants need. With the soil life decimated now you have to keep feeding fertilizer indefinitely to keep your plants alive. On top of that your plants aren’t getting enough micronutrients anymore and are getting sicker, more susceptible to pests and diseases so you have to spray more chemicals. This is unsustainable, expensive, and poor stewardship of the soil. There are no half measures in establishing the soil system. You will have plant failures in your early years. Sometimes it will be a disease, or pest. In most cases it will indicate the plant wasn’t healthy enough to be worth eating anyway. However, as you build your soil over time, and the soil life blossoms you will get more consistent results. The potato bugs will show up, and barely affect your potato plants. I’ve had several years recently where I had carrot fly damage on my carrot tops. This year was the first year with no damage. What do you think that tells me about the nutrient value of those carrots? They were also some of the best tasting carrots I’ve ever grown. Do you think there was a correlation between the life and nutrients in the soil, and the health of my plants and their ability to ward off pests? I think so.
- Save your own seeds from the most vigorous plants. Growers that raise plants specifically to sell the seed save the best for themselves. They sell the next best quality to the farmers who will pay a premium, and the lowest quality seeds (the runts) are sold to the packet trade which is what ordinary gardeners are ordering from in catalogs. The packet trade does not sell seeds based on size/quality. They sell based on germination rates. If it germinates they’ll sell it. The professional growers understand that seed vigor leads to plant vigor. Saving the best seed over multiple generations grown in vibrant soil will lead to premium genetics, production, and plant vigor. It is the same as selectively breeding cattle, or any other type of livestock. You don’t breed the runts, you cull them. If you want long term success in productive growing you need to stop planting runts. Saving seeds is not about saving a few bucks, or supply chain independence (both good reasons), but about consistent access to genetically superior seed. The only way to do this at a homestead scale is to save it yourself, or obtain it directly from someone who is saving superior seed. Tip: Talk to the best gardeners you know and let them know you are looking for high quality heirloom seeds. Tell them you think their seeds will be superior based on the quality of their plants and soil and ask if they can spare you a few seeds. Most serious gardeners end up trading seeds and plants every spring. Usually we plant too many seedlings either to make sure we have enough, or because of poor planning with no idea where we were going to plant them all. These are usually given away to neighbors and friends for free, or traded with other gardeners because we can’t bear to chuck our beautiful seedlings into the compost. It’s a great way to network and make friends. Gardeners love to talk about our work, and an interested listener is likely to get an offer of plants or seeds.
- Run experiments and take notes throughout the year. This will help you to see what is really going on in your soil system. It will also teach you about planting timings and can save you so much time and effort in future years and help you with garden planning.
(To be concluded tomorrow, in Part 5.)