Organic Gardening Info from Peaceful Valley

There it is.  The first tilled row of the GGP.  At the crack of 8 am (huck it up, farmers…that’s early for us city-folk!) I was out there, tilling up my back yard.  The actual tilling itself took about 3 hours.  We had to go over each row multiple times, stopping to dig up rocks and sundry other oddities.  Among the strange things found that had to be removed: 3 cigarette lighters, a 2′ x 4′, a Happy Meal toy, broken glass, an old irrigation pipe that went nowhere, and concrete support posts for what apparently used to be a deck.  The final stage was going over everything one final time, my son in my lap (he LOVES tractors!) to make sure the yard was as level as possible. (more…)

Results of my soil test came in, much earlier than expected.  As it turns out, the results were MUCH better that I had anticipated.

The minute I got my results, I consulted the Understanding Your Soil Analysis Report book, to see what I was dealing with.  As you can see, most of my levels are either good or great.  After a thorough reading of the book, I wanted to be sure that I understood what I was reading, so I employed the services of Amber, our friendly, knowledgeable store manager / garden consultant.  To be able to properly convey this information to you, the reader, I corresponded with her entirely through email:

 ”There are only a couple of things you need to do to improve your soil.  One is to increase your biological activity.  You can do that by using a soil inoculant and/or arctic humus, by cover cropping, and by using compost tea (start in the spring, not now, microbes aren’t very active in winter anyway).  Here’s a good website if you want to learn more about soil structure, biologically active soil and more.  As you increase bio activity and organic mater, your CEC (Cation Exchange Capacity) will go up, which is good.  The higher the better for CEC; it reveals your soil’s ability to hold onto nutrients to be used by plants.

Also in the spring, you should add a Nitrogen fertilizer. If you go by the Understanding your Soil Analysis Report booklet, you can choose Blood, Fish, Cottonseed, or Feather Meal at the “heavy” rate.  Your pH is nearly perfect, so it’s probably better not to use the cottonseed meal as it’s acidic.  Nitrogen is a nutrient that you’ll be adding each spring, because it gets used up quickly.

There are a few interesting things about your soil, like the Phosphorus is very high, which is unusual for our area.  I wonder if the previous caretakers fertilized the area in the past?  Potassium is also high, and Zinc is extremely high.  Watch out when plants are growing, the excess zinc might induce an iron deficiency.  It doesn’t necessarily mean you actually have an iron deficiency, just that if one nutrient is out of balance it can “bind” other nutrients.  Scientists have figured out which nutrients bind which, and zinc apparently binds iron.  If your plants show yellowing between the veins, especially on the young leaves, you might consider using a liquid iron chelate.

I’d suggest that you go ahead and work up the soil enough to plant the cover crop.  In Spring, look out over the area and when the crop is at 25-50% flower, chop it down and till it in.  At that time, add your nitrogen fertilizer (you could probably go with the Medium rate of application instead of the Heavy though) , and soil inoculant and/or arctic humus.  When you put in your garden or lawn, start using compost tea.  Voila! Before you know it, you’ll have a luscious garden!”

(By the way, anyone who gets a  soil test done can make an appointment for a phone consultation with Amber for a nominal charge)

So, my next step, since I apparently don’t need to amend anything (yay!), is to till up the ground and plant.  Hopefully, the time will be available this weekend to make this happen.  Stay tuned!

Cover cropping is a hot topic at Peaceful Valley right now! Wise farmers and gardeners are planting cool season annual legumes and grasses now in order to till in in the spring. It’s a cheap and practical way to add good nutrition and organic matter to the soil.

For the more poetically inspired, I came across a beautiful poem by Wendell Berry, an eloquent writer and careful farmer:

“Enriching the Earth”
To enrich the earth I have sowed clover and grass
to grow and die. I have plowed in the seeds
of winter grains and of various legumes,
their growth to be plowed in to enrich the earth.
I have stirred into the ground the offal
and the decay of the growth of past seasons
and so mended the earth and made its yield increase.
All this serves the dark. I am slowly falling
into the fund of things. And yet to serve the earth,
not knowing what I serve, gives a wideness
and a delight to the air, and my days
do not wholly pass. It is the mind’s service,
for when the will fails so do the hands
and one lives at the expense of life.
After death, willing or not, the body serves,
entering the earth. And so what was heaviest
and most mute is at last raised up into song.
~~~~~~~~~~

If you liked that, you’ll LOVE “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”
Here’s a snippet, “Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.”