Soil building or soil depletion

[Gardening with Rabbits]

Well, I started looking for answers and found Ruth Stout, which I had already heard about, but just found out she gardened NUDE, so why the heck would I listen to her. Saw her plant potatoes in a video and okay and if I was 87 and had a 40 x 50 garden then all that might be the answer. My neighbor that moved in is gardening. He is tilling this so called dirt and planting and has not added any compost or manure, nothing. He has a SECRET FORMULA. He mixes 3 ingredients. Listening to him talk about other things, I think he is talking about hydroponics and I goggled hydroponics and 3 ingredients and got Floragro, Florabloom, Floramicro and I am going to ask him if this is his secret, but he will mix me some and I do not want it, but he says watch his garden and if it grows I will want him to mix me some, but will not tell me what it is. I am trying to say no and be NICE about it. He looked at my compost that is half finished with HIS NOSE TURNED UP LOL and said I know you think this will be good for the soil, but he had a neighbor he said that used composted cow manure for years and had the best garden and one year nothing would grow and had it tested and needed lime. He is saying that will happen to me. I use compost made of leaves, rabbit manure, grass, hay, old plants like beans, tomatoes, coffee grounds, peelings and things like that, plus the pine kiln dried wood shavings soaked in rabbit urine. My question is compost from these things is a lot different than just going and getting a load of aged cow manure and fertilizing that way, correct? My garden is full of worms and should I just be happy and plant until disaster hits or take soil samples? What is the best way to keep your garden from having soil depletion?

 

[digitS']

I understand that the U of I now does soil testing. That wasn't true for at least 20 years but, times change. Their recommendations should include organic ones.

What is the best way to keep your garden from having soil depletion?

That's a good question. @MontyJ once said "dust to dust" about compost. It will literally decompose away to nothing. The soil supply outfits probably still sell something called "3-way mix." Described as sand, compost and manure -- after 5 or 6 years, what are you left with?

I once had a neighbor, olde guy, tell me that he could make great improvements in the local soil by adding sand. If he had the time and inclination. He was from somewhere else and wasn't around long ... Sand? To all this gravel and boulders?!

Your earthworms are a good sign, GWR .

I think the best things for your soil are roots. Grow something! You can lose some nutrients from leaching or evaporation but most of them are being carried off by cropping. If soil additions resemble what is being removed as a crop, seems to me, you are closing the circle.

Steve

 

[Ridgerunner]

Like @ducks4you recently said in another thread, everybody can come up with their own theories on gardening. I've seen theories where you could build up high salt levels by adding compost, especially if you live in an arid climate. Salts are soluable so if it doesn't rain enough to leach the stuff away it can build up. Compost made from animal manure should contain more salts than compost made from plant matter. If you irrigate salt build-up can be a real problem depending on how much salt is in your water. @bobm might know something about that. But that is from water, not compost.

A few years back one of these self-sufficient gurus that makes a lot of his living writing articles for certain magazines and giving speeches said either phosphorus or potassium (I can't remember which) could build up to bad levels if you use a lot of compost because it is not all that soluable. It doesn't leech away.

I'm sure there are other theories about why adding compost "could" be bad for your soil, not from depletion but from build-up.

My compost is a lot like yours except think chickens instead of rabbits. I'm going to keep adding it in spite of these theories. Every few years I'll get a soils analysis to make sure things are not getting too far out of kilter but I'm not going to worry about something that somebody said "could" happen. I need to drive to thee store in a few minutes if I'm going to eat supper. I could have an accident while driving, but I'm going anyway.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

The sand made me laugh. The neighbor has the same soil as I did when I started. Both yards had pine trees. The dirt to me looks sand full of gravel and there are rocks in the mix. I read something once where somebody was making manure bricks and burning them in a stove and putting the ash on the garden and something about the Chinese having farms for 1000 years and never having depleted the soil and that is what they used for fertilizer. I am trying to understand why burned manure would be any different than composted manure. I agree with Ridgerunner and continuing on. There are a lot of things that are maybe going to happen.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

I think the best things for your soil are roots. Grow something! You can lose some nutrients from leaching or evaporation but most of them are being carried off by cropping. If soil additions resemble what is being removed as a crop, seems to me, you are closing the circle.

Steve

What about if you start weeding an area and hoe out clumps of weeds with a lot of dirt attached to it, would you throw this away, compost it, bury it?

 

[seedcorn]

Fire burned manure depletes the carbon. Carbon burns.

Composting just changes the nutrients' chemical structure.

 

[digitS']

I wouldn't throw it away ... unless it was bindweed roots and I was afraid it might survive laying in the full sun through some stroke of treachery .

I might do either of the others, bury it or throw in compost. You know, I practice that composting-in-place ... where I just bury my compostables, GWR. But, I also may do the full sun treatment before doing either.

Leaving to bleach in the sun will result in chlorophyll loss and that will mean nitrogen loss. Nitrogen is also what you will lose with every ounce of protein the crop produces that you carry away to the kitchen. But, Wikipedia says 78% of the Earth's atmosphere is N ..! Think of that!

Some plants work with microorganisms to fix atmospheric nitrogen as a plant nutrient. Yay! We are entirely dependent on this process, us Earth critters. We are also dependent on photosynthesis to create sugars and starches. Food!

Steve

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

I feel like I am in a biology class. The pile is in the sun now. I think we will compost it later because there are worms in there. I told DH that the unfinished compost has worms in the pile and the pile is kind of warm and he said he has been putting worms in there when he finds them. What about Azomite or rock dust or is that kind of the same as the guy adding sand?

 

[digitS']

No, I don't think so.

Plants use certain minerals for growth and life processes.

This glacial till I'm on has rock samples from several hundred miles! The glaciers and floods drug them out of the mountains. My gardens are closer to the Selkirks than the Rockies, where most, but not all, of the rocks come from. Could the soil be missing a mineral? I suppose it could ... maybe, Mt. St. Helens will erupt and send a layer ash from the Cascades, again!

Steve

 

[Beekissed]

Sounds like you could use something like this, which is what I'm trying this year to amend my thin, clay, acidic soils.

http://www.backtoedenfilm.com/