Soil building or soil depletion

[Gardening with Rabbits]

maybe, Mt. St. Helens will erupt and send a layer ash from the Cascades, again!

Steve

Did you have a layer of ash? I bet that was something! I was gone that year and missed the whole thing. My brother and mother were here.

 

[hoodat]

It's true the compost will continue to decay in the soil and slowly get reduced but the final thing to go is lignin, which can last a long time and sort of buffers the soil. I prefer to mulch rather than compost. it decays more slowly. In Oklahoma my problem was that the summer heat ate up any buried plant matter in no time so I got into the habit of just mulching.
As to rabbit manure it really doesn't need composting unless it has an ammonia smell. Rabbit manure is not high enough in nitrogen to burn. You don't need to bury it. The worms will come up at night and drag it down into the soil for you. I've found that rabbit manure is quite well balanced in major nutrients but needs a mineral boost like Ironite once or twice a year.
I started with coarse sand but with the organic matter I have added over the years I now have sandy loam topsoil about a foot or so deep. When I butcher rabbits I dig down till I get into the subsoil and bury all of the ofal there. It seems like the bones in the skull are not decaying but they are leaching calcium and phosphorus into the soil steadily. Organic gardening is a long term project that is never done. Your soil just gets better every year.

 

[hoodat]

My German grandfather farmed most of his life and I often heard him say, "Don't feed the plants. Feed the soil and let the soil feed the plants".

 

[digitS']

There's some more crop and soil science. It probably has layers of complexity.

I subscribe to the idea that the subsoil is "unkind" to most of our garden plants. They have evolved with humans and seem to need human activity, at least on the soil I have to deal with.

I once had a piece of forest ground cleared of stumps. Then, I planted a garden. The beans and turnips did okay; that was about it. Fortunately, I had just about unlimited access to cow manure and rain-spoiled alfalfa hay to compost for the garden in following years.

Did you have a layer of ash? I bet that was something! I was gone that year and missed the whole thing. My brother and mother were here.

Yes, I was living and working at the greenhouses in Post Falls. They were like tunnels until we had them cleared. Then! The sun began to cook things! We had real problems with ventilation, cooling and all the ash.

The immediate soil effect was a lowering of the pH because of the sulphur content but I wasn't in the deepest part of the ash. That pH level is often rather high, here abouts.

Operating machinery in all the dust was a big problem. I would be interested to have some idea what the effect was on our respiratory systems ...

Steve

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

The immediate soil effect was a lowering of the pH because of the sulphur content but I wasn't in the deepest part of the ash. That pH level is often rather high, here abouts.

Steve

This sounds good that sulphur was added to the ground, but I bet if tested, the ground now would not show this, correct?

 

[ducks4you]

I don't think that burning and using the ash would work well. I like to burn my weeds bc either they are going to sit in a pile and the seeds survive and sprout, or I will dry them out and burn them and then cover more weeds with their ashes.
As I understand it, mulching or composting takes a long time to build up and make your garden beds richer. You just cannot speed up the process, unless you are willing to add browns to greens and mix them 1x/week. I don't have that kind of time. All I know is that where I added compost 4 years ago, my raised beds (read that: the beds nobody gets to walk on!) are fluffy and grow good vegetables and flowers.

 

[Beekissed]

You may be interested in biochar....

http://www.biochar-international.org/biochar

http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/making-biochar-improve-soil-zmaz09fmzraw.aspx
http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/making-biochar-improve-soil-zmaz09fmzraw.aspx
http://biocharfarms.org/

 

[digitS']

This sounds good that sulphur was added to the ground, but I bet if tested, the ground now would not show this, correct?

"May 18, 1980, at 8:32 a.m. PDT," thirty five years ago this morning! How did we happen to hit the anniversary !

"Digging Out (link)"

In the more direct path ... Yakima, Ritzville, & Pullman would still have the ash layer.

Steve

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

We lived in Kansas in 1980, so it was the smaller eruption in 1989 or so that my brother saw. I watched Mt. St. Helen's on TV, far, far, away.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

My neighbor came over while I was planting squash and asked if I saw his tomatoes and I said yes, they were looking good and asked if I wanted some of the SECRET FORMULA. I said no. I was doing an experiment with what I had and he asked what and I said compost and rabbit manure and I wanted to see how my plants were going to do this year. I feel so ungreatful or something. We will see what our gardens do. He said there is a danger of putting too much compost on. I am not going to worry about it. I am carrying on. This garden is now 6 years old and the last two years have been the best. I guess I really mulch most of this. I use half finished compost around plants. In the fall the compost and manure go on the ground and stays on top until spring. I am going to feed the soil like hoodat said. The neighbor is feeding plants the way I see it.