Garden season retrospective. Part 2 of N

Permaculture/no dig/ back to Eden/lasagna gardens do take some time to set up. It is mostly easy on the budget work because one would go after free materials (cardboard from store, wood chips, free manure, weeds - green bio mass, grass clippings, whatever kitchen vegetable waste), layer these, let the nature do the thing.

After one year one looks and learns what does the soil do.

First one looks at what do they have to start with.

And here is diagnostic hole soil profile in the area near garden, not far. As it is on 'pasture'... not like I have anyone grazing there, well except of free ranging chickens.

 This is 1-2 inches of top soil, after that is different variations of clay. This is taken after multiple snow storms in January. Our so called wet season. This is how not covered soil cracks in winter, these are small, in summer we can have half of a tree root system ton by one of these cracks, they can ho several feet deep, several inches wide.

Took samples in different areas where soil was not covered, this pasture is not bad as is started from bare dirt dry lot.

 And here is right next to those not covered areas where the soil was mulched on pasture between the clump grass

 And the grass there is green and started growing in January-February

 Here is near new wind block (has long way growing)

And same but 3-rd season in making in the garden. "Black" soil is composted wood chips and garden waste and earth worms that are taken between the rows, put on top (after tomatoes were frozen well and chopped and dropped as well). The soil is not black technically, at leas when I wash my dirty garden clothing it never was, it's like deep deep brown stuff. It is soil under construction, and many different types of wood chips went there, branches, bark, and what else, leafy trees, evergreens, pines, name it, all kinds of trees and whatever was on them (hopefully life forms).

 Here more of these rows in making, tomatoes and other remains being chopped

 Garden is covered like so

 We found main irrigation pipe... hard way... via t-post hitting it in the middle. Now there is a separate garden zone.

 And wood chips are loaded in between the rows so more worms will do the work. From December to spring there is plenty of time and moisture to get it all settled and done.

By evening one has this nicely mulched and ready for next seazon

This is in August in dead heat above 90F+ all drip irrigation, one can see how does the pasture look like, like a fire hazard. Yet mulched garden is quite green

 And it produced not badly either

Folk who try it say fod tastes better and many comment on tomatoes. These stain my hands brown in no time. So I actually do pick my tomatoes in medical gloves. Or I can scrub my hands for a very long time.

And there was in in good bit more one can manage. I'd say chickens were eating well too

And eggs taste better...

Diversity and this year plans for cover

This year I want to go for live soil armor. And that means cover crops in orchard and poli-culture on pasture.
But I need to stop erosion first. And that is wood chips, cause they were free and they did not go to land field.
Also someone else needed land reclamation research topic and plot to show. Mine already has a lot of work put in and free materials brought on the land.

So, no till cover crops. Where does that come from? From weeds and virgin plot near by. It does grow tall weeds and some native grasses. Mine grows clump grass and soil between the clumps erodes.
I should have taken picture of the pasture when we did see it first in August several years ago, and if I dig archives maybe I'll find one. It was mowed clump grass to under 2 inches flush.
Massive cracks in dirt, very hot. Even bindweed (and that's darn tough) did not grow there...

I do not want to till pasture, do not have equipment and not about to buy that or rent that. very expensive. Now no till cover crops however regenerate soils, and that;s what I want.
you say Brazil, will not work. Turns out that it can be applied year around...

My own clump grass is green under that wood chips I placed... So I have at least some perennials in there growing. If I maintain living organisms my dirt will become soil in several years and I'll have regenerated pasture.
Here is one of the links ... Regarding making soil produce organic matter.

It seems that cover crops meant to be seeded as multi-species combination. I wonder is that's why my attempt to seed yellow, red and white clover did not go well... the time was right according to CSU extension office...
For ears we were told that cover crops supposed to be planted as mono culture because poli-culture plants will compete for moisture... But here is the rub... when I look at virgin pasture I see that nature does not work that way, the plants are mixed and somehow they all are ok...
There are patches of mono culture that are considered to be invasive, that I guess is a separate case...
For a distressed soil whatever cover is a good cover.

I my case if I want to make desert bloom I need to get to it a bit differently. The question is what kind of mix should work. On my salt grass spot I have a mix of weeds. They grow and turn brown fast, they burn in sun. I wonder if I could grow live cover crops longer... I do have my clump grass go to seed just fine. The trouble is it seeds but I do not see it germinating as is much. At leas I do not see visibly thicker pasture year over year yet.
The hope is to fill in the the bare dirt between the clumps.

At this point it is mulched, so if I do not get to the right diversified cover crop mix this year I still have the armor and the cover over the dirt ans start making soils there employing worms and fungi.

With cover crops one is after the biomass. Some of the research states that diversified cover crop mix can triple the bio mass. Something like that in our case if huge because we do not have whole lot of organic material. If dirt makes that we use every bit.
Where does fungi play the role there? It turns out that in poli-culture fungi makes 'bridges' between different species, so they benefit of one another...
From that point of view mix of brassacas, legumes and grasses would be good...

It seems that my dirt manages to grow well cool season cover, after the summer heat waves is where I have troubles with the living cover, soil temperature gets too high. Second autumn planting would be for us August, the thing is we are in dead heat at that time above  85+F and that does create a problen for anything to germinate, because not covered dirt heats up too much.
With wood chips I'm going after cooling the soil and when plants establish more covering with wood chips. On my scale that would be a lot of work without automation.
So I'm looking for some more efficient way to get where I want.
Preferably the cheaper way as well.

The end goal would be blooming meadow with longer growing season so my beneficial fungi gets to work longer.
In the garden it is possible, on pasture it is challenging due to the mid scale.

I have perennial clump grass and in covered by wood chips soil I do have some of it green.
The roots are living. And these are good for beneficial fungi.
Longer I have living roots, longer the system functions.
Nature is trying to put living thing in dirt for as long as possible.
I see cover crop as biological primer that enhances the life and the function of the soils.

Some of the cover crop mixes that can work here are
sunflower
sorghum
millet
cowpea
kale
radish
hemp
buckwheat
oats
flax
clover
hairy vetch
alfalfa

Also diverse cover crop will maximize solar energy collection (because leaves shaped differently and they are all over the place). More photosynthesis means more liquid carbon pumped into the soil.

Liquid carbon pathway:
photosynthesis->translocation to the roots->transfer to soil->consumed by microbes
Soil carbon is the driver for the nutritional status of the plants and soil moisture holding capacity.
That last factor alone often is the most limiting factor to soil production. For a farmer that counts  as profits.

If my pasture blooms it attracts pollinators, and those are good for me.
Pests exist, but also other bugs that eat these pests.
If I attack bugs that eat the pests I do not have to cut a check to someone for pesticide, all I need to do is provide a home for that bug that eats the pest.

Folk have pests problem because there is lack of homes for predatory bugs. As soon as I made homes for praying mantises I have drastic decrease in grasshoppers population, and 30-20 chickens add to the damage quite a bit. These velasoraptors are on day light patrol non stop.
When these can not get to bugs the start digging rock for every unfortunate worm or bug there is hiding.
These bit of birds along with rabbits are my little bit of life stock integrated on the pasture.

Diversity of the plant covers ends up in water conservation.
It is not about how much water one can get from the sky.
It is about
      how much water one can infiltrate into the soil
      and about how much water one can hold in that soil
Water is stored via organic matter. End of story.

Often we create our own drought.
It is not how much water one can get. It's how much water one ca hold and do not evaporate... cause no one has enough water to water entire state... I sure do not and I want to water my land, not some other X miles away if it forms a cloud and falls down there somewhere. I need my water here.
Here is how much different types of soils can hold
“For each 1% increase in soil organic matter, soil can store an additional 20,000 gallons of water.”
That’s an impressive statistic! According to the USGS, the average person uses 80 to 100 gallons of water per day in the US.  This means the extra water stored from increasing organic matter just 1% would last most of us up to 9 months for all the water we use in our daily activities.

Key point is made clear in the final figure of Hudson’s paper: soil textures (the amounts of sand, silt, and clay that make up a soil) have a huge impact on the change in water holding capacity of a soil with increased organic matter.  Because of the big differences in the surface area of soil particles, large particles like sand grains really can’t hold a candle to the really small soil particles like silt and clay in terms of holding on to water. And this affects how increases in organic matter can change water-holding capacity, too. Boost organic matter 1% in a sandy soil, for instance, and water holding capacity increases. But that same increase in a silty loam soil will store even more water.

We are on solid clay. I can see a lot of benefit from life forms in soil...

Soil. Armored and :)

Not covered soils have erosion. That's one of the big reasons dirt grows weeds first thing.

Dunes move, right? To stabilize dunes one plants what? Grass.
But dunes have their own reason to move, and that's a different type of the eco system I do not have, so I'm not going to talk about it here.
I have different type of soil where erosion takes top layer and not much grows, at least it grows not the stuff I can eat. I'm not a big fan of bindweed... it is not poisons to humans per say, and one can eat it. Bad part about it seeds live in dirt for 20 years and germinate and hard to get rid off.
Trust me I seeded bindweed mites on it, and many other things. Hard weed.

Bindweed is one heck of an armor, it is very hard to get rid off, and it gets soils covered and it sits in solid clay 1.5 feet to 2 feet deep (we did dig a hole once, so I know 50cm deep root system when I see one :) in solid red and gray clay).

If soils need armor and I do not not like bindweed what do I do?

I place another organic armor. Bindweed does not go away, but it likes sun light. If I take sun light it is under the cover.
Mind you I did have bindweed to go through over 1m tall mulch pile. I have some very advanced  bindweed.
I put  cardboard, mulch and let it be for a year, decompose, after that put more mulch, feed fabric on top, mulch. It looks all right, still builds soils and weed fabric keeps bindweed under. Why did not I do cardboard? It does decompose too fast, so I simply need to get more time to cover that bindweed aka solarize and have time for other projects, just too large of a scale.
The tough soil armor plant was solarized by black plastic for 2.5 seasons. Plastic was off, bindweed was up in 3 weeks. Ok that's tough armor. Because nothing lived through solar and heat damage that long and sun and heat can do a lot of damage (not much grows on those hot dunes... right?)


So what do we learn from soil armor?
First soil even in the dirt state wants that living armor. It will build it if any opportunity given and will grow weeds. Some are not native invasive and will form mono culture.
That's the first stage of soils and it develops it's own food web, after all weeds put out in roots exudates  and feed those critters that come for it (aka cakes and cookies the plant makes to attract the life forms that feed the plant).
Meaning a field of weeds. Others will come, tougher and form clusters in mono culture or will have no chances depending on what competes.
Some weeds are annuals. What do they do? They come, build roots and tops over distresses dirt. They are frozen, soil is covered in snow and tops remains.
Looks like garbage, right?..
I've mentioned before one needs to change how do they SEE things... We see garage, but what these annual weeds did? Better to say what did the root system of the dead plant does? It exists there, decomposes and it brought organic material into the body of the dirt. It just laid pathways there for something else to grow...
Dead roots make pathways.
Perennial roots do that too, because roots regenerate, kind of like leaves...
I mean you did hear plant grows need roots from gardening granny maybe...

Native prairie pasture is what we have native. Ground dogs and voles make pathways, not much trees, but there are some near water. Higher in mountains we have trees that grow in... rock.

Everywhere native soil has armor. So it does not erode. When it looses armor we have...
It does end up as impressive as this Dust storm 1-12-2014 in Colorado USA visible from space...

Weather.com's Senior Meteorologist Jon Erdman suggested that the storm was able to "loft dust easily" partly due to the extreme drought in southeast Colorado and other parts of the Southwest United States.

I mean this photo shot from an airplane does not look like a good weather... There are a lot of similar photos in news articles if one pulls google phoho search.
Eastern CO is conventional farm and ranch land. That kind of a thing does look like a seriously bad weather and someone lost a lot of top soil and someone got a lot. It looks more like Saudi Arabia... but that's on other side of the planet and CO not used to be Arabic desert type of a climate.
I mean landscape under it is not sandy desert, that not supposed to be happening.
It is happening all over North America, it is happening all over the world. Dust storms.

Conventionally farmed land does not have soil armor, it has nothing living to keep the soil after the crops are taken in autumn here winds come.
When we get 60+ miles per hour winds in winter and spring my top soil just goes...
When it's gone it's gone, fertilized my neighbor far far away down wind... maybe made to mountains fertilized them... It is all good, but my little piece of land does not make soil at that rate.

So what do we do?

We tried to mow the pasture high for 2 years, it made whole whooping 1/4 inch or 2.5-3mm ground cover.. Yeah...

But there was a chunk I left not moved, covered with weed cheat grass (aka brown top), annual grass that reseeds itself at crazy rate, a weed... that one I left so up wind dry lot does not bring me goat heads wee and other weeds. And it held them. And neighbors grazing animals did help a lot to manage the weeds and the wed=eds seeds as the result.

So that soil did have a lot of armor, still it has built 2 inches of organic material and did give habitat to field mice an rabbits (aka kept them away from the house and eating my plants). Also soil there was a lot better. Soil temperature was lower...
I got a hold of more wood chips, they are similar carbon, if I get green trees chopped even better, so I got a hold of that and applied that on the ground 2-3 inches thick. At some places even thicker, I added where I could more.

Having high winds I did learn one thing, wood chips do not fly that much, they are uneven, they have texture, they keep the soil moist and they decompose. This is all good.

What I observe is that in new orchard wood chips level soil temperatures, my trees are sleeping even if it's unusually warm winter, and some bushes with less cover on the ground I have budding and confused because we get -15C and snow in May... budding berry bushes in January in climate like that means one thing... no berries.

Armored soil ...it turn out it does perform better. Can not grow armor, HOA wants to mow, so can not leave field of dry grass. Can bushhog it, but still it erodes.
What I can do is cover with free delivered wood chips. Lots of them. And they do not fly that much.
I'm not tilling that into the soil, so I do not rob nitrogen. Instead when that's on top I have a sponge that will soak all the snow slowly. And it all will melt slower. Then when temperatures fluctuate over 20F or more during the day (50+ day and to single digits night) I gave frozen water in wood chips, it kind of acts as snow armor.
It means my plants roots do not have freeze damage. And it also helps them to sleep and weather that crazy inter out... they are cold enough and they tell the top 'do sleep now'.
My chickens... pullets molted in mid winter in December-January... they were NOT HAPPY without feathers. And I was not that happy either because I supposed to have eggs and molting 'porcupine looking' chickens do not lay, they grow feathers instead and cranky, at least tailess rooster is.

Lesson learned, armored soil is the way it supposed to be, when I did see it on other side of the planet the worst thing for us was snow-less winter, we were guaranteed to have crops damage.
I did learn that hungry lesson well.
So when I could get a hold of soil armor in any form here on the other side of the planet I did.

I'll be using also cover crops as living armor and see how that goes. I tried clover in beneficial weather in April-May. Did not take. And birds helped a lot to make it expensive bird seed. I had very very poor germination because birds were hungry and ate the seeds, they came scratching and digging for them. Did not see that coming.

But got free wood chips. And it does this:

Soil is moist under them.
Can not grow soil armor, ok, find it, bring it, load it.


What does happen in summer with not covered soil? We are in desert. And why I replaced rock with mulch?

Here are the facts:

140F soil bacteria is dead.
130F means 100% of moisture is lost through evaporation and transpiration
100F 15% of moisture is used for growth, 855 is lost through evaporation and transpiration
70F 1005 of moisture is used for growth


One can water their garden a lot here in summer and they do and soil gets very hot (black dry garden soil... compost bought at $5+ a bag... and lot of it... very expensive dirt). Plants do not grow because its too hot.

My covered with wood chips garden on the other side grows tomatoes bushes at 85-90F... Its nasty hot but it does grow. Well... lettuce bolts :) super fast.

This is above 85F outside, and these are digging for active biology in soil

back pasture is bone dry solid up there. When it's 70F it looks like below. See the picture?

And that's so called salt grass over eroded pasture.
That is short term living armor. I just need more of the same.
and I can not get soil temperature to drop for long enough for ground covers to germinate.
With wood chips now I can bit by bit.

Mycorrhizae, clomalin, hyphae ... ok basically fungus is good

So, forests... and weeds.
Someone asked why do I load and spread that moldy wood chips. They have being composting and decomposing all right. And also I was asked why the heck did I get that dark woody mulch thing wet stuff and spread it around... Yep  that was a ground up trees stump.

Why would I need any of that?...

One thing we do not appreciate in the soil when it's tilled is the fact that... you till it it compacts by the end of the season, you til it again and so it goes...
Forest soil does not do that. Why? What's in it that gets killed by tilling?
Whatever it is loves one thing - moist and dark.  Do you know one of those living things that like that type of environment?
Right. Fungus and mold.
Learned to hate it right? It's not good in your house it ruins you property and so on. Right, inside you do not want it. Outside in the forest it's however the part of the living systems that has symbiotic relationship with one more thing that likes it moist and dark. What are those? Roots.

So what is there in the forest that forms symbiotic relationship with the roots and soil making it soil?
It turns out one can buy it on amazon and it's the good old nature R&D exists for thousands of years. It is fungus. And it's good for roots. Mycorrhizae.

What is good about it? That's an interesting fungus, makes sort of a clue in the soil
Glomalin is a glycoprotein produced abundantly on hyphae and spores of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi in soil and in roots. Glomalin was discovered in 1996 by Sara F. Wright, a scientist at the USDA Agricultural Research Service. The name comes from Glomales, an order of fungi.

So that stuff found and made by nature's R&D is an interesting thing. Here is the link regarding what that does in the lab. Long story short it's the fungus that you want to be in your soil. And one of the ways to get is free is what? Dead trees near roots.,, Your good old forest... Where trees grownicely this fungus grows, get yourself a bucket, get yourself some wood chips, some dirt, Fill your bucket in the forest with good life soil from there, cover the holes you made with material, found around, do not take all, because that living creation of natures R&D needs to live. 
It does breed given  the environment and it forms symbiotic relationships with the roots. So get some native life soil, bring that home, make fungus bed near your tree, cover it up, keep it reasonably moist, it does not like a lot of water at all. Let it grow, after a bit (3-4 month) it will establish. You can go plant that in your garden. But you do not till that. Because tilling kills it, it brings air, sun and uv and turns soil upside down. May as well go buy yourself next batch on amazon in form of spores someone took from forest (not naive to you). IF you want beneficial fungus, leave your soil be and do not till it.
Also it turns out it acts like sort of a glue in the soil and improves the texture, soil does not compact. And that's what one wants. Let the soil wok for you. 


Now we get to weeds. What about them, we hate those and want to kill. And regardless they come back. So what makes weeds stronger. Tried to dig one out? They have heck of a root system... We have all the tools and such to get the roots.
I've mentioned before if one wants to make big changes they need to change how they SEE things. What do you see looking at the weed? The top. Wrong. The weed lives below the surface. Weeds is the roots.
That's the main thing one needs to learn from weeds. They do not buls tops, they build bottoms, that's why they are tough like no one's business.
When one wants stronger plants they want to be there they need to learn from weeds. To make roots. That's why all the landscaping trees in small pots do so bad and do not grow for years and have high failure rate. They all are root bound. When one plants one of those trees it sits there. And has trouble to keep it because it has no root system to support the top.

In the forest that does not happen. Young trees build stem root and lots and lots of side roots.
Same kind of a thing does happen in meadows. Grasses and plants grow root systems, one with the strongest makes it and gets to go to seed.

Do not stick $200 tree into $20 hole. Does not work. Make soil to stick the tree in, put smaller tree in, and oh-oh-oh... I put once a seed from an apple into soil, seeded earth worms and covered with little mulch around. It was under pine tree. Made a decent tree in 2 years, so I transplanted that tree and that was hard to dig it out, so I made a hole, put some peat moss, coffee grounds, compost and good old clay dirt in,, mixed it all, placed worms with coffee grounds at the bottom. In less than 6 years that thing was thick trunk tree and taller than 2 story house... And that's being under typical grass lawn. Now does any of those 3-4-5 year old (no one tells you that $150 tree spent 3-5 years from seed to tree in that tiny pot growing taller than you are... on sale in August) transplanted trees grow in 3 years taller than the 2 story house?
No they do not. They had their root system ripped out.
They will spend a long time rebuilding that, they are sick needing water all the time and build surface roots for 3-4 years. One recalls landscaping company telling you you need to water your trees like every day after planted... How are they going to be forced to go deep to make roots if they get water and nutrients on the surface? How are they going to find fungus to extend that root systems of theirs if there are none?
If something has root system it grows. Like weeds do.

And any landscape tree needs all the help it can get. So cover the dirt, place beneficial fungus and observe your symbiotic relationship...

And if you do not believe me here is the same tree that was poisoned by 2d4d and glyphosate, dying etc.

And by the way that is end of January 2017, our dry season.

Same tree
And same tree in 2014 here 

Take a look
See the difference?

And that's June. after April and May, the 2 wettest month around here, first year covered.

Before it was all moved very short weeds here.

It needs more work, but does it look better and still here. 

Because yellow large trees do not live, do they?

Big yellow trees make nice income for tree companies 

and get brought up here as wood chips.

So I re-fed someone's tree to my tree.

Re-fed crappies mulch no one wanted taken from 

swampy boggy area.

Why? It had fungus I wanted, and lots of the spores came here for free.

Do you like the fungus and soil covering now?

Soil particles need to be formed about every 4 weeks. If one does not have symbiotic relationship with the fungus it is not building soil particles for you in there and is not depositing that glue. In other words soil is not working for you instead you are working your tail off at the office or where ever and then buy stuff to put into the dirt... working for dirt. 

If soil particles are not held together one has erosion. How fast can we do that? It turns out pretty fast...

So why is that not sold to you by corporations? Cause if you get a little fungus and make soil work for you why the heck would you buy their stuff. I stopped buying it, if you will to that's no good for their business. So one needs to do some footwork and research to find all the nature R&D and thankfully now days there are resources to learn all that stuff benefiting from other folk observations. 

Someone already shown you pictures of grass roots that go little down and do not take up water, many times. Can not do that here, do not have water for that. I need my plants and trees to make roots. And I need all the other life forms to help me to do that.
So I'm hiring me a lot of life forms.
Fungus, worms, bugs, spiders, even weeds (cause I soak them, break their cells and feed that liquid back to soil and my plants I want).

The soils are here indeed fertile. They just need to make it out of the dirt state into the soil state.