SOIL-BUILDING BASICS
(Page 2 of 7)
Before sowing their cover crops, Kerry and Barbara prepare the beds by loosening the soil with a garden fork. They do this by simply swinging the tool laterally into sur face clods . . a technique called tilthing (developed by Alan Chadwick, founder of the biodynamic/French intensive gardening method). They then fork up, and shatter, any dirt balls existing in the top 8 to 12 inches of soil. The gardeners work compost into the growing area and treat any hairy vetch seeds with a special inoculant to increase the legume's nitrogen-fixing ability. Finally, they sow the seed by hand and lightly rake over the soil surface.
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When it comes time to harvest their cover crops, the gardeners sharpen flat-edged spades and skim the greenery, by chopping it off—just near the soil line—right under the plants' crowns. They then pitchfork the cuttings into a wheelbarrow and use them to make compost.
Now you may wonder why the two growers don't just turn the crop under and there-by save themselves the trouble of harvesting and processing the material. Well, the Sullivans' response to that query is that green matter takes four to six weeks to decompose in the ground, and actually ties up some of the soil's nitrogen while it's degenerating. So it would be necessary to wait more than a month after turning under a cover crop before getting any use out of the nitrogen it could offer! However, since the gardeners skim off their "green manure", they can plant vegetables in the same growing spaces right away.
When Barbara and Kerry have a cover-cropped bed that's going to remain unused for a long period in the spring, they just trim back the greenery with a sickle every time it starts to head, and use those clippings for compost. That practice prevents the plants from getting hard and dry—as they do when seed heads form—and can give the gardeners two, or even three, harvests of good compost fodder from a single plot.
Our master growers also often employ a summer cover crop, buckwheat. This warmweather plant (which, by the way, provides excellent honeybee forage) grows so rapidly and lushly that the Sullivans try to sow it whenever a bed will lie idle for as long as a month or during hot weather. Once again, they use the foliage for compost material. However, Barbara and Kerry point out that many home gardeners could achieve pretty much the same result by simply letting their weeds grow for a month and skimming those plants off before they go to seed. In fact, such indigenous ground covers might reach down and loosen soil more deeply than buckwheat would, anyway.
CROP ROTATION
The Sullivans rotate crops primarily to help balance such nutrients as nitrogen, potassium, and potash in the ground. As Barbara puts it, "The ideal planting sequence would be to start off with a nitrogen-fixing legume . . . follow that with a nitrogen-loving leaf crop . . . then raise a root vegetable . . and finally, after dressing the bed really heavily with compost, grow a heavy-feeding fruiting crop." However, they're rarely able to achieve that optimal sequence themselves. Instead, Barb and Kerry often simply divide their plantings into four groups—the root, leaf, legume, and fruiting crops— and avoid planting two of the same type consecutively in the same place.
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