Gardening took a back seat to learning about gardening this weekend. The Foothill Collaborative for Sustainability (FoCuS), along with the Tuolumne County Master Gardeners, presented a seed exchange and series of informative workshops on Saturday in Columbia. For ten dollars, I came home with several packets of locally saved seeds and two money plants! AND, much information.
I attended six half-hour talks on various subjects. For those who wanted to attend but were not able to (and for me), here are some notes I took from a few of these. I will do some in this posting and continue later with the rest.
Permaculture with Misha R. (I would attempt to spell his last name, but I would certainly get it wrong.) There will soon be a website - Sierra Nevada Permaculture, and monthly meetings of folks interested in permaculture will be beginning on the last Wednesday of the month in Sonora. He emphasized that it is not possible for each of us to become self-sustaining on our land. Our sustainability efforts must be in community. He encouraged each of us to ask ourselves: "What is something I can produce that the community can use?" As an example of community effort, he told us that trees use half of their energy to support the things in the soil and air that they need in order to survive. In other words, they are feeding the organisms that they depend upon.
He encouraged us to rethink our use of resources. If we use composting toilets, then the rest of our household wastewater becomes graywater that can be used on our land. He asked if we are dependent on power for water (we mostly are - our household well water is delivered via an electric pump). He mentioned ways to manage soil and water on our land with ponds, swales, and terracing. He asked the question: How can we change something that is destructive into something that is constructive? Locally, small scale co-ops are beginning so that groups of people can share in what no individual alone could do. Some examples: potatoes, biodiesel, seed growing, community kitchen.
He ended by suggesting we think of the seed as a metaphor: a very small unit of life that with proper food and growing conditions and community can become something very large that supports the life of others.
Jason Diestel on soil fertility: When we are increasing our soil fertility, we are improving the structure of the soil, not the content of nutrients. Compost builds humus which breaks up compacted soils and allows plants access to the foods they need. We provide the conditions that let nature direct the path.
He strongly urged those of us who are gardening at home, not really farming, to do our composting with worms. The worms do all the week of turning and digesting the food waste. It is very labor intensive and tricky to do a heat compost where the human beings do all the turning and management. I'm convinced. More on worms later!
When our garden beds are empty and ready to be prepared for a new planting season, we can simply spread about an inch of compost on the bed. Rake it in no more than three inches. Do this about two weeks before you plan to plant. When plants are about 4-6 inches tall, they should be side-dressed with some compost, and then this should be repeated about every 4-6 weeks during the growing season. He claims that is all the supplement they need to thrive. He also encourages putting on another inch after the season is over and the plants come out of the beds. Then plant it in a cover crop that fixes nitrogen.
He offers a couple of compost blends for sale. If you are using his "root force" blend, then it is only necessary to spread on a half inch. It is much more potent. We are working to build a soil that will respond to the plant's needs. Compost is a buffered food for the plants; it is not a raw nutrient like most commercial fertilizers. This lets the plant choose what it needs.
If you keep your compost covered with a tarp to protect it from rain, it needs to be uncovered when it is not raining so the organisms in it can have air. It also should not be allowed to dry out totally; keep it a bit moist.
He mentioned the benefits of compost tea (an infusion of compost in water) for applying to plants and ground. Misha, from the audience, told a story of totally loosening compacted ground with just applications of compost tea. Jason suggested that when you make compost tea, you use half compost from a heat compost pile and half from a worm compost system.
If you are filling a new garden bed, it is best to use a mixture of topsoil that is purchased and the native soil where you live. The native soil has the nutrients that the plants need.
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