Importance of organic matter
- Feeds and shelters soil organisms, i.e.,feed soil, not plant
- Binds together mineral particles
- Increases soil aggregates
- Increases soil fungi
- Binds particles together, creates porosity for air and water
- Higher resiliency to compaction and erosion
- Cycles organic matter, releases nutrients
- Reduces tillage
- Focus on mulching from top down – the surface contains the most 02 and the
most biodiversity
DO LESS DIGGING, MORE MULCHING
NO DIG METHOD (lawn to garden)
First layer – comfrey leaves, manure, kitchen scraps, grass clippings
Second layer – cardboard
Third layer – leaves
Cut hole in cardboard – plant field crops such as potatoes, squash
ON MULCHES
I think almost any type of deciduous leaves can be added to the garden and they are great. They add organic matter which enhances the soil structure, helps with nutrient availability, water-holding capacity and they contain a multitude of microorganisms. Leaves are an important source of the micronutrients, i.e., zinc, manganese and iron, which most commercial fertilizers don’t provide (i.e., they provide major nutrients, N-P-K). Oak/Pine/beech leaves take longer to decompose and they are more acidic, while ash, popular, and cottonwood leaves are a little more alkaline. The larger leaves, like maple and chestnut, tend to clump up in the rain and matt and then don’t breakdown quickly because the oxygen can’t get in and around. Waxy leaves like holly, laurel, arbutus, rhodo, pine needles take ages to breakdown so avoid using very many of those, although strawberries are acid loving plants so would benefit from needle mulch.
Ideally, it would be good to shred the leaves to help with the decomposing but that’s hard to get done in our garden. The trick is not to add too much (i.e., 2″ is probably enough) and not to add them directly over top your herbaceous (soft stemmed) perennials because that can cause the crowns to rot…keep the leaves away from the stems of the plant. Leaves are the carbon side of the compost and do take up nitrogen to decompose. I tend to mix in some seaweed in and around. Coffee grounds, veggie scraps, grass clippings, also add nitrogen. You can chop up some of the comfrey in the garden and add it in with the leaves because comfrey has high N. In my plot, i have some fall rye growing – I will cut that into the soil in early spring, as well as add some composted manure, to get the nitrogen back into the soil.
If you have a trough or rows in your garden, adding the leaves into the trough is an excellent idea…they will sit and decompose over the winter and then you can turn them into the soil in spring, and add some manure. And if you can shred them, even better. Not too thick a layer so that oxygen can get in and around…and add some nitrogen (manure, coffee grounds, comfrey, grass clippings, okara, veggie scraps) in the early spring…..
(PS – I’ve read that avoiding walnut leaves is a good idea because apparently they secrete a compound that is detrimental to tomatoes…also, I’ve read that eucalyptus, bay laurel, juniper and cypress are not good because they have acids that impede microbial life (Jeavons, How to Grow More Vegetables, p. 44)
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ON SEAWEED:
Gardeners Grab Seaweed Crop
Saanich News
Wednesday, October 24, 2007Just as trees lose leaves in fall, so do seaweeds, the result being a bountiful harvest for savvy gardeners. Seaweed adds nitrogen, phosphorous and other trace elements to gardens and composts easily, says University of Victoria professor John Paul Volpe. “They effectively compost in the ground – barely needing to be treated,” said Volpe, an environmental studies professor. “It’s a very simple way to increase the health of your soil.”But seaweeds like kelp, eel grass, sea lettuce and bladder wrack need to be well-rinsed to get rid of salt, according to a local garden shop. “You can lay it out on your driveway and let the rain do it or rinse it off with a hose,” said Gardenworks manager Janice Rule. Rule advised chopping up seaweed and mixing it into soil to avoid its pungent odour, Using kelp in a garden has other advantages for environmentally-conscious gardeners: a chance to avoid petroleum-based commercial synthetic fertilizers. “In these post-Kyoto days everyone is conscious of their footprint as it pertains to oil consumption so here’s a product that is being literally thrown up on the shore for us to use,” Volpe said.reporter@oakbaynews.com
This story was also carried in the Oak Bay News.