More on soils
In recent days Max and I have agreed to serve on the Board of the Western Colorado Horticulture Society (http://www.coloradofruit.org/). We are pleased and honored. Our friend, an organic orchardist and the outgoing President, who made the offer said he expects us to be a progressive voice on the Board. We’re pleased to be viewed in this light and pleased that the Board values a diversity of perspectives. We’ll do our best to be a worthy. As far as this blog is concerned, this role ups the ante; I don’t want to be dismissed as a kook. I’ve begun to regard this blog is a conversation with myself — I’m about the only one who contributes — that I let the rest of the world in on. I’m tasting ruminations that I’ve been chewing-on. I hope you find them worth digesting.
I generally feel that whether I can explain something, even to myself, succinctly and briefly is a measure of how much I understand of it. By this measure I have a lot to learn about soils. Since my last effort to describe what goes on in the soil I’ve been trying to take this discussion further; to review, for my own sake, what I’ve been observing, studying, deducing and intuiting. I find I can’t simplify. It’s not just that there’s a lot of different perspectives and different commentators formulating the challenges differently. Perhaps it also discloses how little is really known about soils. It reminds us that every soil sample is different, every agro-ecosystem is different, every farmer has a different outlook. Moreover, much of what is going on down there takes place in the microscopic realm and is more about relationships, synergies, and competitions than about the indivisible parts.
If we’re going to intervene in our soils, how are we going to measure the results? Size and quantity of fruit? Taste? Resistance to disease and pest pressures? Believers say “yes” to all of the above. These results are hard to quantify and are largely subjective. Maybe we can perceive success in the size and hue of the leaves, the appearance of the trees and the overall orchard. The bottom line results aren’t in until harvest when we can measure fruit size and tonnage. But even this is, at best, an indirect measure of the health of the soil. What about the confounding variables such weather, irrigation skills and challenges, pruning and thinning, pest cycles, the progressive maturation of the plants, climate change, phases of the moon, and my own mood? Our scientist friends can try to tease apart the interconnections of the subterranean world; but as far as I can tell, we do what we do less on the basis of empirical data, than on what seems to us to most closely comport with our observations and what feels right: Our belief system.
So, what do we believe? We believe in helping Mother Nature succeed. We try to work in harmony with the ecology of the farm to produce delicious, healthful fruit. This does not necessarily mean the biggest or most tonnage. We also believe that, by reducing the interventions and off-farm inputs, any potential loss of quantity can be compensated by reduced costs. And that fewer tractor trips into the orchard the better for the soil ecology. We’re focussed more on quality, health and flavor than on sheer quantity.
Consistent with our beliefs, we are moving to use cover crops exclusively to provide the nutrients our trees and vines need. Certainly we won’t accomplish this in one year; it is a transition that will take at least a few years and thereafter it will be a way of life. Beginning in the vineyards, in the vine-rows, we’ll plant a mixture of low-growing (so we don’t need to mow them and they don’t overly compete with the vines) plants including dwarf white clover for nitrogen, alyssum and other flowering plants for the beneficial insects, etc. This ground cover will out-compete the weeds and eliminate the costly and time-consuming tilling we now do with the Weed Badger. It will help hold moisture, reduce erosion, and lower summer soil temperatures. The beneficial insects which predate on the pests will have a supportive home right next to our valuable plants. Next, using a no-till seed drill, we’ll plant the alleyways with a mixture (yet to be determined) of buckwheat, hairy vetch, etc to produce a lot of organic matter. This we’ll mow or simply knock down according to Bob Shaffer’s theories to provide organic matter and lignin.
We’ll do pretty much the same in the peaches: We’ll apply commercial organic nitrogen this year because the trees need it. And we may have to shallow rototill in the tree rows in order to control the existing orchard grasses and enable the cover crops to get established. By tilling we run the risk of damaging the tender, shallow, feeder roots from the trees, breaking down soil aggregates, and disrupting the live flora and fauna of our soils. But we probably have to break that egg on our way to an omelet. In an alive soil, these qualities will reestablish themselves. And the critical thing will be to beat the weeds by seeding the cover crop immediately. Also, similarly, we’ll establish a more diverse cover crop in the alleys as time and resources permit.
Likely, by the time we get all that accomplished, the apples, which seem hardier than the peaches and appear plenty healthy at this point, will speak up for their share of the attention. By then I may have refined my belief system with more understanding of the capacity of healthy trees to repel insects and disease simply by virtue of being strong and healthy. This is an attitude that I can appreciate, in that I apply it to myself, so I’m predisposed to apply it to our friends, the trees. More on that in the future.
Too much palaver! By now you’ve likely concluded that these ideas are hopelessly naive, far too simplistic, that I’m out of my mind, or all of the above. Possibly all true. Please weigh-in with anything you care to share so we can all benefit the better.