I have southern California clay soil with embedded/encased/entombed river bed-like rocks that range from pond skipping to softball size. It has made just growing grass difficult! I have been digging down about a foot and filling with various organic soil packaging from the local improvement stores.

I have also found the topsoil I have been using to replace the clayish soil I take out seems to have the wrong pH or something that makes it hard to grow the grass even if the soil is softer. What are the values and ways to measure pH to get things in optimal growing condition?

The third problem I have encountered is the amount of water needed now is more since the clay soil held the water. What is the best combination of soil additives to condition clay soil? What are the best water holder/gradual release components to add?

What might be the optimal depths for typical herb roots, typical vegetable roots, and typical dwarf fruit tree roots where I could leave a clay bottom to act as a water holding bowl for each of the three types of plants I want to grow?

I have also discovered short, fat about one-to-two inch segmented cream-colored grubs with a blue-grey head helmet. They are found alone, with about one every four square inches or so. Could these be eating roots? What are they? How do I get rid of them without hurting good bugs?

Thanks,

Chris

New Natural Fertilizer Doubles Garden Production…

Dear Chris,

I think you should move to Pennsylvania.

You’re exhibiting the behavior of a pathological engineer toward life. You’re dealing with a living community of beings in the soil. You have to be gentle, massage. It doesn’t respond to a half-Nelson wrestling session. The rocks give you wonderful minerals. But the minerals won’t become available until you have active decomposition. That’s why perennials, animals, periodic pruning (mowing), and rest are the pattern nature uses to build soil.

Here’s the deal. Soil is built with organic matter decaying. Tillage does not build soil. Soil likes to be fed on top of its head—that’s the way nature feeds soil—decaying things fall onto the soil surface; it’s not plowed, dug, tilled, or turned. If you plant your fruit trees with a couple of five gallons buckets of compost or well-rotted manure put back into the hole, and then a slowly decomposing mulch like wood chips or leaves placed around it out to the drip line (straight down from the circumference of the top of the tree) it will probably do reasonably well.

Chemical fertilizers harden soil, reducing tilth, killing microbes, and locking up nutrients that should otherwise be available. Plant things next to the rocks. Plants love rocks, as long as they have enough soil to root in. Bread from Stones is a wonderful book that addresses the benefit of rocks. But these rocks need nearby decomposition. That is easiest accomplished with harvesting by animals, but can also be accomplished with strategic mowing, compost application, and foliar feeding. Remember that animals must be rotated every day or two to allow rest between disturbances.

Adequate decomposition will rectify pH problems. These are all symptoms of a lack of decay. You must stimulate decay. Nature does that with herbivores and perennials.

And I don’t know what the grubs are, but yes, they could be eating roots. So you need moles to eat the grubs. Will you be happy with moles? Right, I didn’t think so. Try looking them up in a bug book to see if there are any specific solutions available.

Joel

If I purchase conventional seedling plants of tomato, eggplant, squash, etc. that are not organic, would they grow to be just as healthy as organic if I put them in a prepared organic soil to mature and produce fruit?

Thank you,

Rosanne

Dear Rosanne,

Mayday, mayday! Slippery slope. Trick question. Complex issues.

If you can’t find organically grown bedding plants or seedlings in your area, don’t worry about it. That doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s an issue; what it means is that you’ll be far better off with a garden that’s not pure than no garden at all. You have to start somewhere, and you have to bloom where you’re planted. You can’t always have your “druthers” just the way you want them.

While I certainly prefer organically started plants, lots of times they aren’t available from our local sources so we do the best we can, and they do great. Could you tell the difference? Perhaps. But it’s not enough to keep you from planting what’s available. It’s not a perfect world, so be glad you’ve got ground for a garden, plant something, and keep looking for organic sets, but don’t sweat it if you can’t find them.

The health of those sets is determined far more by timing (soil temperature, day length, etc.), soil fertility, and sturdiness than whether they grew in organic potting soil. The most common malady is legginess or spindliness, caused by either placing grow lights too far away and/or by not hardening off. You want thick, stout stems, not tall, spindly ones, and that is not primarily a result of growing medium but of management during the starting process.

What I’m getting at here is that organic is not a comprehensive term. Many of the most important production variables are not addressed at all in organics. Organic soil will never compensate for production management mistakes. I’d much rather have nonorganic sets grown with all the production variables right than organic sets grown with even one production variable wrong. This is why the question is complex.

And in the end, no matter what you do, if you over water, under water, over fertilize, under fertilize, plant in too hot or too cold soil, too wet or too dry, etc. the plant will be stressed and not healthy. Health is way more than organics. Organics is just one tiny slice of health. You can eat the most organic diet in the world but be stressed about marriage problems, financial problems, work-related problems, and get an ulcer or have stress-induced high blood pressure. Organics are just one part of the picture.

Joel

How do you get rid of nut grass in the garden?

Thanks,

JT

JT,

Most perennials are extremely susceptible to tillage. The key is to stay with it—do it several times in a season. As you expose the roots to the top of the soil, they will either freeze or bake in the sun. Whenever I have a perennial infestation, I make sure I plant something that will require soil disturbance mid-season—like sweet corn or potatoes, which will be hilled after they are up a bit. This mid-season disturbance puts the perennials on the run.

Of course, double-cropping or even triple-cropping can be a great help. Early radishes or beets followed by tomatoes, peppers, or squash, then a late planting of Swiss chard or spinach will give you several tillage opportunities. And when I say tillage, I’m not requiring a garden tiller. It can be a spade, broad fork, or shovel even. The point is to disturb the soil down at least six inches to keep the perennial from acquiring energy equilibrium (the point where photosynthetic activity has replaced the energy in the roots that was expended in sending forth the shoots).

Joel

How can I get rid of the proliferation of crawdad mounds that keep reappearing in my yard? I have a pond, and many people have told me that that is the reason the mounds keep appearing. I would appreciate your advice on this frustrating problem.

Jessie

Dear Jessie, 

This sounds like a problem that requires copious amounts of crawdad consumption at scrumptious dinners. Plenty of people in the world would love to have this problem. If you put up a volleyball or badminton net in your yard and use it for exercise, I’m sure the crawdads will get tired of competing for yard space and go elsewhere.

You could drain the pond for year and see if they reappear. That would tell you for certain if there is a connection between the pond and the crawdads. You must have good water if it supports crawdads. Their tails taste like lobster—in fact, it’s the same basic biology. So get cooking and enjoy your problem.

Joel

I am currently researching the in’s and out’s, do’s and don’ts, of putting in asparagus plants. What kind of soil? How deep to plant? How to harvest and when? How much sunlight? I live in central Minnesota.

I have established horseradish plants in a garden plot, but am not sure how or when to harvest, or how to process the roots. Appreciate being able to ask the questions and will be thankful for assistance in finding answers.

Thanks,

Patricia

Patricia,

Every vegetable seed packet says: “Plant in loamy, well drained soil,” right? Asparagus responds to nitrogen, so well-rotted manure and compost will really make it shine. Rule of thumb for planting anything is 3 times the diameter of whatever it is you’re planting. So corn seed should go in an inch deep but carrots just a quarter inch. Asparagus cuttings should go in a couple of inches at least. Asparagus likes full sun. I don’t know much about horseradish.

My main advice for planting asparagus is to plant it in a bed with borders so you’ll never till nearby. If you chop the roots along the edge, the bed will spread as the rootlets sprout. If you want a contained, controlled patch, put it in a bordered bed where no tillage occurs within a couple of feet of the plants, preferably 3 feet.

Joel

©2012 Off the Grid News

We live in the Rocky Mountains — zone 4– at an altitude of 7800 feet. We have a short, unpredictable growing season and a large population of deer and rabbits. We currently have a container garden in a small “greenhouse” (white tarps over a frame) placed against a southern wall of our home, which has produced mediocre results. What advice can you offer on suitable heirloom varieties for our area?

-Kate Hamilton

Kate-

Oh, this one is out of my league.  I’d defer to to Seeds of Change or Seed Savers — there are a host of good seed folks out there who know climatological acclimation of numerous varieties.  We buy most of our seeds from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, located just 50 miles away from us, because all their varieties are grown and selected for mid-Atlantic adaptation.

I’m sure a similar seed bank exists in your area.  If you have trouble locating it, check with your nearest Permaculture support group.  The Permaculture network maintains databases of seeds — they concentrate on perennials, but they certainly do plenty with annuals as well.

I’m thinking your white tarps may be too opaque.  You don’t say in the question whether your poor results are due to temperature or sunlight, but a white tarp would affect both negatively.  Get some clearer plastic and see if that won’t help by both upgrading the temperature and increasing the UV penetration. Container gardening has really come along with the urban farming tsunami and plenty of material exists out there to help you along with that.

One of the big problems with the container gardening is that you don’t have a big enough heat sink to stabilize temperatures between day and night.  You may need to think about adding some thermal mass, even if it’s 55 gallon drums painted black and filled with water to set your plants on.  The barrels absorb daytime heat and slowly release it all night.  Plants do not like temperature extremes, so anything you can do to ameliorate these would be beneficial.

-Joel

©2012 Off the Grid News

I’ve had the pleasure of reading most, if not all of your books, and find them insightful, witty, and funny…. and unfortunately sad when I consider the current state of our country and the continuous erosion of our rights.  I do appreciate your efforts to bring sanity to what is at times an insane world. My questions for you today are based on my plans of retiring in the not too distant future and purchasing a piece of land I can do some farming on.  Due to the fact that two of my grandkids live in Maryland, I am looking at retiring there.  My questions are what is your perspective on the possibility of following your farming techniques in Maryland?  How hostile is Maryland towards farming and direct sales to the customer?  How difficult is it to process live stock you raise on the farm?  Do you have interns that need a little help getting started that would be willing to work with an old dude who has some money saved but limited experience in farming? Thank you for any insight you can offer.

-Milton

Milton-

I would not stay away from any place based on regulatory environments.  Maryland is certainly not particularly good, but the advantages of being close to grandchildren far outweighs governmental inconvenience.  I always tell people to go where you want to go.  Whatever drew you there will be more powerful than the bureaucrats.  Remember that bureaucrats have weak spots.  I’ve suggested many ways to get around regulations and you need to be aggressive and creative at circumventing the ones that are a problem.

Our most recent issue on the farm has been intern housing.  We don’t want a permitted building because that will need a water-based sewer system, and we want to use composting toilets without the cost of water-based septic fields.  Further, we want to build it the way we want to, not the way somebody else tells us to.  We found 5 exemptions to the building requirements in our county:

1.  If the building is  on water  (we could build something in or on a pond)

2.  If the building is on a chassis (like an RV or camper)

3.  If the building is in a tree–treehouse

4.  If the building is an agricultural accessory building–barn, shed, or shop

5.  A hunting camp up to 900 square feet.

Guess what we’re building?  A Polyface hunting camp for interns, who are HUNTING FOR THE TRUTH.  The code doesn’t say what you have to hunt.  My book EVERYTHING I WANT TO DO IS ILLEGAL is full of creative ways around regulations.  While I go on tirades about how terrible are, I’m thinking real hard about how to circumvent them until our country comes to its senses and realizes how terrible these regulations are.

One of the big attractions of Maryland is that it has plenty of people, everywhere, to make marketing simple.  Anyone who has been to our farm knows that we do not live in a populated area.  I’ve daydreamed many times about being in a more urban environment.  But the more rural has its advantages too, like fewer people complaining about what you’re doing or looking over your shoulder.  So this side of eternity, there is no paradise.  Just go where you want to go and it’ll be fine.

As to a Polyface intern coming as your partner (in crime–ha!), we receive a request like this about every day. Tons and tons and tons.  I wish I could help you, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to find your young partner.  There are lots of avenues, from ACRES USA magazine to your state sustainable agriculture organization to this website.  You won’t find them at the extension office or hanging around government buildings or occupying Wall Street.  You’ll find them already busy doing something.  Go for it.

-Joel

This year I want to create a garden out of raised beds using concrete blocks (about three or four high).  Besides using earthworms, do you have a good recipe for the soil to use?  About how many earthworms per foot would you start with, or is there a formula?  Also, which seeds would be best to plant in this type of “garden?”  I live in Wisconsin.

I thank you for your thoughts,

Darla

———————

Darla-

Plants in a bed like this are generally very productive just because of the aeration and elevation.  You can always create good soil with enough carbon.  A good formula is two parts soil and one part compost.  There are plenty of recipes out there for this kind of thing from folks who are smarter about this particular question than I am.  Some people like to put in vermiculate to create more looseness and water retentive capacity.  You probably should put in some crushed stone or raw mineral, like Planters II or Greensand.

As to earthworms, I wouldn’t worry about them too much because they won’t do well until you have a fertile habitat for them.  And if you have a fertile habitat, they will naturally be drawn to the bed and proliferate on their own.  Unless the beds are completely sterile, I wouldn’t worry too much about trying to seed earthworms.  They’ll come naturally as you get the habitat full of organic matter for them to eat. Remember worms like to be fed on top of their heads, so always practice minimal tillage, or gentle tillage, like with a spade rather than pulverizing.

As to seeds, plant what you like to eat.

-Joel

Ask Joel Salatin

Dear Joel,

What resources do you recommend to help someone get started without getting ripped off?  My wife and I live on 40 acres that we want to, at minimum, grow our own nutrient dense food at the same time we are treating our land with sustainable husbandry practices.  We basically want to enrich our soil and control pests in harmony with nature so we will be rewarded with the most nutritious, nutrient dense food possible.

-Dave S.

Dave-

Very astute question.  The problem with inputs is that the performance data always compares the product to nothing.  ”Our XYZ foliar elixir increased green beans by 40 percent.”  Sounds great, until you realize that it was compared to nothing.  This is not the real world you and I live in.

In the real world, we have a certain amount of time and money–an investment–we’re willing to put in something, so we actually want to compare product A with product B.  But none of the companies does that.  Nobody compares the relative cost/benefit, or return-on-investment, with compost tea going head to head with BD501 in biodynamics, or Neptune’s harvest foliar, etc.

So at the end of the day, we make decisions based on “I really liked that guy.”  But that’s not very scientific when it comes to agronomy fertility management.  I’d like all the organic input outfits–all the people at the ACRES USA tradeshow, for example, to put together a kitty of money and hire someone for 5 years to do half acre plots on a 20 acre field (that would be 40 trials) pitting all the products against each other.  Then you’d really be able to compare.

So here’s my take:  buying in things is the LAST thing you want to do.  Look to nature.  How does nature build fertility?  First is organic matter.  Begin composting.  Get leaves, rotted sawdust, wood chips, corn cobs, leaves. junk hay, corn fodder, junk straw, apple pumice–anything carbonaceous, and get it on your land.  That will feed the latent biology and wake it up to do what it needs to.  For example, azotobacter are free-living bacteria that will take as much as 100 pounds of nitrogen out of the air and put it into the soil.  But they only become active if you have at least 4 percent organic matter.  Most of our soils are below that because the organic matter has been depleted through tillage, overgrazing, erosion, etc.

Second, put on animals in high densities and begin moving them around.  That will stimulate biomass production and nutrient cycling, which is the way nature builds soil.  There is no animaless ecosystem in the world for this reason.  Buying in feedstocks for poultry or rabbits is okay as a remedial soil building technique.

Third, start working on water control.  Build a pond or get some water retention so you can stockpile it in the rainy times and then meter it out in the dry times to maintain biological activity and biomass growth.  As a land manager, your mandate is to stimulate more solar energy conversion into decomposable biomass than nature can do in a static state.  That’s what humans are for.

This is probably enough for starters.  Go for it.

-Joel

A family owned, multi-generational, pasture-based, beyond organic, local-market farm and informational outreach in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.

Dear Joel,

After reading your very practical and common-sense books, I have a few questions.  When you talk of rotating your animals on your “fields,” what rotation schedule do you follow?  From what I can gather, it goes cattle, pigs, chickens, rest 100 days, cattle, pigs, chickens, rest.  Is this correct?  Where does a garden come into play?  Is that in one permanent place with the pigaerators working in the fall or spring?

Thanks!

Patty K.

Patti-

I wish it were this simple.  It’s not.  Let’s start with the cows.  They move daily to a new paddock.  The eggmobile follows them, wherever that happens to be.  The broilers want short grass, not only because it’s easier to masticate and more palatable, but also because it keeps the chickens cleaner and exposes predators, who don’t like to be exposed.  A great horned owl will pick a weasel right up off the ground.  To keep that grass at the proper height, we graze as necessary ahead of the broiler shelters to manicure the plate.

The pigs are in their own paddocks.  We do not use them in the chicken-cow fields because they tear up too much.  It would be a nightmare trying to move little broiler chicks through a field pocked with bathtub-sized holes.  The pigs do follow the cows in the hay shed after the hay feeding period to turn the bedding into compost.

Turkeys can handle much longer grass, but they like it shorter than cows do, as well, so we use the cows to prepare their table too.  The egg layers in the feathernet are like the turkeys in grass length desire, so we run the cows around them as necessary as well.  Wherever the cows go, the eggmobiles follow.

Then you have hay to think about.  We rotate our hay fields so that different fields are allowed to go to full physiological expression at different times of the year, and even in different years.  This creates diversity in the sward.  We don’t move poultry through the tall grass, so we have to account for the hay ground in our rotation with everything.  It’s quite a ballet, and takes awhile to get it all running smoothly.

Now as if that weren’t enough, each rest cycle is different because growth is different throughout the season.  Sometimes it’s 50 days and sometimes it’s 150 days.  The biggest reason people fail at this is because they want a cookie-cutter formula and can’t seem to understand how much of a spontaneous dance it is.  But if you’ll stay flexible, keep observing, and watch what’s going on, you’ll get skilled at it and it will happen effortlessly.

-Joel

Ask Joel Salatin

Dear Joel,

What should I do with a yard that contains an “arsenic content” of 12.5? (Lack of recall on exactly what the measurement reflects other than the fact that “over 5″ is a level considered to require some possible remedy which has yet to be determined.)

Thanks Joel!

-Kimie R.

Kimie-

Depends on what you’re doing with the yard—is it going to stay a yard, or are you going to turn it into an edible landscape?  If it’s just going to stay a yard, the fastest way to remediate toxicity in the soil is with organic matter (OM).  That’s the buffer.  Back when Chernobyl blew and dropped radiation across the truck farming region of Austria, all the standing produce had to be destroyed. Then when they went and began measuring radiation in the soil, only one farm was able to resume production immediately: the Luebkes, who had been using copious amounts of compost instead of chemical fertilizer for many years.  Their OM absorbed and dissipated the radiation.  That’s just one of many stories, but OM is the key to everything.

The quickest way to get OM into your yard, if it’s going to stay a yard, is to just let the grass grow fairly tall (eight to ten inches) before cutting.  That stimulates root growth because the plant maintains bilateral symmetry between what’s above the ground and what’s below the ground.  By letting biomass accumulate above ground, you’re creating depth and volume in roots that the plant then prunes off when you eventually mow the top.  Those pruned off roots add to OM.  This, of course, is what we’re doing with tight controlled grazing, and how nature built soil for millennia under the hooves, pruning, and rest periods of grazing animals.

If you’re going to turn it into edible production, then I suggest you go with raised beds and put in clean soil, compost, and mineral.  Vegetable roots don’t go very deep, so if you elevate off the current surface grade, say, twelve inches, you’ll be pretty safe in keeping the plant roots out of the arsenic zone.  There are tons of ways to do this.  One guy just gets some straw bales, puts them on their side, and then plants into the topside of the straw, adding a little compost and soil to give the plants something to start on.  Go for it.

-Joel

Dear Joel,

For the last three years I’ve gotten late blight on my tomatoes. I have rotated the area I am growing them. I have changed to different seeds. Any help to avoid this problem would be appreciated.

Thanks!

-Chelia T.

Chelia-

This is pushing my pay grade on expertise. Generally, blossom end rot is a factor of inconsistent water, and that’s why it hits in late season.  Mulching is a huge help to maintain consistent moisture levels.  Of course, professionals use drip irrigation.  But maintaining consistent moisture is huge for tomatoes.

I think—and I’m trying to remember things I’ve read—that magnesium deficiency can also encourage blight-type issues.  You might try a good foliar like Neptune’s Harvest or even some Epsom salts to remediate that.  One year we had white strips show up in our sweet corn, indicating magnesium deficiency.  I mixed up some Epsom salts in the garden sprayer along with a surfactant and sprayed the corn.  Within two hours the strips were gone, and it returned to a healthy green sheen.  Foliars are amazing for quick remedial attention.

Beyond that, just keep working with the soil.  Get books about tomatoes—ACRES USA has a great selection.  Organic matter, proper mineralization, looseness, etc. are all going to be key.  I’m not a tomato expert though—sorry.

-Joel

*Editor’s note: Solutions from Science also offers several books on growing tomatoes that may help with these issues. Best of luck!