Boring Soil Talk To Make You Cry
A Long Preachy Intro About Soil: Tomatoes and most other vegetables like a soil high in organic matter that drains well. I stopped turning my garden soil a long time ago with a Ruth Stout approach, then returned to limited tillage + mulching, and then whipsawed back to a different variety of no-till a coupletree years ago and I like what I’m seeing again. No-till means you never or rarely dig or turn the soil over, but instead protect soil life, covering the ground with organic matter at least once yearly, usually in Fall, the way Nature does it. It can be kept continually covered with a thin layer of compost, or deeply mulched throughout the year or just during the growing season, or planted with cover crops that are then either winter killed or they are chopped or crimped to terminate them and the residues left on the soil; the important thing is to keep the soil covered with something. I apply rough compost in Fall or sometimes just autumn leaves (though in my climate leaves tend to encourage a proliferation of slugs and voles). In Summer I apply hay mulch, which is light in color, reflecting sunlight, keeping the soil cooler for the plant roots and retaining moisture evenly. The way your soil gets covered, in what season, will be dependent on your particular climate and pest issues.
When a plant in a no-till garden is removed at the end of the season, it is cut off at the soil line and either chopped-and-dropped to become one with the mulch, or taken away and composted. The roots and their biome remain in place, supplying their structure and fertility workforce to the next crops.
No-till systems take advantage of certain principles; plants in nature do not usually uproot themselves and walk off, they rot in place and their residues are used by the next generation of plants and soil dwellers. Unlike tillage, when Nature is left to its own devices, soil fertility tends to either remain the same or increase over time. The use of organic residues has been the backbone of gardening for far longer than not. It’s like we have forgotten how new chemical fertilizers are, and how long we have grown food without them. Save your money, just rake up your yard trash and start a compost pile. You can also mulch with cut weeds. There is virtually no soil anywhere that does not contain all the substances plants need to thrive. In “poor” soils, the missing element is life in the soil. These creatures need to be protected from the effects of the sun baking the surface of the soil. Mulch also helps break up raindrops and allow water to infiltrate gently instead of running off along with topsoil.
Plants’ roots exude substances that attract and feed living creatures. They also secrete chemical “instructions” for this soil biology to act upon minerals in the soil, freeing the elements the plants need, right in the moment that they need them. The life cycles of soil organisms (the vast majority of which are beneficial to agriculture) thus feed the plants correctly right in time with their precise needs. Fertilizer application is not required in no-till practice. Keeping soils awash in an excess of some nutrients found in fertilizers can actually inhibit uptake of other elements needed by the plants. The activities of soil life also create a lovely porosity, admitting air into the soil. Cavities, tunnels, and adherent granular structures are formed in the soil that improve drainage but hold water too. Like a sponge. Water runs straight down into it, but the nutrients do not leach and the soil remains firm, not soft and ‘fluffy’ like tilled soils. That fluffiness doesn’t survive too many rains, anyway. After collapsing the structure of the soil, tillage increases topsoil runoff. In my area, exposed soil becomes hard clay crust as soon as the last rain dries off, and will not admit the next rain into it. Tillage and cultivation also increases weeds as the soil bank of weed seeds keeps getting brought to the sunny surface to sprout.
However, lots of people who have gardened longer than my paltry 30-year run, still till up their soil every Spring, and the best gardening technique is the one that works best for you. I just prefer this no-till system, you can use your tillage and fertilizers if you want, but this works for me. And my tomatoes love it. These days I still fertilize heavy feeder crops like garlic with an organic fertilizer, but I give tomatoes nothing but the compost that is already there at planting time, mulch, and an insulating layer of fresh compost under the mulch when it gets really hot out.*
Therm said he is growing on sandy ground. I have learned first hand how hard it is to garden sandy soil. I have applied heavy layers of fine compost to the trees and ornamentals on my mom’s land and it simply disappears in weeks. Sand needs rougher, unfinished compost and mulches that stick around longer. One of the ways I have heard of to develop a deep rich soil even in sandy areas is to (in addition to cover cropping, but that is a whole other conversation) yearly apply a rough compost made from chipped small branches, twigs, and leaves of growing trees and woody shrubs. This takes time, but it becomes like the black spongy fungal-dominated soils in forests and theoretically should improve the retention of manures or other soil amendments you may need to apply on top. I can’t say for sure because I have not done it myself. This subject is covered extensively here. I highly recommend that old web log site for many gardening topics. Here is his post on growing tomatoes.
Here is an additional source for growing tomatoes in the desert.
*the best tomatoes I ever grew were pure beginner’s luck when I was a youngster and I have never been able to replicate it to my satisfaction. I recalled how my grandfather used to bury crap fish under his tomatoes. So I begged for post-sale fish trimmings/ scraps from the grocery store fish counter and buried them about a foot down, then planted my little tomato plants on top so the roots would find them later. I did this in the sandy soil at mom’s house. Gurney Girl™ was the tomato variety. What an outstanding crop, and absolutely delicious, we were raving about them all Summer long, and long afterwards. That was about thirty years ago.
Flawlessly naming puppies since March 2009 