Tangible results

Working clay soil is a little bit of a pain.

I’m new to this, but a little bit of applied research is starting to show promising signs.  Although there is a lot of potential nutrition locked inside of clay particles, its dense physical structure and relative nutritional unavailability demand some attention.  As is the solution for many other soil problems, adding compost has certainly shown off its efficacy.  The added organic matter from our soil block transplants has also helped quite a bit.  As a result, the roots on all of our radishes are showing deeper habits and more vigorous growth.

Long term soil development is always on my mind, and I’m constantly trying to learn more about the best ways to maintain a healthy growing environment.  If I had all the time in the world, I would continue to add compost year after year and just call it a day.  However, I need to get this show on the road as quickly as possible if I want the business to grow, so I’m willing to try some things.

As an addition to our liquid fertilizer, I’ve begin including Humax (12% humic acid derived from leonardite) in the mix.  Humic acid is also present in compost, and helps work on clay particles at the molecular level, sort of “un-gluing” them (from what I understand) from each other.  Humic acid is also said to improve germination rates; and while I don’t have a strict control to judge against, both the buckwheat cover and our new successions of lettuce have sprouted up quite densely.  Yesterday we had our largest salad green harvest to date. Alright!

Next week I’ll be turning the buckwheat under with our new BCS machine (is it a two-wheeled tractor? is it an oversized tiller? people seem to disagree, haha).  I’ve used it a couple of times already for seed bed preparation, and it’s worked great. It seems like a pretty efficient machine so far, I’ll probably make my next post about it.

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