has55's R & D Journey

Top 10 Ways Cover Crops Build Soil Health

has55 wrote:WOW. It great to see our government embracing soil health and really working hard to see how the biological community works. I thoroughly enjoyed the video. Great info.

Right on!  I have used cover crops forever, as did my father and grandfather before me, as a cheap way to boost the soil organic matter, to fight weeds, to prevent erosion, and to attract pollinators.  Before leaving for a month-long road trip, I cleaned out the tomato bed, refreshed it with compost, and planted the Winter Rye/Hairy Vetch cover crop. This is a picture of that cover crop a month later.  After we have some hard freezes, the tops will die back and cover the soil until spring when it will start growing again.

has55 wrote:interesting Visual results.

Most interesting is that the results of the section in 100% compost is totally dependent upon the type & quality of the compost. Is the compost completely plant-based, or does it have manure, etc., included in it?  Is it fungi-based, or bacteria-based? Is it mature compost, or quick-made? Did the compost have rock dust or other minerals added to it during processing?

While the video makes some good points, such as the non-compost section got the minerals and nutrients from the sand & clay in the soil, it doesn't address the addition of, or lack of, minerals in the compost.  For example, when I make a batch of compost in the tumbler, I use not only the kitchen scraps and pine pellets for carbon, but add coffee grounds, rock dust, biochar, and the fermented Bokashi (the Bokashi adds EM and minerals from the bones, egg shells, meat scraps, etc.). When that compost comes out of the tumbler, it looks like rich black soil, and the plants love it.

It would be very interesting, though, to see a similar video with 5 or more sections of pure compost, each using a different type of compost, and document how plants respond to each type of compost.  I will say, though, that over the 50 years or so of gardening with in-soil gardens that no matter how much compost I added to the soil, it never performed as well as the raised beds which have higher and higher concentrations of compost each year. As the video description says, "At least if you have good soil, and you take care of it."  It all depends...