Re: organic and air circulation

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Virginia- Welcome to the list. If you agree concider discussing with your husband trying a couple of raised beds for select veggies near your traditional garden. While his tractor will break up the soil each year, it will only reach so far down. Meanwhile the wieght of the tractor (and your own body wieght) will pack the soil down under the level the tractor reaches.
 
This packed soil simply will not be optimum for roots reaching for depth and deeper water sources. In addition, apparently trace chemicals/elements needed by veggies are often found deeper in the soil than is traditionally tilled by tractors or rototillers. Double digging can help with this but who would like to double-dig a patch fifty-feet by twenty-five feet?!!! lol.
 
We recently had a discussion regarding the depth veggies will go if soil will allow easy access. Optimum depth seemed to circle around 3-4 feet deep, with tomatoes (and probably many other veggies) reaching 9-10 feet deep in loose soils.
 
It is your choice completely because it is your land and efforts to choose. Just thought you might like to know what we have been discussing.
 
Haveagreatday,
bill missen.
----- Original Message -----
From: v*@watson.st
To: s*@listbot.com
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2001 7:07 AM
Subject: organic and air circulation

Square Foot Gardening List - http://myweb.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html

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Hi everyone,

I just joined the list this morning because John suggested you guys might be
able to add some insight about my question: it is about the tightness of
space...I try to grow organically and I thought that packing the plants
tightly would deprive them of air circulation and lead to problems. John
said that in his experience this problem didn't occur, but rather the
tightness caused plants to topple onto each other. What to do about either
issue??

Also, I'm planning a new gardn area about 50' x 25 and my husband doesn't
want to use raised beds with actual sides. He just got a new tractor and I
guess wants to be able to get in there and plow it up every year! I know I
can still SQFT garden with raised areas, but it tends to get pretty wet. Do
you think simple raised areas without sides will be enough to keep the roots
from getting too wet? Also, my concern about his tilling the area is the
sharing of diseases (I try to rotate crops to avoid this).

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Virginia Watson


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