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Re: Natural raised beds

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

This is very interesting. Over 50 years of reading that clay, straw and
water mixed makes adobe, Olin says there's more to it than that. Now I'm
curious about what the "more" is...Margaret L, and yes, I am familiar with
adobe houses and commercial buildings. They do a better job of that in Taos
than in Phoenix, IMO.


At 01:10 PM 4/30/2000 -0700, you wrote:
>Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html
>
>----- Original Message ----- From: margaret lauterbach <mlaute@micron.net>>
>> You made adobe. Margaret L
>>
>> At 09:16 AM 4/27/2000 -0700, you wrote:
>> >Charlie- I just remembered that in Girl scouts we mixed clay with straw
>and
>> >water and made- -well I don't remember what we made- but they were
>> >hard-almost like pottery.-Teri
>
>On a more positive note:
>
>A clayey soil, straw and water mix does not make adobe.  It will simply dry
>as a hard clod which is pretty easy to break up with a rototiller or will
>break up easily when soaked with water.  There is a bit more to ADOBE
>making than simply mixing clay, straw and water and letting it dry in the
>sun.  We have many very old adobe block houses in Phoenix and a few ones
>each year (very few because of strict structural building codes) are
>constructed each year.
>
>Our native desert soil is an orangish alkaline clay with virtually no
>organic material, no nitrogen, very little phosphorous, an abundance of
>potassium and calcium, and a native pH of around 8.0.  But it is rich in
>most other nutrients and with a little work it can be very productive.  Our
>irrigation water is runoff from the Colorado Plateau and comes in at about
>pH 8.0.  With only an inch or so of rainfall during the 4-month spring
>growing season, drainage is not a problem if one works in plenty of organic
>matter, tills deep enough, and doesn't over-water.
>
>There may be advantages to raised sqft beds in some areas but here the hot
>dry desert winds wind will dry out the beds very rapidly, especially around
>the edges, and earthen beams around ground-level sqft beds have worked
>pretty well for many of us over the years.  After running parallel drip
>tapes through the beds spaced at 10-12 inches, I usually mulch with clean
>straw (wheat or rye, then work it into the soil after harvest and either
>plant something else with a mulch cover  or cover it with an organic
>compost.  I have heard the discussions about C:N ratios (more recently
>greens and browns) and that decomposition of the straw robs the crop of
>nutrients but I have never personally found that to be a problem.  The
>trick is to keep the soil covered and keep it from completely drying out,
>even when there is no crop planted.- if you lack organic compost, you can
>always cover it with newspapers.  With earthen berms, I can run my 28
>year-old 8 HP Troybilt through the garden every year or so and work in 3-4
>inches of manure, then it is a pretty simple matter to reconstruct or
>reconfigure the beds.
>
>What works or doesn't work for some people doesn't necessarily mean it will
>apply to you depending on your circumstance.
>
>Olin
>
>
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