This is a series of posts that details day to day the development of two patches of soil that will be seeded with all the leftovers from this year's sowing. If you want to start from day one you can do so here. From now on, all posts of the series will be under the tag #mixedseedpatch.
The adventure continues without delay 💪 there's just something about focusing on a small area that keeps me motivated. I guess it's the fact that you can appreciate evolution much faster than if you're working on larger extensions.
Before going to the actual work, I wanted to share a curiosity that was the first thing I saw when getting out of the house today.
It's like a mushroom stencil hehe. My rational mind says a bird took a dump right there and this formed, but my magical mind is sure the gnomes made it. It's a funny thing this appeared just when there is a big abundance of mushrooms all around the place. This hadn't happened before and I was always very confused as to why mushrooms didn't appear in a forest. My guess is that since the cows always invaded this place, they didn't get a chance to thrive.
These beauties, for instance, appeared near the broad beans. No idea what they are, it's crazy how little information there is on mushrooms in this part of the world. But there is interest and lots of research going on so maybe soon there will be more knowledge.
I went back into the woods in search for good soil for the patches again. This time I went further in until I found this log.
The soil beneath looked more promising as there was no sand and it had lots of little wood chips, leaves, and other organic materials on top.
After some digging...
Jackpot!!! Beautiful soil, filled with organic matter, wonderful color and structure. A true treasure of Nature. Very grateful 🙏🙏🙏
Time to drop it into the patches.
Let's talk about soil
To me, this is not an ideal process. I believe a better way is to keep an ongoing process of gradually adding organic matter to the ground, without any tilling. If I had to do this for a large extension of land it would be too much work and I would have to be like our ancestors that worked their asses off until they got sick and died.
Yet, since this is a focus project on small patches, this is useful as it quickly improves the microbiology thanks to the manure and forest soil. The sand took care of the structure as shown in the previous post.
But speed is not necessarily the best option. A soil that is worked over time will have a larger diversity of insects, fungi and bacteria, that will become stable over time. Not static, just stable, because the diversity won't allow any intruder to come and easily take over, but there will always be space for newcomers. When we're tilling and adding new stuff all the time, we're breaking the immune system of the soil and that's when lots of "pests" and diseases kick in.
It's ok to want quick results and garden old fashion, but if you're into creating a healthy self-sustaining environment where you live, that not only provides for you, but also for the different inhabitants, then I think the best way to go is to create soil through mulching, even more than compost.
Note, that I'm saying this not from a productive lens, but rather a holistic one that sees Nature beyond the benefits it can provide to humans and as a home to every creature that populates it.
Also, I don't claim to have the final truth on this, it's just the way I see it today, which might change over time.
The evolution so far
Not feeling sure about that reddish color yet, but in this case it comes from wood residuals so it might not be so bad. At least it's not clay anymore.
The change can be highly appreciated here, and it looks a lot better from the clay at the beginning.
This is the end of the soil preparation and tomorrow is the big day for sowing! I almost wasn't able to wait haha, it's going to be nice putting that huge mixture of seeds in this carefully tended soil. Wish me luck! 🍀
I bet that log is going to grow a ton of mushrooms as well!
After I started adding compost to a little patch of weedy neglected land (which was also where I frequently did litter pickups, as it was next to a parking lot where people dumped trash from their cars), and also, dogs started using it as a toilet (previously it had been fenced off, lol), we got SO MANY MUSHROOMS in that area. Walking in it you had to watch your step either for dog poop bombs or mushroom clusters. 😂
I haven't seen it in a long time because it was blocked off due to construction, but they just recently finally opened it back up, so I'm curious to see what it looks like now that it's had two years or so to sit mostly undisturbed.
I wonder if the mushrooms spawned from the dog poop 🤔
it's so cool to see big clusters, surely you'll find nice stuff there, tag me if you do a post on it 🙂
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