Re: [compost_tea] Roto-tilling is evil?

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 16:28:15 -0500

Frank Teuron apologized to me about using a rototiller, and intimated that I tought rototillers are evil.

No. I have never said that. Please, stop trying to put words into my mouth.

Tillage intensity is important to understand. The greater the destruction of aggregates, the greater the impact on the soil foodweb, especially on fungi, the larger protzoa, the beneficial nematodes and the microarthropods.

If you WANT to get rid of these organisms, as in you want to grow early successional plants, then rototilling, which is a very intensive tillage method and nearly completely destroys the macroaggregates - but not microaggregates - is a good idea.

I just want people to understand what they are doing.

I don't think rototillers are evil. Any tillage method has some impact on the soil biology. Not tilling results in greater growth of fungi, in general. Maybe more fungi isn't a good idea, sometimes.

Depends on what you are trying to grow, huh?

So, Frank, if you brought good forest duff, highly fungal, into your garden, and rototilled it into the soil, what is it that you have left in your garden? What's the fungal to bacterial biomass ratio after you rototill?

And therefore, why would you expect that your broccoli would not be very happy to have all that wonderful bacterial biomass humming around it's roots?

But, are ALL the fungi gone because you rototilled?

Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
SFI Corvallis, OR
SFI Port Jefferson, NY
SFI Lismore, NSW, Australia
SFI Hilversum, The Netherlands
SFI Cambridge, New Zealand
www.soilfoodweb.com

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Received on Sun Nov 23 2003 - 17:32:36 EST

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