Posts Tagged: soil

Build the soil for successful gardening

Before digging in to spring planting, pay attention to building the soil, advises an article in the Los Angeles Times by Jeanette Marantos.

Marantos visited the Pasadena backyard garden of Yvonne Savio, the retired coordinator of the UC Master Gardener Program in Los Angeles County. Savio is the creator of the Gardening in LA blog, with new stories appearing "every other week or so."

“The old saying is, ‘Feed the soil, not the plant,'" Savio said. “When you just use chemical fertilizers, you're not establishing a long-lasting base of nutrition for the plant. It's just giving it a huge piece of cake on Sunday, and then by Thursday it's nutritionally starving.”

Savio recommends a steady diet of organic matter be spaded into soil, and a layer of organic mulch added to the top of soil.

When you continually add organic amendments to the soil, the dirt comes alive as the amendments decompose, creating the beneficial bacteria, fungi and the nutrients plants need to grow strong and healthy, Savio said. “It's really like a cafeteria where your plants can pick and choose what they really like.”

California governor sets aside funds to promote soil health

California Gov. Jerry Brown has included $7.5 million in the 2017-18 budget to launch the Healthy Soils Initiative, reported Bob Gore in a commentary on Techwire.net.

The story said CDFA secretary Karen Ross announced the development at a recent meeting, saying "We're starting from the ground up."

Carlos Suarez of the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service was also quoted in Gore's story. Suarez said the funding puts "soils back into the forefront of agriculture. Feeding the people is the real issue. We have to take care of our soils."

Jenny Lester Moffitt, CDFA deputy secretary and walnut farmer, is the point person for the Governor's Healthy Soils Initiative, which formally starts Jan. 19. Moffitt said the $7.5 million will fund research and demonstration projects so the "UC Ag and Natural Resources engine will rev up."

California's Healthy Soils Action Plan notes that the new initiative will "provide boots-on-the-ground" research, education and technical support to the agricultural industry.

"Utilizing partners such as Natural Resource Conservation Services, University of California Cooperative Extension and Resource Conservation Districts, (the initiative will) enhance and expand technical assistance and outreach activities to distribute new and existing management practice information to farmers and ranchers," the action plan says on Page 5.

State funding may help farmers overcome challenges to improved soil practices

Improved soil promises to help farmers use less water and reduce carbon in the atmosphere, reported Ezra David Romero on Valley Edition, a one-hour weekly program that airs on KVPR-FM. 

The five-minute story, which begins at the 30:30 mark, focuses on CDFA's new Healthy Soils Initiative. The program is expected to allocate $7.5 million for farmer incentives to use practices that will improve soil health and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These are practices that are already in place on some innovative valley farmers, including two that are active in the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources' Conservation Agriculture Systems Innovation center.

Jesse Sanchez, manager at Sano Farms in Firebaugh, said 15 years ago, tractors were rolling across the 4,000-acre tomato farm all the time. Now, the farm features cover crops in the winter, reduced soil tillage, irrigation with super-efficient buried drip tape and lower fertilizer needs. The result is a one-third drop in water use and a 75 percent reduction in diesel to fuel tractors, Romero said.

Many of the farm's tractors have been sold. "We don't want to see them no more," Sanchez said.

Retired Madera County farmer Tom Willey discussed the critical importance of soil care he learned as a long-time organic vegetable grower.

"It's the survival of our species," Willey said. "The soil is the thin skin of the earth that we all exist on. Our lives are bound up in the health and productivity of the soil."

UC Cooperative Extension specialist Jeff Mitchell noted the challenges that farmers face in making soil care changes. “A real part of the challenge for California farms is the high-value nature of the production systems, the crops themselves, and some difficult challenges in terms of the diversity of the crops," he said. 

 

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