May-mulch madness
by Stowell P. Watters

At a time when the word “automobile” is, in some circles, synonymous with peak oil, climate change, and supreme-wanton-disregard-for-all-things-sacred-and-green, and the roaring sound of an engine seems to impress only the attendant at the gas station or the oil tycoon picking filet mignon from his teeth with one of the thinner bones of an Ivory Billed Woodpecker, I am going to attempt a risky metaphor: our farm is currently a vintage beast of an automobile, cherry red, with a snarling, carnivorous engine thundering on all eight hemispherical cylinders and powered completely by - what else - vegetable oils.

The market season is fully on and we have salad mix, spicy mustardy stir-fry mix, spinach, electric lettuce heads, radishes, eggs, organic vegetable starts, and flowers flying out of our store on River Rd. and off the trucks at the Portland and Bridgton markets. The seven-layer mandala (clover shaped fifth-of-an-acre vegetable bed) is built and planted thanks to some friends from the Portland Permaculture meetup.com group and every passing day another few beds are given happy, humming plants, mulched, and set to prosper. The sun came back out and we were ready for it; time is flying and vegetables are everywhere.

But back to my automobile analogy; just as a finely tuned roadster depends on continued fuel combustion and oil viscosity, so too our farm requires some key processes. The bulk of physical labor during the early summer is devoted, therefore, to the mother of all farm tasks - mulching (vroom vroom). It is not possible for me to overstate the importance of mulching here at Rippling Waters Organic Farm.

If you look at plants growing in a field or on a forest floor you will observe nature's mulching (effortless) efforts as leaves, pine needles, golden rod stalks, and rye all fall to the earth and facilitate new growth. Every crop we plant is subsequently mulched with decomposing leaves and hay, this covering is anywhere from two to four inches thick.

First, this bio-mimicry allows the soil to retain moisture - think of a bare field of tilled soil baking in the sun with the moisture rising up and away, paving the way for desertification and soil erosion. With more moisture locked into our soil we can water/worry less about plants crashing in the field.

Mulch also suppresses weeds by blocking sunlight to their creeping rhizomes or seeds. In some cases where the Bermuda grasses have a presence like old phone wires in the soil we start our mulch with newspaper or cardboard. The fight against weeds is good, important work and mulch allows us to maintain a game-long 10 point lead - something every organic gardener needs.

Better than black plastic - which requires yadda yadda amounts of petroleum to produce and is more than slightly annoying to purchase, put down, find drip tape beneath, maintain, clean up, etc - mulch is nearly free and does something black plastic does not - it gives back all important organic residues into the soil (not to mention it is well loved by and frequently packed with worms).

When microbial life (various bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms) already present in the soil comes into contact with this mass of carbon compounds in the mulch a veritable feast is kicked off. The microbes chow down on carbon for their own metabolism and transform the organic residues back into plant food and nutrients as microbes have mutualistic relations with plant rootlets in the soil. The undigested portion accumulates as readily available plant food known as humus. For more on this topic I refer you to "The Waste Products of Agriculture and their Utilization as Humus" by Albert Howard (http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/HowardWPA/WPAtoc.html) - he does the subject justice like I cannot.

Fueled by mulch we are forging on into June, but May isn't over as we are having an open house this weekend and a Pumpkin Planting Blitz this Saturday May 28th 9:00am-3:00pm, and we are inviting you, good reader, to join us and get some vine crops in the ground - oh yea, and we'll be full throttle mulching too! See you there.