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  • Elmar

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    December 16, 2021 at 3:26 pm
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    I guess you are a smaller scale grower? Vegetables?

    Don’t put woodchips on your ground, they take a long time to break down and lock up nutrients in the mean time. They are just too woody to be fast food for microbiology. Make a longer term compost with them and mix it with some young and energy rich material.

    What kind of manure do you have? Be careful with high P and K loads, this might cause some extra insect pressure. K might also disrupt the Ca processes and stress young plants. Definitely don’t put fresh manure on your main crop, compost it really well for next season/cover crop application (if this is allowed at your location).

    I guess it is a bit late to make compost for spring time, otherwise I would suggest to make a Johnson Su reactor and some compost tea to use at seeding and as foliar spray as needed on your main crop. Maybe a handful of worms in a warm spot with fairly little raw material can make something happen to boost your seedings and transplants?

    Can you get your hands on some microbial inoculation? Maybe some careful use of fishoil and seaweed to get some extra activity?

    Even tough it doesn’t look like much, but plant some covers (like buckwheat, tillage radish, oats, mustard if you have a bit of time before your main crop, leave as much as possible at planting time so you can use it as mulch later on?

    Hope this helps 😉