Over the past few years we've been trying to get the garden to produce more food and require less maintenance. The theory is it's possible to get year over year improvement in soil quality just from the plants and by adding our farm's own, or free/local organic matter. Some areas of the garden have improved hugely and are very productive and the soil looks and feels rich. Other areas have only seen marginal gains, though. The soil was so depleted, that I probably could have added many times more compost and manure than I did last season.
Anyway, my hope is our property goes into a positive feedback mode where life begets life over a long period of time. If it's really possible to accumulate the fertility and productivity of the farm year after year as some people claim, that's an amazing revolution in the human condition. The people quietly planting cover crops and trying to grow the soil life might be as important in changing the direction of humanity as our ancestors who first gathered and planted cereal crops ages ago.
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