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Message: [QUOTE="treeguy, post: 163627, member: 7026"] Stuff that decomposes, as in a compost pile or as heavy/thick mulch, consumes N, so you need to add some. Not a lot, some, to bring it back to non-N-deficient. If you want more foliage growth, you add more for that, remembering that you want to give vegetables like tomatoes low rates and leafy things like lettuce more, etc. I agree that if your mulch is disappearing quickly you are benefiting quickly. Yes, having lots and lots of worms is wonderful, and they do makes lots of aerating tunnels and leave lots of castings in little piles, but that's not a substitute for turning the soil which accelerates the process of putting all the ingredients in close association. The constituents of soil do not migrate by their own hand. If you pile two feet of manure on the top, rain will leach some good stuff into the mineral soil below the surface, but the fiberous material will remain in-place, on top until the wind blows it away over time. To get the best mix, you gotta mix! If you mulch heavily, it is arguably more beneficial to turn that decayed material into the soil, than it is to prevent weeds and retain soil moisture. The residue can blow away over time or feed them voracious microbes with worm castings and tiny little fibers (don't want them to get all bound up!), -your choice! If you calculate the amount of land which is fully tilled verses no-till, and ask yourself why the tiller's do all-l-l-l that work when they could just plow a single furrow, an answer will emerge: Production, with a capital P.:happy: The no-till farmers can only feed the rich people in Manhattan, the other guys are feeding the world. What is woodash? Wood ash? [/QUOTE]

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