Sounds similar to what my neighbour used to do. Leave the bed all winter, torch everything in spring and rake it in to the bed. No mulch either. Is he Italian by chance?

I'll tell you, she had the best tomatoes and eggplant though. Healthy plants.

Hi Sudzy,

What you might want to be asking is how long has he been gardening this way and what kind of results does he seem to have year after year?

It sounds to me like he is practicing a form of slash and burn which is hardly a new gardening technique. From my understanding slash and burn is an old practice. Due to the type of soil and all the rain, soil in the rain forest is not very rich. Farmers in that region would select a spot, usually only a few acres and with hand tools, slash all the vegatation then burn it so the nutrients enter the soil. He and his family would farm the cleared land for a few years till the fertility was used up then move on to the next small plot of land. The size of the plot was small enough that the rainforest could easily "heal" itself once they moved on.

I doubt your neighbor would continue using his methods if he failed to get good results. Eventually he'd abandon his practices and search for ones that worked better. If he's been doing this for years, it must be working for him.

Hi Shellva,
That's the thing. IT IS working for him. He's an old-time gardener from up north. I know he's been gardening at his current plot for 5 years. And he's pulling alot of veggies out of that little area. It's amazing. He's uses no fertilizer at all. I guess leaving the crops in the field all winter is benefitual. Correct? You would have some decomposition of the roots. I'm just amazed about how little effort he puts in versus the amount of produce he gets. He's a talker and from what he's said this is pretty much what he's always done!
He thinks I'm a nut to rake/shred save fall leaves and to bother with composting. Laying mulch etc. Thanks fro replying.

Hamilton: thanks for replying! Italian...nope he's a blond guy from WIS. lol. He does have good tomatoes though!

Leaving the plant residue in the ground does no harm and can be beneficial because the soil bacteria will digest that material in place and any nutrients the plants removed would be put right back into the soil. Whether buring the above ground residue would be harmful to the Soil Food Web will depend on what the soil temperature are below that fire. Burning is never a good idea since it does destroy valuable organic matter and pollutes the air we breath, but may not harm what is in the soil if the fire does not last very long and does not heat the soil up beyond what the Soil Food Web finds uncomfortable and they do not have time to move deeper into the soil and away fom that heat.
There are some that still believe that burning "crop" residue on the garden will put the minerals from those residues back into the soil and kill any disease pathogens, and possibly any insect pests, that may be on or around those residues, and that may well do that, but that practice will also kill any beneficial insects that overwintered there as well, and possibly destroy the natural immnunity the Soil Food Web was developing against the potential plant disease. Knowing, today, that burning "crop" residue is not good in any way it is surprising that there are those that still do that.

I've not come across the burning part of the process but leaving dead plants over winter is often recommended here to protect the soil from the effects of winter rains, which wash out nutrients, wash away soil and compact the surface, to shelter beneficial insects and to provide forage for birds. Below soil plant parts would rot over winter. Also the roots of any any legumes would return their nitrogen to the soil as they broke down. I do a bit of tidying in autumn but leave quite a bit of preotective plant material in place over winter. I also compost spreading it at any time of the year it is ready. Mulching is relatively novel here too. Bare earth is the conventional way of doing things. But then we don't have such big issues with water loss or freezing. Mulching is coming in more and more though.

I guess the rain forest farmers never got the memo that slash and burn is a bad practice. The new practices of farming that have moved into that region are so much better. Large tracts of land cleared, farm it, then put cattle on it.

Now that I think of it, I guess some of farmers around here didn't get the memo either. Last year some of the local farmers were burning their fields, very large fields not home gardeners.

Oh, and what about some of the areas in the mid-west that rely on occasional wild fires to replenish the soil? Aren't there sections of our country where the plant life actually requires a good fire in order to set seed? I guess Mama Nature didn't get the memo either.

Sudzy, sounds to me like you have a gardening goldmine in your neighbor there; I'd let him talk while I listened! lol

Michelle

Back during WWII I was just old enough to notice these things. My mothers uncle did the burning bit, my father argued it was wrong. Now lets see: 2008 minus 1943 means 65 years later we are still hearing a few a few arguments about the practice. vbg etc.

I think there is really isn't a right or wrong answer. I think it really depends on the plants. When things are burned they release chemicals in the ground that are needed for some and not by other. By doing this in the spring give enough time in the winter to decay the roots and any thing else that touches the gound. It also helps prevent any diseases that might of started or been on the plants. Also if he adds a lot of leaves to his garden and if he doesn't burn them his soil could turn very acidic but with buring them it helps keep the ph in the correct levels.

But for people like me that have a raised vegitable bed or that have it close to a building or house buring might not be such a good idea.

Thanks for all the replys. You've given me alot to think about. :)

I suspect that your neighbor is living on borrowed time (or borrowed nutrients) much like a person who is burning through the principal of his inheritance. Without putting anything back except a little ash while withdrawing the soil's nutrients, he will more than likely (and suddenly) deplete his soil in the near future.

I wouldn't hold him up as an example of a gardening goldmine.

Wayne

Yeah, I agree, he is mostly mining some very good soil.....

"I think there is really isn't a right or wrong answer."
There is a right answer and burning a field is not a good practice. Valuable nutrients are lost, the air is polluted with unneeded carbon particles and other materials, and the Soil Food Web might be damaged depending on how long the heat from that fire is in contact with the soil. There is no good reason to burn any organic material today.