What Ken is asking about is physics. Heat transfer occurs when a warm object, your hand, is placed on an object that has a lower temperature and when your hand looses heat you perceive coolness. The case of your refrigerator is made of a substance that is a good conductor or heat hence your hand looses heat fairly fast and you feel that heat transfer and that case feels cold. If you used a thermometer to measure the temperature you would find the case to be about room temperature, plenty warm enough to germinate seeds. Heat flows from high temperature to low temperature and the greater the temperature differential the colder an object will feel. When you step outside on a day when the air temperature is 20 F you feel colder faster then on a day the air temperature is 70 F because of the rapid heat loss.

1. Yes, and it gets complicated trying to explain the differences between Nitrates and Nitrites. In a good, healthy soil the Soil Food Web, the soil microbes, change the various types of Nitrogen into what they plants can use and in many instances the plants are "fed" that N by some types of fungi. Some forms of Nitrogen are more readily available than others, more soluble, and are therefore more susceptible to leaching from the soil and polluting your groundwater. 2. Whether the N in an animal manure is more soluble or not depends on the form it is in. Poultry manure and horse manure have very readily available forms of N and so are "hot" while cattle, sheep, and goat manures are more stable and are considered "cold". All animal manures should be composted before being put in the garden, fresh manure should not be put on a garden plot, especially if food is being grown there. 3. Poultry and horse manures have very readily available forms of N and that availability is what makes them "hot".

Oh... I also think this CHART is pretty phenomenal. It lists cover crops and their specific uses. The article I posted above is pretty detailed. For example the Barbara Pleasant (Mother Earth) article linked above, she suggests "biodrilling" into clay soil with the sharp roots of daikon radishes and canola rape. Then you can turn to the chart I like here and find out that diakon attracts beneficial insects and loosens heavy soil, but it doesn't fix Nitrogen or add much organic matter. However, Canola will add organic matter, keep out weeds and tolerate the heavy soil. Used together its a pretty good pair, but still doesn't fix any Nitrogen. I think these two resources together are great as tools for selecting the best cover crops (together with zone info, etc) but they don't give me a good idea of when to plant what in zone 10 California. Hence....I'm still begging for a good calender of which common cover crops can be planted/turned in which months. I'd like to see: buckwheat, clover, barley, peas/beans, oats, radish (esp daikon), rape, rye, vetch. Here is a link that might be useful: Cover Crop Chart - Functions of various plants

Firstly, deep ripping would be a problem at this point, I don't have the funds to do something like that today and I have some obstacles(dry well, sprinkler supply lines) to deal with. The last time I disturb the soil(tillage) will be this year, my street has many neighbors with huge trees, I just bought a heavy duty leaf shredder, so when they place there leaves in bags for the city to collect I am going to snatch them up, grind them up, then till them up in the compost/soil layer I have now. Point taken on the smell from decomposing radish. I have thought about blue lupine and will probably integrate that into my plans. I think I will find around 8 or 10 different plants, then plant them in bunches separated by either a ground cover or some partially composted wood chips. So far my options for plants are narrowed to these for nitrogen fixation: Blue Lupine Bush Clover Crimson Clover Sweet Yellow Clover Then for organic matter: Black Eyed Susan Buckwheat Daikon Radish Sunflowers I am open to suggestions. I will not be planting like it is a field, I plan to plant just several plants of each in bunches, the bunches being arranged so the nitrogen fixers fertilize the organic matter producing plants. I have to make it look sorta decorative not to get the city on my back. I am not wanting to do any plowing after this season. I am trying to build the soil food web and will even be putting in a path of stepping stones to avoid compaction. In spring I will buy some earthworms from a bait shop then seed my front yard with them. Each year I hope to grind up my neighbors leaves to feed the worms, until they wise up and use them as nature has done for years. Then the following year I plan on planting three trees, hopefully by then I can get some worms and other organisms breaking up the soil as long as I keep supplying the organic matter. I will be collecting the above ground organic matter and making some compost for the spring in my back yard, along with any spare organic matter from my neighbors(they are throwing it away). My reasoning for this is my city has an ordinance that weeds that are cut down must be removed withing X hours. Each year I hope to have a steady stream of leaf mold and plant roots to keep the worms happy. I have attached a photo of the yard after I had tilled about 3" of compost into the top 6" of soil and had built up some raised beds.