[basjoos]

One way I have been reducing my garden's need for fertilizers has been to let any mimosa seedlings that pop up grow whenever they come up in a location that isn't in the way of any of the vegetables. They'll grow 6 feet high during the growing season, provide convenient support for any pole beans or cucumbers growing nearby, fix nitrogen, and then add biomass to the soil when I cut them back in the fall. Then next spring they will grow back from the roots so I can do it all over again. I also allow other nitrogen-fixing pea family plants like clover to grow whenever they don't interfere with the vegetables. I'll weaken and slow down their growth by thinning or partially up rooting them when establishing a new vegetable crop in their midst so the vegetables can can outcompete and overgrow them.

The whole idea in naturalizing the garden is to keep enough plants growing on the soil at all times so that it mimics a meadow and the amount of organic matter in the soil keeps increasing with time. This contrasts with the weed-free, bare-earthed-except-for-the-few-crop-plants conventional garden. I never have more than a small area of bare soil exposed at a time. I will usually sow seed or plant seedlings of the next crop while the existing crop is still in place or clear a small space to allow the dormant vegetable seeds already in the soil to germinate. For me, weeds aren't an undesirable element of the garden, but are simply part of the garden ecosystem, whose changing mix of species gives me valuable information about the changing fertility of the soil. They provide additional organic matter for the soil, and add complexity of the garden ecosystem, making it more difficult for garden pests to find the crop plants in their midst.

This natural farming method is unlike conventional synthetic fertilizer gardening where the organic matter gets oxidized out of the soil so that, over time, the soil level in the garden drops below that of the surrounding lawn. It is also unlike permaculture where they keep adding organic matter from sources outside the garden to keep the organic soil content up or grow and turn in green manure crops every few years to build up the soil organics.

Loss of organic matter via soil oxidation may not be a major problem in the cooler northern climates, but down here in the hot, humid southern summer, organic matter quickly oxidizes away leaving behind the red clay mineral soil unless you keep replenishing it via manuring or plant growth. This region of the South originally had a thick, rich grayish topsoil that was oxidized away to red clay by clearing away the native forest, plowing the ground, and growing repetitive crops of cotton until all of the nutrients in the soil were mined out. Then the land was abandoned or converted to pine plantations or pasture. The soil in my garden is gradually turning from red to grey as I rebuild the levels of organic matter in the soil.