Gardening Mistake 1- Timing of planting and building up

I have been reading a very good book called "ECO FARMING". I recommend it to anyone who wishes to seriously understand the chemistry and biology of soil building and plant producing.

The first lesson leaned in this book is that I have committed a cardinal sin in my garden, thereby severely reducing yields and hampering nutritional value. That is the sin of bad timing.

What I have done for 3 years is this cycle..
When winter dries out enough to work the ground, I add as much organic material as I can gather (shavings from chicken coop, scrape the pig pen, clean out the barn stalls, grass, etc). I applied that to the garden and tilled it under a couple of times, then plant. I  assumed that organic material was good so it could be added anytime. WRONG!

Organic material is good, it is in fact the only way to increase soil fertility. Chemical bagged fertilizers do NOT increase soil fertility, in fact they reduce it. The mirage is that plants seem to grow better with chemical fertilizer, for a while, but its not real. Over time more and more fertilizer is necessary to achieve the same effect until finally we realize that the land is.. dead.  No, organic material is the ONLY beneficial soil building process in the long run.

However, you can not add uncompleted (green) organic material when plants are growing. Green organic material must be added at the end of fall, when it can sit and compost in ground over the winter before spring planting.  Adding green material in the spring right before planting has a detrimental effect on plants for that year.

The reason behind this is that the organisms in the soil that compost the material USE the same nutrients that plants need to grow, so for the time that the ground life is composting the green material in the soil, the plants are left without nutrients and actually starved.  It is only after the soil life (bacteria, fungus, etc) has finished composting and then dies itself, that the nutrients they consume in the organic material and produce in themselves are deposited in the soil for plants. So here again is a cycle of nature. Organic matter added to the soil is consumed by bacteria and fungus, then the bacteria and fungus die and their remains are higher in nutrients that the original material. Plants can then grow in this and excel in nutrition and hardiness.

Composted organic material ( to the point that it looks like dirt)  is ok to add anytime of course.

So, this spring I wont be adding any additional organic material that is not composted . Next fall I plan on adding everything I can find right after harvest, till it in, make mounds to drain the water better, and let it sit for the winter.