Type of soil?

[Leo Maximus]

... we agree, you allow life to flourish, where it was banished, we are more on a time scale problem, life would have returned alone without your intervention but maybe not before the end of yours unfortunately
you opted for the most muscular intervention
your example still confirms a point, heals the living of your soil, your vegetables will grow

We agree !

I do not remember having found any trace of life in the land of origin that I sifted. I heal the living of my soil now that it exists. Vegetables grow very well, for years, without chemistry.

[Leo Maximus]

... I wonder about "how much more production" compared to "how much effort". All over the long term.

I believe this is a calculation that never came into play. The original land produced nothing. The only thing I regret is having planted Cupressocyparis Leylandii (Leyland cypress) around the land. It was very bad advice because they had to be pulled out by hand afterwards (70!). That was worse than the "free gym", it was precious time totally wasted. The Leyland cypress is a magnificent tree, but it has no place around a vegetable garden. Leyland cypress + vegetable garden = disaster.

... Your testimony was "wobbly": as soon as you concentrate the fine earth where you sift, leaving a hole next to it, it is no longer comparable. The surface that you leave (the hole), it must be integrated in your assessment: if you double the thickness of fine earth, by removing the pebbles on 2 m² and by putting the fine earth on 1 m², it is necessary that your production on this m² is double what you get on the 2 m² without doing anything. Otherwise, you did the gym for free, which is very, very good. But not necessarily accessible to more "worn out", older, more limited people (like I am).

The volume of "void" created by the sieving is compensated by the "anti-void" of organic matter provided by the composting. The level of the garden has been roughly constant for 25 years.

"Older people? More limited"?

[Did67]

The volume of "void" created by the sieving is compensated by the "anti-void" of organic matter provided by the composting. The level of the garden has been roughly constant for 25 years.

We misunderstood: in your case, it may be compensated ...

I wanted to say that in the general case, and on significant surfaces (I hear orders of magnitude of 1 to a few hundred square meters), the demonstration is wobbly:

- example you have 200 m² in all
- you sift them
- to maintain the level, you bring the fine soil of 100 m² on the others 100 m²
- at constant level, the volume of fine soil will have doubled; the effect on crops, as on your irises, will necessarily be "very clear", and fortunately!
- but you end up with 100 m² "emptied" of loose soil
- it would remain to be evaluated if the 200 m² without removing the pebbles + the contributions of organic matter that you put in your hole would not produce as much as these 100 m² "improved", less work ...
- in the long term, I am quite convinced, given what Manfred Wenz obtained in Germany on pebbles of the Rhine (in field crops).

Your words had just the "fault" of suggesting that sifting is the only possible way. And that the yield is higher. It is the one you chose and which is respectable. But I get lots of people who are physically impaired and who believed that they could no longer garden, so much they were convinced that "without tillage, it does not grow!"

[Leo Maximus]

... Your words just had the "fault" of suggesting that sifting is the only possible way. And that the yield is higher.

?
This is the way I chose but it was not the only one. There was a more radical way of replacing the original land with so-called expensive garden soil. I preferred another way: to preserve my land and revive it. Sieving made cultivation possible where soil life had disappeared. The forced intake of organic matter revived it very quickly. The yield is necessarily better, the garden produces well with little work, without chemistry or plowing. I sow, I plant, I harvest.

... It is the one you chose and which is respectable. But I get lots of people who are physically impaired and who believed that they could no longer garden, so much they were convinced that "without tillage, it does not grow!" ...

Very good, congratulations!
Masanobu Fukuoka has been preaching the 50 fundamental principles of his agriculture for 60/4 years in the desert, the first is "do not plow or turn the land".