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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Organic and us
  • Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 22:36:49 EDT

Bill,

>My impression is that standards are much stricter than they used to be.
>It's easy to find the evidence of that.

Unless we are talking at cross purposes, it would be very hard to determine
that. Before the USDA definition there were scores of organizations
certifying
a farm as organic and each had their own set of definitions. A few states
also had definitions.

Now it is illegal for any state or organization to have any standards for
'organic' that are in any way different from the USDA definition. Since the
USDA definition permits inorganic nitate salts, no state or organization can
exclude that from the defintion of organic, for example.



>I couldn't find the post I wanted to quote. You were saying that it
>couldn't be any good unless there were dozens of compost bins. I think
>that direct manuring is probably one method they might use to circumvent
>the composting process.

To add an inch of finished compost to a growing bed, you need from 20" to 30"
of raw organic material. I'm making these estimates from experience. For
example, I shovel out the grass and sod on the permiters of beds and in the
paths and heap that up over beds as in situ compost piles. It's dense
materail
with a good amount of soil, and yet a 36" pile will reduce to 10" by the end
of
summer and then to 4" or 5" by the next spring. I take half of that off and
put it on another bed and plant into the other half.

In some piles I don't have sod with a lot of soil. Grass clippings, weeds,
sawdust. manure,. garden waste, old hay, etc. in a 3' heap will reduce to
just
2" by the next spring.

So when I don't see compost piles on "organic" farms, and it is suggested
that they direct compost or sheet compost, then at some point the entire farm
is
under a 3' layer of organic material. Unlikely I'm thinking.

And at any rate, adding things bought from a catalog is foreign to the
original idea of organic which has to do with building the soil, not
fertilizing the
plants.

James




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