Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Pat Meadows <pat@meadows.pair.com>]

On Mon, 03 Jul 2006 10:02:35 -0600, you wrote:

>
>Various cover crop seeds are carried by feed stores everywhere. Here's one
>I just saw online http://cooperseeds.com/organics.php3?cat=Cover%20Crops . 
>
>What's puzzling to me at this point is how best to use amendments like bone
>meal, fish meal, etc since I have a quantity picked up at Rowlands' going
>out of business sale in Abq. Mixed in compost for spreading on the soil
>surface to sprout cover crops? Or double digging in this summer heat? Like
>some others here I'm no "spring chicken" ;-) 

Paul, I'd be very wary of bone meal - I wouldn't want to
spread it around my garden if there's even a vanishingly
slim possibility of it containing a BSE-type organism. 

There's a ton of information out there on this; but here's
just one page:  http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/%7Ecomm/bse-ra.html

If the FDA thinks it's even vaguely possible that
*cosmetics* could carry BSE, I'd think it more likely that
bone meal could.  

Fish meal, OTOH, as far as I know, would be OK to use.

Pat (who is very glad she doesn't use any cosmetics!)
-- Gardening in northern Pennsylvania.

Growing some of our own food, eating local foods,
cooking basic foods; transforming the planet -
one cucumber at a time, one salad at a time, one
meal at a time.