Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] "Soul of Soil: A Soil-Building Guide for Master Gardenters and Farmers" by Joe Smillie and Grace Gershuny

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Art Corbit" <art_c@cox.net>
  • To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] "Soul of Soil: A Soil-Building Guide for Master Gardenters and Farmers" by Joe Smillie and Grace Gershuny
  • Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2006 11:38:38 -0500

Very good point. I also believe all the pollution in our rain water is
killing off a bunch of the little desirable critters in our soil. As time
marches on this will get even worse.

Art


----- Original Message -----
From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, August 04, 2006 10:37 AM
Subject: [Livingontheland] "Soul of Soil: A Soil-Building Guide for Master
Gardenters and Farmers" by Joe Smillie and Grace Gershuny


> Subject: Re: Garden doing poorly
> From: npetroff@bowdoin.edu
> lehmanslife digest: August 03, 2006
>
>
> A plant needs a balanced diet. The main requirements are
>
> Nitrogen - for healthy leaves (from manure, compost, etc)
> Potassium - for flowers (wood ashes are a good source)
> Phoshorus - for healthy root system (from rock phosphate, etc)
>
> This needs to be balanced. Just like protein is needed by humans to build
> muscles, but if the diet has too much protein and not enough fiber and so
> on, you can wreck your kidneys.
>
> Similarly if a plant gets too much potassium (in the form of wood ash), it
> can also hurt the plant.
>
> I have a friend who is an organic crop certifier. He told me that too
much
> wood ash can choke up the plant's system, so that it can't get enough
> nitrogen for the leaves and stem.
>
> Before he told me that, I had an experience with some sunflowers. I
> thought I would make sure that they produced lots of flowers, so I put
> plenty of wood ash on them. Actually it was too much. Instead of just
one
> or two flowers on a plant, I had 15 flowers -- but the sunflower could not
> get enough nitrogen, so it was only 2 feet high. And the flowers were
only
> 3 inches wide!!
>
> Also, don't forget, plants "digest" the nutrients in soil by using
> mycorryhizal fungi in the soil. (Which is analogous to the enzymes in a
> cow's stomach which help it digest grasses and hay.) It could be that an
> excess of ashes has killed lots of thesesneeded fungi, so that the
> nutrients in the soil and not being sufficiently taken up by the plant.
>
> One fascinating book on soil nutrition is "Soul of Soil: A Soil-Building
> Guide for Master Gardenters and Farmers" by Joe Smillie and Grace
Gershuny.
>
> -- Noma
> in Maine
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Livingontheland mailing list
> Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page