Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

> and I mean SOME of this information is good as a backup reference, but 
> that information is widely available, any gardening book will contain it, 
> I got a different one years ago at the thrift store for 1.69 and its been 
> infinitely more helpful. "

I followed Steve Solomon's list for a few years and eventually had to give 
up because the man is playing only for an adoring public and does not stand 
for much critique.
Some things that really annoyed me :
- he has no thoughts about gmo's and advises use of gmo seed meal as 
fertilizer.
- He likes the use of pesticides such as roundup
- he has this idea that potassium is deadly and thinks that all gardens are 
already over-supplied with this mineral
- he is dead against building up a soil with compost or organic matter 
because he is convinced this breeds gazillions of crop eating pests apart 
from bringing even more unwanted potassium in.

-what broke this camels back was his dishonesty in connection with the use 
of charcoal as a soil amendment. I have been experimenting with charcoal for 
at least 15 years and have never seen it do any good in the garden and I 
have come to the conclusion that it is extremely bad for the planet to burn 
woods down to charcoal just for soil amendments.
Privately Steve Solomon admitted to me that he was experimenting with 
different concentrations of charcoal in his cannabis beds and that he could 
see no positive results.
Publicly on the list he ridiculed my position stating that there was such a 
hype going about charcoal that it simply had to be true. Maybe so of course, 
how could ten million lemmings be wrong?
john