Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Regrettable. But interesting about biochar.

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 12/5/2010 at 6:47 PM John D'hondt wrote:

>> 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
>
>
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