North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Jim F <bonfire58_2000@yahoo.com>]

     I'm getting flak from folks who ask, "How can you say that pine needles don't make soil acid when countless nurserymen and landscape professionals believe otherwise?"  I've also had an editor from a national gardening magazine ask a similar question.

     To such questions, I can only reply that for a thousand or more years, or more, people believed in "Spontaneous Generation".  Simply put, everyone believed that if one were to put dirty underwear on the floor in a corner of a room, it would generate mice.  Then there's the notion of Alchemy when the greatest minds of History believed that base elements could be transformed into gold.

     Old ideas die hard!

     I have had some positive feedback from a few extension agents who have come to assert that pine needles are no more acidic than other organic matter.

     For the doubters, I can only suggest they buy a pH meter and test for themselves.  Mellinger's sells an inexpensive pH meter for around $20.00 - Buy one and test for yourself.

     Then there's a couple of letters suggesting that the reference to 'Old Wive's Tales' might be a sexist remark.  That phrase comes to us from the days when women were denied a formal education.  The truths and untruths they came up to try to explain the forces of Nature stemmed from that which appeared to be true.

 

Jim Fruth

---

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Search - Find what you’re looking for faster.