North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["kieran or donna" <redherring@tnaccess.com>]

Burning manure.  It's interesting that you say potash would be the only
thing left.  If potash levels get too high compared to Ca and Mg, it will
make cucumbers bitter.  It also supposedly makes everything green taste
bitter to the animals grazing on the fields where K is too high.  Neil
Kinsey talks about fields where animals are packed in and fed hay from
outside and sometimes given no salt.  He says that the animals will eat the
bitter plants because it's the only greenstuff, but he says the day K gets
higher than Na, the animals will die and the vet won't know why.  Balance,
balance, balance.  But in smaller doses, I note that K is supposed to
increase resistance to disease.
    You know, there was an article some years back in ACRES USA about a
farmer who had a manure pile he had composted and was about to spread on his
fields, when someone offered him cash for it.  He agreed, and after he had
the money in hand, he considered that that was the easiest money he'd made
all year.  He started looking for other stuff to compost... and wound up
making a fortune in the compost business.  So maybe the guy who's burning
his manure just isn't all that good a businessman.  I just read something
about how horse manure was THE thing for gardens, and then a few decades
later people complained they couldn't get it anymore.  I personally want the
stuff composted after getting spiky amaranth in the garden from a small
batch of uncomposted stuff, which makes a good precomposted pile all the
more valuable.  There is a stable here that actually paid someone $1,000 to
haul away a huge pile a few years ago.  Now a nursery has discovered them,
and has taken 3/4 of their newer pile away.  I hope they don't get it all
before I can get a whole bunch myself.  We finally have a truck, but it's
too dang wet to drive near the garden.    Donna