In article , Pam wrote:

Dave Gower wrote:

Some people have balanced informed views on gardening. Others are
eco-fanatics who really care nothing about any living creatures, only about
their egos and agendas.

Balanced, perhaps - informed, not very. The suggestion to use peat moss as an
organic fertilizer is indicative of a serious lack of information. The
nutrient
value of peat moss is nil.

I use peat moss for almost nothing except mixed with sand in a few buried
bog-containers for carniverous plants that want pretty much inert soil,
getting most of their nutrients from catching insects. I do, however, use
a great deal of leaf mold throughout the gardens, which is also rather
inert (certainly not rich in nitrogen), yet causes the nitrogen levels of
soils to raise.

The majority of accessible nitrogen in soils is released by bacterial
action & the amount of accessible nitrogen in composted manure, for
example, is not measurably great either -- composted manures come awfully
close to inert themselves. But the amount of organic material in the soil
defines the population of microorganisms that produce nitrogen, & to great
extent, the nitrogen content of a fertilizer is beside to the point. Also
many plants lock nitrogens into soil, taken even from the very
atmosphere, so that nitrogen-poor soils can actually be improved with no
artifical application of any compost or fertilizer of any kind, but by the
mere presence of pea-family plants, clovers, cotoneasters, or manzanitas.

As my understanding of the process comes much more from reading gardening
literature than by a deeper understanding of molecular science, I could
well have some of it wrong. But I'm fairly certain that even an "inert"
organic enrichment such as peat, by encouraging the healthful organisms
that produce nitrogen, ARE in fact adequate "fertilizers" in organically
balanced lawns, because the issue is not how well it functions as a
fertilizer, but how well it functions encouraging microorganisms that
produce nutrients of varioius kinds, bacterial release of nitrogen,
symboitoc fungal release of other plant-accessible nutrients, & so on.

An article by Christopher J. Starbuck of the University of Missouri
Department of Horticulture, "Improving Lawn & Landscape Soils" (at
muextension.missouri.edu) states that peat is as good as composted manure
as a soil enrichment for lawns, whether worked deep into the soil before
planting, or when aerating & surface-treating for improvement of soil
under established lawns. In fact, when listing possible lawn enrichments,
he places peat first, though not stating that any one surface-applied
choice is better than another, the fact that he did list peat first would
seem to have some meaning.

Many other authors seem to agree that the quality of the nutrient is NOT
in a bag of chemical ingredients, but in maintaining an organic content
that permits an extremely active microorganism population such as permit
soils to take care of their own chemical processes very naturally. If,
however, a lawn is chemicalized on a regular basis, likely the
microorganisms are very unhealthy or low in concentrations, & only then,
during such harmful lawn-care methods as have alas become "normal," an
inert enrichment would be less effective because artificially treating &
retreating the soil attempts continously to repair conditions that are
inherently second-rate. Recurring & persistant applications of all sorts
of chemical to kill the pathogens that arrive when healthful
microorganisms are killed off, to kill the plants (weeds) that are not the
selected grass, chemical tinkering to raise & lower pH in lawns so
unhealthy they cannot help but fall out of balance, to artificially
fertilize beyond any degree of necessity if organic practices had been
followed instead, to kill insect larvae that attack the typical kind of
unbalanced lawn that most suburbanite chemical-loving morons believe they
require, & to replace nutrients that are bagged & carted off by
metropolitan garbage collectors rather than mulch-mowed or composted for
recycling back in the yard. Chemical use leads to the "necessity" of
further chemical use in an endless cycle of harmful practices attempting
to repair the effects of harmful practices. And the more moronic, menacing
& horrific a lawn-putz's chemical reliance, the more certain that putz
will be that organic gardening is the province of big ego & agendas.

And of course people that squeel like little piggies about ecological
"agendas" (believing as they do that caring about the environment is
inherently skanky) never quite seem to "get it" -- that an agenda to
promote safer, cleaner, more wholesome gardening practices is vastly to be
preferred over the harmful agenda to remain chemical-reliant consumers of
needless products, the accumulative effect of which have been proven to be
doing ongoing harm to the environment, often harming even the immediate
environment of lawn or garden their chemical-reliant habits purport to
assist. For THAT agenda "Buy, Consume, Die" becomes "Buy into the
PetroChemical Agenda, Toxify Everything In Sight, & Die a Cancerous
Festering Death Twenty Years Sooner Than Was Otherwise Necessary."

Your commentary below I quite admired.

-paghat the ratgirl

Tom's "agenda", as you put it, is to help discourage the mindless use of
chemicals to control any gardening ill. Chemically enhanced lawns
(fertilizers,
weed and feeds, and other chemical pesticides) develop a dependence on those
chemicals to remain viable, requiring consistent, repeat applications
and copius
amounts of irrigation to to approach even a visusal appearance of good health.

Current horticultural science tends towards a more naturalistic approach -
improving soil fertility is paramount, whether through aeration and
topdressing
with compost, modest applications of bio-innoculated organically derived
fertilizers, aerated compost tea or the use of self-mulching mowers. Feed the
soil and you'll feed the plants - it is as simple as that. Eco-fanaticism has
nothing to do with it. It is a smart, practical and responsible approach to
plant husbandry, regardless of the type of plant in question. It just doesn't
feed the pocketbooks of the lawn product manufacturers or the mow, blow and go
twits who think that owning a pickup truck and a lawn mower has somehow
endowed
them with any kind of horticultural knowledge.

The following rather lengthy treatise was prepared by the Seattle Public
Utilities Resource Conservation Division in conjunction with the King County
Water and Land Resources and Hazardous Waste Management Program for lawn and
turf care professionals. It references some of the leading scientific
works and
publications regarding ecologically sound and sustainable turf
management. This
publication surpasses the knowledge base of anyone posting at this forum and
supports EXACTLY what Tom was trying to communicate - there is NO need to rely
on chemicals to grow or maintain a lawn when other, more responsible, less
environmentally damaging and less EXPENSIVE methods are available to the
average
homeowner.

http://www.cityofseattle.net/util/la...s/Grnlwn61.pdf

pam - gardengal

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/