"0tterbot" wrote in message
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote in message

No doubt that horse poop has helped :-))

i'll say! i've even put it on a spot where there actually wasn't any
topsoil at all; i scraped together some straw & leaves & put my blessed
horsepoo on top & mixed it all around a bit, & that spot is giving me my
best-ever lettuces (i'm not generally good at lettuce, but these ones are
pretty good!) all praise horse poo!

Perhaps it wasn't the horse poop but cosmic forces???????????????

Actually I'm always gobbsmacked by how astoundingly well the earth can
respond. I started my veg garden on what had effectively been "virgin"
soil. This farm was originally a soldier settler block which wasn't cleared
until the 60s and where the veg garden is had never even been pasture
improved - just the claysubsoil (to describe it as being topsoil would be
laughable) with lots of quartz and shale rocks and not a worm in sight and
with limited native grasses as cover. Your description of your place fits
very well with my own experience. But, give even that unpromising start a
bit of help and care and all that soil biota just seems to burst into life,
but the effort has to go on for a few years.

And what did he have to say (in a nut shell if you can give it) about
Formula 500 or was he too long winded?

it was actually covered very briefly. even more briefly:

firstly, assume you've read the book & are now more aware of bacteria's
relationship to worms & soil generally. :-)

in short, the 500 is composted cow poo that is absolutely chockers with
bacteria, in particular actinomycetes. it's been composted over winter at
a depth where the bacteria are warm enough to still be happy & eat the
poo. because you have dug & buried the cow horns, there is plenty of
oxygen available for them to complete their task. the fact that the horn
is, er, horn-shaped means oxygen can "follow" the bacteria down into the
horn (people have tried with other containers & it didn't work). bd-ers
think the keratin in the horn must have some sort of positive effect but
nobody knows (i'm thinking it might be because air can still pass through
horn somewhat? at any rate, a mr podolinsky, bd-er extraordinare, thinks
other containers block the "cosmic forces" but i am disinclined to think
_that_ is what they are blocking.)

when you dig it up & put it in water & stir it vigorously, you are
oxygenating the bacteria all over again, & so their population explodes.
(at this point he started on with "cosmic forces" & my eyes just rolled
right out of my head). bacteria can double in quantity in 20 minutes with
oxygenation, so as the stirring process is a long one, the result is a
great deal of bacteria. you strain, etc, & apply the solution at night, as
u.v. light would kill the bacteria, so by the time the sun comes up the
bacteria has had a chance to work its way into the soil, and the fact that
it's full moon apparently means soil moisture is drawn up somewhat to aid
the bacteria in entering. b.d. soil is therefore just hyper-bacterialised
organic soil. with so much more bacteria, the other animals (including
worms) benefit, and the whole system is therefore improved & improves on
itself.

that's about it!!

Thank you for the description, which actually makes sense when put in that
way. Friendly bacteria, bred in an environment much as we would breed
earthworms and then used in a way that will cause least loss of the
bacterial benefits.

i love these sorts of ideas, but all the faff about cosmic forces etc just
puts me off.

Yes - rather gag making but then it does seem to work, but I keep asking
could it work without all that faffing about and the way you describe it,
then it would appear that it could.

are you thinking about converting your farm to biodynamics?

No bloody way! I like our animals to be protected by the correct
vaccinations for illnesses such as the clostridial diseases and from my
reading it seems that none of the broader "organic" schools of thought
believe in the use of vaccinations. I think that is daft and flying in the
face of good use of science. However, I certainly don't like to use
chemicals willy nilly either. Even glyphosate, which I think is a
reasonably good product, I use very sparingly and only when I can't get rid
of a weed by using a less intrusive method.

I've been nagging my husband for years now to check out the Yeomans Plow
(how's that for an Aussie company? - silly sods cant' even spell plough!).
The Yeomans seems to me to be a very sensible invention for soil airation
and improvement along the same lines and we veg gardeners try to achieve all
the time and I have finally managed to get him to show an interest - the
drought has done some good at long last but we still have to use some
herbicides on the pastures as some weeds are too invasive to be dealt with
by hand.