In article ,
Bill Rose wrote:

In article ,
Jan Flora wrote:

In article , Charlie wrote:

On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 12:45:40 -0900, Jan Flora wrote:

In article ,
Homer wrote:

This is the first year that I have planted brandywine.
The plants are turning purple... is this normal?

The plants need phosphorus. Fertilize them with a
"high middle number" fertilizer. Like an 8-32-16 or
something.

If you're trying to be organic, bonemeal is the
middle number organic source, but I don't know
how fast a plant can uptake it...

Jan

Rock phosphate powder supposedly has a quick uptake, but yet is
released long term as the plant needs it.


http://www.yardener.com/RockPhosphatebyEspoma.html

Care
charlie

Huh. The more I learn about this stuff, the more I realize
that I don't know squat. I'm just learning about soil microbes
and stuff.

Decided not to till this year -- just kept my old mounded beds
from last year, dug holes for each plant, put a handful of
composted cow manure and a tiny bit of prilled lime in each hole
and planted. So far, the little plants are looking *really* happy.

My neighbor, the Goddess of Organic Gardening and a founding
mother of our local Farmers Market, just gave me a 50# sack
of codfish bonemeal that got wet. The bonemeal clumped, so I'll
have to smash it into powder again.

She said that our young, glacial soils are way deficient in
phosphorus, so to use 5# per 100' row of bonemeal! (That's a
LOT, sports fans.) Where we live was buried under 100' of
ice as recently as 8,000-10,000 years before present. In
geologic time, that's yesterday. Or late last night.

Look for this book: "Teaming With Microbes," by Jeff Lowenfels.
It's expensive, so see if your library has it. If not, ask them
to buy it. Or ILL it. (Interlibrary loan.)

Jan

Jan,
you said the frost goes pretty deep there. Do you still have earthworms?
I mulched pretty good at the end of last year and this has been the best
year for my soil. I believe one of posters in this NG (simy1) was
saying that he mulched and when he wanted to plant he pulled the mulch
aside and planted. Got the feeling that he was in a permanent state of
mulching and side dressing. It should do wonders for the worms. That's
where my gardening is going until I feel the need to make a change of
course. This turning the soil every year is a young guy's game. Time to
turn to technique instead of brawn.

I added "Teaming With Microbes," by Jeff Lowenfels to my back log of
books. When it comes in, I think I'll need it. I just started a new one
about people's general lack of interest in genocide. Seems like I spend
too much time looking at the beast when I should be concentrating on the
strawberry. But, I guess that is what this book is about.

Have a good day mucking about.

- Billy

We have earthworms up the wahzoo anywhere that commercial fertilizers
haven't been used. Since we're lazy, we don't insist on everything
being neat, clean, groomed and "just so." We let the weeds grow, die,
mulch the ground and feed the worms and the soil.

Our soil takes it's sweet time warming up in the spring, so I pull
the mulch off my beds as soon as the snow goes off them and don't
put any back until things are up, growing good and looking happy.

My neighbor said to side dress the raised beds in the garden with
compost or composted cow poop, so the soil microbes can eat the
stuff and flourish. Sounds good to me!

My hens go nuts for earthworms. Since the hens produce so much good
stuff for my soil, I don't begrudge them a few worms. They also eat
bugs, weeds, weed seeds and anything else they can get to. (I have
to cage my plants until they're fairly big, or the biddies will
eat them or scratch around them and dig them up. My main veggie
gardens have 8' tall moose fencing around them, made out of old
drift net -- commercial fishing net.)

People are confronted with horrors on a daily basis on the network
news. It's hard to stay good & ****ed-off about something as common
as genocide when people are afraid of freeway snipers on their
daily commute, about being in the 7/11 when some bonehead junkie
with a gun decides to rob it, and all of the other random violence
that seems to be the norm down there in the small states. (And
people ask why I moved to Alaska? Haha. An armed society is a
polite society, and up here, *everyone* is armed. We're not at
the top of the food chain here.)

You can read Jeff Lowenfels' weekly gardening column in the
Anchorage Daily News. http://www.adn.com I think he publishes
every Thursday. There's an archive of old columns. It's in the
"Life" section. Hit the links. Holler if you get lost on the
way and I'll try to write specific directions to get there.

Another cool thing is Marion Owen's weekly newsletter, The
Upbeet Gardener. http://www.plantea.com/mailinglist-current-issue.htm

Marion lives over on Kodiak Island, a 12 hour ferry ride from
me. Her newsletter is often the highlight of my week. She's
all about organic gardening, producing your own food, edible
landscaping, thinking outside the box; her list of 163 things
you can compost is well worth a trip to her website --
http://www.plantea.com/compost-materials.htm

Okay, I have to go get dirty. I've got a couple of flats of
stuff that are waiting to be transplanted.

Jan
Bedouin proverb: If you have no troubles, buy a goat.