In article , Charlie wrote:

On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:19:09 -0500, Bill who putters
wrote:


Seems there is a large issue with disease and it's containment. I
believe healthy soil and perhaps not planting the same every year in the
same spot is wise. Fallow I think is the word which I equate with rest
and healing. Give it ( the soil a break without intrusion) and come
back latter with another attempt to find out what harmony may mean.
The tomato blight seems to suggest 2 years but Green peppers are
essentially banished from our area due too long lived soil pathogens.

This brings to mind 4-H camps when young and conservation folks
presenting about crop rotation, fallow ground, fertilization with
animal manure. Fallow is a concept long abandoned, cover crops and
all and giving the soil rest and rebuild...given over to big-agri-biz
and chemferts and roundup ready everything. Many is the hour I have
spent in my youth walking bean fields and cutting weeds and later
riding a tractor, cultivating crops, removing weeds and aerating the
soil, etc. (yep, guilty as charged)

Had to spend a bit of time at the local Chevy dealership recently,
getting a vehicle inspection and sat visiting with the elderly owner
for an hour or so. Good converse, as it turns out we both have many
old characters in common from the last fifty years. Even a Playboy
Bunny, believe it or not. Part of the conversation involved the large
amount of ground being farmed by single proprietors...ten thousand
acres for one fellow, spread over a large chunk of northwest Missouri.
His "crew" plants, sprays poison, and never sees the crop again until
harvest.

Lots of love involved, eh?

Charlie

Industrial farming consequence via Union of concerned scientists.

http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agric...acts/impacts_i
ndustrial_agriculture/costs-and-benefits-of.html

--
Bill Garden in shade zone 5 S Jersey USA
http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending