Ross@home wrote in message
On Tue, 30 Nov 2010 20:26:36 +1100, "FarmI" ask@itshall be given
wrote:
"Bill who putters" wrote in message
...


I always thought that what was local was best and cheaper. I swear by
wood chips. Marton NJ 20 miles away gave me green sand and I purchased
granite dust in the day. Other things brought in was various manures if

I cleaned it up the coop or stall.
Green manures are a given sort of like roots trying to help the soil.
Dried blood and bone meal too. (Prions) I've also composted barber
hair and sea weed along with fish and game innards.

Question ....are some amendments deleterious more than others?

Peat got me questioning thinking.

It's a question most gardeners I know grapple with Bill. I live in the
country and the garden on this farm has been made on the side of a stoney
slope. Farmers don't put their houses on good soil, they put it on the
shitty stuff because income comes from the good soil.

The unimproved soil was appalling - dunno how to describe it but it's the
colour of the poo a calf with the scours produces - yellow, unhealthy
looking stuff - it's full of small rocks quartz and shale/mudstone.

Everything I need for the garden except animal poop has to be brought in,
but to get some of the animal poop eg, the chook poop, I need food for the
chooks to be brought in. I have to hunt the plops the cattle leave all
over
the paddocks.

I recycle and return to the soil as much as I can but all rose prunings go
to the tip and in spring when I'm overwhelmed with giant weeds, some of
those go to the tip too as I can't get to them before they get seed heads
and I can never make and turn a hot compost. My compost tends to be more
weed piles that rot over time. I'm better at tumble compost bins. Dead
chhoks get buried in the bottom of these weed piles.

I've found straw bales work as a good soil improver for me and also
sawdust.
The sort of quatities of peat that you Nth Americans write about using has
never, ever been possible here in Oz. The most we could even buy would be
a
small pack that could be used to line hanging baskets with so we've never
had the chance to use it to add to beds to 'lighten' the soil. In fact I
can't even imagine why you'd use it to 'lighten' the soil. I add sand and
rotted stuff from the bottom of my weed piles or rotted hay bales to break
up my clayey soil. That and turning in old dead stuff dropped on the
surface from weeding.

Interesting question. I'll have to think about it some more.


In other words, as they say in the real estate business, it all boils
down to location, location, location.
Here in my location, Southern Ontario, Canada, in spring, every garden
center, hardware store, big box store or roadside stand has bales of
sphagnum peat moss for sale. Usual size is 3.8 cu. ft. and the bales
are compacted making them relatively heavy and hard as a brick. Price
averages CND$8.00/bale. End of season on sale prices can be as much as
50% off.

Well of course it's there and for sale and even goes on special! There's
bucks to be made and people who'll buy.

According to the International Peat Conference, Canada has an
estimated 272 million acres of peatland, second only to the former
USSR (371 million acres).
Australia & Oceania combined have less than 2.5 million acres.

Therefore, in reply to your post where you stated:

Quote
I'm stunned that any gardener these days would recommend, approve or
in any way encourage the use of either spagnum or peat. The use of
these in any garden where the gardener has even any mild concern for
the environment is a total no-no.
Coconut fibre is OK and is a very good replacement.
End Quote

I, and many of my fellow gardeners have very much more than a mild
concern for the environment and, if we lived in Oz, where sphagnum
peat moss is basically an "endangered species", we would probably
agree with you.
However, it is unfair to belittle gardeners in another area where it
is a renewable, economical, readily available and excellent soil
amendment.

You didn't read the cites did you?

Without the slightest twinge of conscience, I will eschew coconut
fibre and continue to use sphagnum peat moss, along with material from
our own compost pile(s) on the gardens.

You will of course do as you choose, but horses and water come to mind.