In article ,
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote:
"Bill who putters" wrote in message
http://www.theinformedgardener.com
I for one was brought up with the idea that burning bones was a good
addition to the garden soil. This evolved into a Tablespoon per bulb
bone meal with a dash of dried blood.
The garden myths section is a good read.
I looked at the bone meal item in the myths section. Yet again as we've
seen in recent cites, there is no mention that what is being said cannot be
universally applied. Not one caveat so it must be a universal truth. Not!
She mentions Proteas being sensitive to too much phosphorus and that they
ahve evolved that way but doesn't make the leap from that to link Proteas
with country of origin (and others in that family in other countrys where
that family of plants grow) and that those countries are deficient in
Phosphorus.
Good for newbies and good
for us set in our ways. Wonder why or how to do garden tasks is laid
out in an organized manner. I'd love to see the same organization
concerning traditional ways.
I read the PDF lightly as old dogs have a hard time changing and I'm
not sure she addresses issues I value like wood chips which I work in my
way.
I didn't bother once I'd read the bone meal section and noted her failure to
mention caveats and make appropriate linkages.
She repeated that if phosphorus levels are too high, over applied,
whatever, she never said what too high was. She gave no way of measuring
short of a chemical analysis.
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The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability - Paperback (May
1, 2009) by Lierre Keith
http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myt...ability/dp/160
4860804/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1300861296&sr=1-1
(Available at better libraries near you)
22 The Vegetarian Myth
And then there was K, potassium, available in ash, bones, urine,
manure and some cover crops. I could pretend I'd find a supply of ash‹
woodsroves being as ubiquitous as maple trees in western
Massachusettsand grow some cover crops, but 1 think by the time I got to
"K" I was too intellectually exhausted to bother. My food had to eat
before I ate it.
There were finer points, all of them sharp and hungry, that I
learned about growing fruit. I didn't have fruit trees yet, but they
were part of the mythic farm that waited in my mist-shrouded future.
Calcium is always a limiting factor in the soil. When the calcium
is gone, growth stops. And again, the calcium would come from ...
Would I finish the sentence with an organic box from the feed store,
laden with embodied energy and slaughterhouse dust? Or would I
learn the grammar of my great-grandparents, and feed the trees with
the bones of animals that lived beside me? Would there be any solace
in this information? I found one small comfort in The Apple Grower
by Michael Phillips. He quotes a book called The Apple Culturist from
1871, recounting the story of an apple tree near the graves of Roger
Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, and his wife Mary Sayles. The
roots of the tree were found to have grown into the graves and as-
sumed the shape of human skeletons while "the graves [were] emptied
of every particle of human dust. Not a trace of anything was left."19
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If you like weekends, thank an union.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/3/7/michael_moore
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE5wjc4XOw