Terry Coombs wrote:
David Hare-Scott wrote:
....
As well as all this keep in mind that a foliar spray is a quick fix not a
long term solution and it doesn't last long. Unless you want to do it
every few weeks study your soil and see what needs to be done to provide a
long term balance of minerals.

My land is mostly oak forest , the piece where we have made a garden was
woods until recently ~12-15 yrs ago and the soil is acid enough that
low-bush huckleberries thrive . Because a local recommended it I've been
adding 1 tbsp of ES under each tomato and pepper plant as I transplant .
Seems to be working ... and much as I hated to do it , today I used some
13/13/13 on the lettuce and a couple of the tomato plants . I'd rather build
the soil naturally , with mulches and composts . But our situation won't
allow a couple of years to let the soil become productive , I have a feeling
we're gonna need it sooner rather than later . Chickens by the weekend , we
just haven't decided whether to get chicks or older birds .

if you have scrub woods that you can trim back
you can use the green leaves in a mulch pile
and chip the wood and add that. use agricultural
lime to increase the pH, short term the finest
powder acts quickest, for a longer term amendment
use limestone grit.

it doesn't take much to get worms going and
they can generate many lbs of calcium rich compost.
a few yards within a year.

pigs can do a lot of conversion of forest grub
into manure. i'm not into using animals here on
this small a site, but a larger farm with more
acres and plenty of woods might support a small
population of pigs in rotation to clean up the
acorns and fruit tree droppings. but then you
have to be a farmer/farmer for that as once
you have animals to take care of then that's a
whole different arrangement than if you are
just doing veggies and worm wrangling (both of
these you can leave go for a few days if you
have to).

for a free range bird fertilizer solution a few
of the permaculture authors recommend having a
pigeon loft as then you can get the droppings
underneath there for the scraping when you need
hot fertilizer or extra nitrogen for the compost
heap. i'd probably just site the compost heap
under the pigeon roost -- then once in a while
add a layer of carbon and dirt and water it a
bit. empty it once a year and start over...
the birds are unpaid employees gathering bugs,
fruits, seeds, etc. and turning them into free
fertilizer. i like this approach even better
than having chickens. sometime in the future i
hope to raise quail, pheasants and/or bob whites
as they can free range and i don't have to go
after them for meat or eggs if i don't want to.
just be nice to have more of them around again.


songbird