Manure

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Manure’s most important contribution to the garden is that it adds organic matter to the soil much like compost and peat, or the, supposedly eco-friendly alternative, coir.

Peat and peat composts are, in fact, something that should be avoided as far as possible due to the fact that the use of them depletes the bogs from where it is cut.

For some strange reason it took a million Pound study for the British government to “discover” that manure is needed for a healthy soil and that using chemical “fertilizers” actually leaches nutrients from the soil. Any organic gardener and farmer could have told them that for free. In fact, they have done so for ages.

The best time to add manure to soil is autumn, but it can also be added in early spring before planting. Add 2 to 3 inches of manure to the soil and mix it into the top 6 to 9 inches of soil, well into the root zone. Do not add manure if you expect to harvest vegetables within two months or so of adding the manure to the soil. Also note that the pH of the soil may change with the addition of manure to the garden.

Not all manure should be used in the garden. While cow, horse, goat, sheep, rabbit, and poultry manures are all safe to use, manure from dogs, cats, and other meat-eating animals is not safe due to the risk of parasites disease pathogens.

Never, however, add fresh manure directly to the soil. It should always have been aged at least six months, ideally a year, or composted first. Either let it simply age or if you wish to compost it yourself make sure that the temperature of the compost reaches at least 66 degrees Celsius (150 degrees F) to get rid of pathogens like E. coli that are potentially lethal to humans. An alternative, obviously, is, like most people do it, to buy it already composted at the garden center.

Organic matter, such as manure is, is important to create and provide a good soil structure and a nutrient rich soil. Using the same soil year in year out for, and this is the worst thing that modern agriculture does, and only applying chemicals leaches the soil of nutrients and destroys the structure.

Chemical fertilizers do not equate manure, even though the components may be right, by way of nitrates, etc. They are but plant food and not soil food. Feeding the plants, however, only goes thus far and no farther.

There was a reason why our ancestors worked the way they did. They found that it works and it is Nature's way.

© 2013

Don't throw out your leaves!

Do-it-yourself leaf mold is great to improve your garden's soil

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Instead of raking the leaves in your yard and garden together, putting them into plastic bags and setting them on the curb to be picked up and added to a landfill, where most will end up via the municipal waste stream unless your council operates a green waste recycling scheme, turn them into leaf mold.

The dark, crumbly finished product of leaf mold is a great soil amendment and conditioner and if we are going to be dealing with droughts in our gardens in the future, which no doubt we will, increasing the moisture retention of our soils is important. Leaf mold is better still than wood chip mulch in this department as it improves the soil much better and quicker.

Finished leaf mold can be used as a mulch to suppress weeds and trap moisture, blended into the soil of garden beds, and added to container gardens and making leaf mold is, in fact, ridiculously easy. If composting seems too complicated and involved for you: give making your own leaf mold a try. All you need to create leaf mold is a space, leaves, water and time.

The easiest way of making leaf mold is to rake all of your leaves into a pile in the corner of your garden or yard. Once you’ve gathered the leaves into place, wet the pile down and keep it moist for the next six months to a year. If your leaf mold pile is at risk of being thrown about by kids, pets or the wind create pen to keep it in place.

Make a round or square frame out of chicken wire, reclaimed wood or similar to the DIY compost bins the designs of which you find all over the Internet. You can also put the leaves, ideally shredded, into black plastic bin liners, moisten them and then tie up the bags.

If you have a mulching mower you can speed up decomposition by riding over your leaf mold pile and shredding the leaves into smaller pieces.

A few years ago while watching one of those cable documentaries on the drug trade, I saw a cocaine farmer use a weed trimmer to shred cocoa leaves to process them faster. And you know what? It works! After you’ve corralled all of your leaves in place you can run a weed trimmer through the pile to break it down. Shredded leaves not only break down faster, but you have room for more leafs and taller piles.

All leaves you collect in autumn are good candidates for making leaf mold, though some are better than others when it comes to breaking down and decomposing. Smaller leaves, such as birch, alder and Japanese maples, can break down in as little as six months. Oak and hornbeam leaves similarly break down rather fast.

The bottom of your leaf mold pile can be ready to be mixed into your soil, used as a mulch, or mixed into your favorite container gardening soil mix in as little as half a year. Therefore, take some time this season to rake up your leaves – and those of your neighbors – to improve the soil in your garden. You will be keeping valuable organic matter out of landfills and preventing your neighbors from making burn piles this autumn.

The leaves have sequestered carbon over the year and this carbon is released into your soil when added to it and will feed your plants. So thus you should not waste it.

If you grow your own – vegetables that is – in the way that I do in “containers” of various sorts you can use the so-called lasagne gardening method and, in fact, add the leaf mold after six month to the bottom of the container and spread a thin, about four or five inches or so, layer of soil and compost above in which you sow your seeds or plant your plugs.

Waste not want not is the old adage and it applies also to those autumn leaves.

© 2012

Fertilizer: magic potion or toxic formula?

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

What is fertilizer and is it bad for plants and soil or not?

So, for a start, let's do the fertilizer crash course. On a bag of fertilizer you will see three numbers like 12-12-12 or 18-6-4 or 5-36-5, though in some countries this is done a little different. Here's what the numbers mean and what they mean to you as a gardener. Those numbers also can be represented with the addition of the letters N = nitrogen, P = phosphorous and K = potassium, aka kalium in Latin, hence the K.

The first number is the percentage of nitrogen in that particular bag of fertilizer. Plants need and love nitrogen, but like many things that you may like as well, too much of a good thing is not a good thing. So you have to make sure you are not putting too much nitrogen on any particular plant.

Although 78% of the atmosphere is nitrogen, most plants cannot utilize this. Plants in the bean family, legumes, have nodules on their roots where bacteria live that fix nitrogen from the air for use by the plant. They provide their own nitrogen fertilizer this way.

Shortage of Nitrogen in Plants - Symptoms

You can tell if your plants need nitrogen when their growth is stunted with weak stems and they will have yellowed or discolored leaves

The second or middle number on a bag of fertilizer is phosphorous. Phosphorous is like an under the hood tune up for plants. Phosphorous plays an important role by helping the plant absorb and use the nitrogen and other nutrients that a plant needs from the soil in order to be healthy and happy.

Phosphorous really aids in the photosynthesis process and essentially makes and keeps the plant healthy. Phosphorus is essential for seed germination and root development. It is needed particularly by young plants forming their root systems and by fruit and seed crops. Root vegetables such as carrots, swedes and turnips obviously need plentiful phosphorus to develop well. This means the plant will produce more flowers and fruit. So, basically, it takes the correct amount of phosphorous for plants to flower beautifully or to produce lots of good fruit.

Shortage of Phosphorus in Plants - Symptoms

Without ample phosphorus you will see stunted growth, probably a purple tinge to leaves and low fruit yields.

The third or last number on the bag of fertilizer is the percentage of Potassium in the fertilizer. Also called potash. It is represented often by the letter K, as mentioned already above.

Potassium, as already stated, has the chemical symbol K from its Latin name kalium. It promotes flower and fruit production and is vital for maintaining growth and helping plants resist disease. It's used in the process of building starches and sugars so is needed in vegetables and fruits. Carrots, parsnips, potatoes, tomatoes and apples all need plenty of potassium to crop well.

Potassium is naturally found in wood ash which is where it its name potash is derived from and potash is potassium and vice versa when discussing fertilizers.

Potassium gives plants stamina because it helps plants absorb and use water. Usually there is plenty of potassium in the soil, but much of it is not in a form that plants can absorb. The potassium in a bag of fertilizer is water soluble and easily absorbed by plants. Potassium helps plants survive drought conditions because it helps the plant use water more efficiently.

Shortage of Potassium in Plants - Symptoms

Plants that are short of potash will have low resistance to disease, scorching of leaves and poor fruit yield. Tomatoes will really show the effects of a shortage of potassium.

As potassium is potash, that is to say, wood ash this byproduct of wood burning for heating is a great addition to the garden soil – and was used for that by the cottage gardeners of old for just that reason – as is charcoal. A great homemade potassium fertilizer is made from comfrey and there are a number of ways as to how to do this.

Tomatoes and potatoes, both in the same family of deadly nightshade plants, bot require a very high amount of potash in order to produce a good crop. That is if your tomatoes don't get hit by the blight again and again, as mine have been over the last couple of years and for that reason I am going to give up on that particular vegetable which, actually, is a fruit.

So what does all that mean? That means that you have to use the correct fertilizer for the particular plant you are fertilizing. However, the fertilizer companies have made this easy for us because a lawn fertilizer has a very high amount of nitrogen because your grass grows a lot more than typical plants and grass needs and will use more nitrogen.

Grass clippings also should be mulched rather than collected off the lawn in order to have the nitrogen contained in the leaves go back into soil and into the growing grass itself.

So-called plant food fertilizers I suggest you avoid a little like the plague. They, like all the fertilizers used in commercial growing, do feed the plants but more often than not harm the soil and you really want healthy soil to grow plants, especially for food.

Good compost is one of the main things to consider and that should be applied as a “top dressing” before any plants are sown or planted and dug into the soil by means of a garden fork or a rototiller. Add some lumpwood charcoal into the compost and the mix and some mulch and you should be well on the way to having a great starting bed for your plants.

To answer the initial question as to whether fertilizer is a magic potion or a toxic formula it would be a case of: “it depends” and that means it depends on what you are using as a fertilizer. Some of the serious chemical ones are that, chemical, and are synthetically produced and but a plant food. They tend to harm the soil by leaching the goodness out of it. Thus it is a case of being careful. The best way is the “organic” way by making your own.

A real gardener doesn’t feed plants, he fed the soil which feeds the plants

© 2012