I love making dirt. I love playing in dirt. I've been trying to experiment with what food matter breaks down into what nutrient. can anyone give me link or a list of foods and the nutrients they break down into? ive been trying to get one pile that is super high in nitrogen, one in phosphorus and so on. any help appreciated.
Nitrogen: feather, hair, blood meal, tea leaves, wool, manure, urine, green plants. Potassium: wood ash (add when compost is turned; if it is added with fresh nitrogenous material, the alkali in the ash will lead to nitrogen loss), urine, banana peels, oak and fruit tree leaves. Phosphorus: rock phosphate, fish wastes, bone meal, chicken manure. Urine is sterile when it leaves the body, so is safe to use, and is a good source of nitrogen and potassium. It can be collected in a bucket and poured on the compost or garden after being diluted.
I love you....lol a girl that talks about dirt! :drool: as for the listed materials...gardener gave you the pretty complete list....if you add wood ash, add urine to prevent a large amount of nitrogen loss. btw, lipids (fats) if your'e doing a hot pile are perfectly fine, and they should go into the nitrogeneous materials
Yeah coffee grounds do have some nitrogen and add to the friability of the soil texture. Same with egg shells they have some nutrients but they are slowly released the main benefit in adding them is that they aid in adding friability to clay soils. Coffee grounds can be acidic so if you have a lot of them, make sure to check your ph.
I was going to say that to your urine lol.. yes be sure you know how to contol PH levels if your serious about what your growing.
Yeah it's important to test your soil before you start adding amendments like compost or heavy duty fertilizers. Know what you are starting out with then check after your first growing season and see what's changed. Most of your ag extensions have kits, or even places like home depot. The last nursery I worked for had several digital probes we'd loan out to our customers. No one ever failed to return them, and it helped us help them.
Im guilty of a ph probe theft many years ago. a freind let me use it and I sort of kept it.. he just forgot I had it..it was funny you mentioned that..
I live in a rural area our local library carries all the soil surveys for the area, if you are really into dirt it makes for interesting reading. Over the twelve years I worked in nurseries I got to where I pretty much had the entire county memorized. But outside factors come into play when you have big ag firms applying fertilizers through flood irrigation and it leaches into neighboring residential areas. A prune orchard next door can cause sandy loam area with a neutral ph, to read acidic. Not to mention weird anomalies like edge creep die back. Where the farmer or orchardist is a lover of roundup and your property line hedge starts to die mysteriously.
impressive.. I love real people doing real things. You probable have many interesting reads here yourself? on gardening Ill bet.
Well some of my guilty gardening reads are Ruth Stout's books...the Gardening Without a Sore Back books. She used everything including old carpet for mulch. And I like Beverly Nichol's books, they are flowery, fluffy but great winter reading.
gardener, I too read the stout books, I'm going to have to see if I can't find beverly nichol's books... any other suggestions?
Anything by or about Luther Burbank. His life was fascinating. He's very important here in California. Especially here in my part where peaches used to be one of the main crops. The shame is kids are taught so little about him anymore.
Oh yes, Luther Burbank. In the very early 1900s Henery Ford and Thomas Edison considered Burbank to be their peer. He was at the time very famous indeed. Here's something only the hard core gardeners will like: "Luther Burbank: His Methods and Discoveries and Their Practical Application", a 12-volume monographic series, is available, free, online through the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center. It documents Burbank's methods and discoveries and their practical application, prepared from his original field notes covering more than 100,000 experiments. http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/HistSciTech/subcollections/LutherBurbankAbout.html One of my main tomatoes is the "Burbank Tomato". Burbank developed this tomato in 1914. The tomato has a classic taste that is acidic yet sweet. The fruits are relatively small and uniform, with a deep red color. The Burbank is particularly special because it is very nutritious, containing one of the highest levels of free amino acids found in tomatoes, and especially contains a high level of lysine and threonine, two of the essential amino acids, which cannot be produced by the body. The world could really use another Luther Burbank today. Peace, poor_old_dad
