[Pops]

I guess I wonder how long it would take to grow a duck flock/covey/herd to fertilize all the rice paddies for current world rice consumption?

Not to be critical Jupidu, I like your thinking.

[manu]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Starvid', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('manu', 'K')eep some cows and oxen and make your own fertilizer. Learn to compost properly.

[manu]

[quote="Jupidu"]@Starvid
Artificial Fertilizer are nothing else but a mixture of different salts. Using this over and over again is damaging the soils. It's like doing irrigation with salty water. Rivers and lakes are getting too much fertilizer and algae are spreading out and in the sommer there could be a lack of oxygen in the lake or even in the river, fishes or other animals are dying.

Good point, not only are they ruining their land, they are polluting the rivers and even the oceans in some places.

@Manu

For a peasant with one or two acres that's for sure a possibility but when a cow breeding farm with thousand cows or more wants to distribute the manure on it's "nearby" ten thousand acres, then you need a lot of fuel!

The farms don't need to be big. That's my point, small is beautiful.
Plus, you use the bull and oxen for plowing and moving things around.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jupidu', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'U')nfortunately most of crops don't like acidic soils and this can cause many secondary problems.

[idiom]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('manu', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jupidu', '@')Starvid
Artificial Fertilizer are nothing else but a mixture of different salts.

[FireJack]

I'm trying to make this stuff called COF as directed in gardening when it counts. The idea is to add a complete set of minerals to the soil to promote plant growth and to keep you healthy. Here are the list of ingredients I need:

Seedmeal
Tankage (blood and bone or meatmeal)
Agricultural line (best finely ground)
Dolomite lime
Gypsum

and smaller amounts of rock phosphate, bonemeal, high phosphate guano, kelpmeal and basalt dust.

I live in rural ontario (about 2 1/2 hours north east of toronto) and I cant find a single ingredient. Ideally I would like to buy it in large quantities as the price will likely keep going up as everything gets more expensive. I really want to get the garden going and I would at least like to get some lime first. Can anyone help?

[kpeavey]

consider also the Indore Method of compost production as developed by Sir Albert Howard. You will find that all materials are available locally, regardless of your location.

[Fishman]

Firejack
I've read the same but I bet you do have these things, just be creative.
Seedmeal = saved coffee grounds
Tankage = ground fish, got any pike heads up there?
Lime, only if your soil needs it.
Bonemeal = saved chicken, beef bones
Kelpmeal is the only one hard to substitute

[alokin]

kv.. (you name is just too difficult for me), could you please explain your glorious Sir whatever method?
Who is or was this guy? Should I know him as a gardener?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'c')onsider also the Indore Method of compost production as developed by Sir Albert Howard. You will find that all materials are available locally, regardless of your location.

[ivanillich]

I'm fairly new to gardening as well and decided to follow the Solomon book this year. A few things from one newbie to another. Experienced gardeners feel free to correct me. 1. Look for agricultural supply stores or orchard/greenhouses in your area. I live in a relatively small city in Michigan and two places had several of the ingredients. You might also check with the agricultural extension office at the nearest university. I haven't done this, but at the very least, you might meet someone who knows a hell of a lot about growing food. 2. In the end, I decided to use a product called Plant Tone instead of COF. It's organic and has many of the micro-nutrients that Solomon calls for to promote not just growth, but healthy vegetables. And it was significantly cheaper than combining all the separate ingredients. Not sure about shelf life, though. But, since I am mostly trying to get the hang of things this year, I decided a short cut was OK. 3. Long term you are probably right to stock up on the component parts, but my main goal this year is to learn about the soil around here and what to do, what not to do. So I'm taking copious notes on what I do and the results. 4. As for lime, you can find various branded products like Nutralime (this, I think is just dolomite lime in pelitized form). 5. If all else fails you can try to order much of this stuff online.

[hermit]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('FireJack', 'I')'m trying to make this stuff called COF as directed in gardening when it counts. The idea is to add a complete set of minerals to the soil to promote plant growth and to keep you healthy. Here are the list of ingredients I need:

Seedmeal
Tankage (blood and bone or meatmeal)
Agricultural line (best finely ground)
Dolomite lime
Gypsum

and smaller amounts of rock phosphate, bonemeal, high phosphate guano, kelpmeal and basalt dust.

I live in rural ontario (about 2 1/2 hours north east of toronto) and I cant find a single ingredient. Ideally I would like to buy it in large quantities as the price will likely keep going up as everything gets more expensive. I really want to get the garden going and I would at least like to get some lime first. Can anyone help?

[Tucker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('FireJack', 'I')'m trying to make this stuff called COF as directed in gardening when it counts....I cant find a single ingredient.

[manu]

That book by Sir Howard has been reprinted, The Lost Art of Organic Composting, with one Krsna Das of England. You need cow manure, grass cuttings, weeds, straw, leaves, some dirt, some ash, so these ingrediants are found everywhere in the world I've been except maybe some desert. You need the right water content, so it may need to be covered in a rainy area, or water added in a dry area, and also turned over a few times. Another good book is the Farmers of Forty Centuries.

[WisJim]

Here's a site with info about Sir Albert Howard, considered to be the originator of scientific composting. http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/howard.html
Some of his work is on the site, in full.
He is generally given credit for figuring out what composting is, how it works, and how to get good results every time.
I have "Soil and Health" and "An Agricultural Testament" in m y library.

[Jupidu]

@EnergyUnlimited:

Finally i find the time to answer. I always want to give a good answer, so sometimes i need a bit longer.

I just read your link:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')his comes at expense of acidification of soil.
Bacterias used as promoters are producing significant amounts of organic acids, which are increasing phosphate solubility.
link

[MrBean]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jupidu', 'T')here are already some solutions to handle the fertilizer problem all around the world:

For rice it is even possible to produce more food without chemical fertilizer:

It's called the "Duck revolution". Invented by TAKAO FURUNO, a japanese peasant. He is practicing ecological farming since 1977 and in 1987 he got the idea to combine rice farming and growing ducks at the same place. Gradually he enhanced his idea by adding other organisms to his system. He published in 2001 all his knowledge in the book "The power of duck". The result of his work is the combination of rice growing together with growing of ducks and fishes in a paddy.
Even better is to let grow different sorts of Azolla ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla ), a aquatic fern in the paddies. Azolla works like legumes in fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere in the ground respectively in the water.

For crops/grains:
- Inter cropping of legumes and grains (not only one year after the other but instead at the same time at the same place): Legumes deliver nitrogen and the grain is the plant for the legume to creep.
- Instead of aritificial and costly fertilizer Bacteria (Diazotrophs, usually living in symbiosis with legumes) can do the work - even better, because plant and Bacteria (in symbiosis)are living together in symbiosis. Bacteria delivers nitrogen and the plant delivers carbohydrate (starch/sugar). Even better is the combination of these Bacteria with a special flavonoid (plant pigment) called naringenin (especially in tomatoes; e.g. in tomato puree or tomato paste). With this substance legumes are signaling in a chemical matter that they are needing nitrogen in exchange for delivering starch or sugar. The colonization of the roots of the legumes (or here: of the crops) is enhanced through the application of naringenin.
The enhancement of the growth of the plants is not only better because of the nitrogen but because of different substances which are produced through this symbiosis.
Here is a study which analyzed this effect at Brassica napus (rape, canola):

"Effects of Glucosinolates and Flavonoids on Colonization of the Roots of Brassica napus by Azorhizobium caulinodans ORS571"
http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/full/66/5/2185

One firm (i am too lazy in the moment to find similar products with a description in english; i get no money or any advantage from this firm. It's just my private struggle against misinformation and agrimultis like pioneer, Cargill, ADM, Monsanto, Bayer Crop Science, Syngenta, et.al.) where you can buy this ecological (!) sort of fertilizer (there should be more, which are selling suitable Bacteria):

"Phylazonit
http://www.bhz-sippel.com/eng/html/prod ... azonit.htm

The price is 57 Euro (ca. 92 Dollar) plus shipment for one kilo (needed for an area of about one hectare) of powder. You have to mix it with water. It's quite expensive for the owner of a small garden, but perhaps you can convince your neighbours AND: If you are cultivating your garden in a ecological way (no articificial fertilizers, no insecticides, herbicides, etc.) then you only have to buy and apply it perhaps once in your lifetime, because then you don't kill your tiny little friends and they are happy in your soil till the end.

[FireJack]

Crushed drywall would not be a bad idea if you can get all the paper off it. Mainly I want these things because stuff like coffee grinds etc may not be available for much longer. If I can get enough of it I can make my COF last may years. IF a war started in Iran or anything that could have any major effect on oil then everyone will go apeshit and having what I need to grow food will help immensely.

[bobaloo]

All of the stuff can be substituted for with compost made from local vegetation and other byproducts, except for the lime. I can't see any reason to have both lime and dolomitic lime, dolomitic lime is just lime that is high in magnesium, which a lot of plants need in surprising amounts. If you can't find dolomitic lime you can use regular lime with the addition of Epsom Salts, which are magnesium sulfate crystls. Epsom salts can be found in any drug store and are cheap.

If you're in the Laurentian Shield area your soil probably needs lime, and there's not really substitutes, so try to buy quite a bit of it to stock up, the transportation costs and availability of heavy products like that are only going to get worse.

Look for any free plant products you can find to compost. Leaves from deciduous trees are especially good, particularly maple trees. One reason they're so good is that trees have deep root systems that bring up nutrients from the subsoil that often aren't available to shallow rooted plants like most vegetables. Grass clippings are high in nitrogen, you can often get them from your neighbors in the summer and let them rot over the winter or use them for mulch, just be careful for herbicides that some people use on their lawn, try to get them from "ugly" lawns if possible

Reading books can make composting sound like rocket science, it doesn't need to be, you're just bringing in nutrients in the form of vegetable matter, letting it rot to make the nutrients once again accessible to plants, and adding it to your soil. I do a lot of "sheet composting", where I use the material for mulch in the summer, let it rot on top of the soil and protect the soil over the winter, then turn it in next Spring and repeat the cycle all over again. Right now I'm buying compost to try to build up my soils as much as possible as quickly s possible while it's still available, I expect it to be in short supply soon and the price to rise. This year I've bought 20 cubic yards of sheep manure, 2 dump truck loads, and have most of it spread on the gardens. I till the soil, add about 3-4 inches of composted manure, till that in, then after the plants come up I mulch between the plants with more of the composted manure which will get turned in this Fall or next Spring. Two or three years of that and even fairly lousy soil starts to look pretty good.

If you live anywhere near a rural area look for what's known as a feed store, look for the rolls of fencing, gates, stock tanks, etc. outside. Those places usually have the more common things like lime and at good prices. The more exotic stuff you'll need to look for at a specialty gardening center and it can get pretty expensive.

BTW, one of the best things you can do for your soil is manure tea. Take a 5 gallon bucket, add about 1/2 gall to gallon of horse/cow/sheep manure then fill with water and let sit overnight. Use that to water your plants, they'll love you for it. Not only is it full of nutrition but it really encourages the soil microorganisms. Remember soil isn't just small bits of rock and organic matter, it's a complex ecosystem of bacteria, fungi, invertebrates, etc., and the health of that ecosystem is what makes your plants healthy. Much as we depend on bacteria in our guts to break down the food we eat, plants depend on the life in soil to break down their nutrients and make them accessible. Don't feed your plants, feed your soil

[kpeavey]

An Agricultural Testament, full copy, free online

It is the instruction manual for composting


---
kpeavey=my name
k=ken

[pedalling_faster]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('FireJack', 'I')'m trying to make this stuff called COF as directed in gardening when it counts. The idea is to add a complete set of minerals to the soil to promote plant growth and to keep you healthy. Here are the list of ingredients I need:

Seedmeal
Tankage (blood and bone or meatmeal)
Agricultural line (best finely ground)
Dolomite lime
Gypsum

and smaller amounts of rock phosphate, bonemeal, high phosphate guano, kelpmeal and basalt dust.