[ararboin]

Try pee, it's free. Just dilute with water 8:1.

[Loki]

I mixed my first batch of Solomon's COF this year. Used 4 parts alfalfa meal, 1/2 part ag lime, and 1/2 part dolomite lime. That's his barebones recipe. All the ingredients were available in bulk at my local retail nursery. Cost about 73 cents per pound. Probably could have saved money had I been willing to spend more time and gas to drive out to a feed store in the country.

The other stuff in Solomon's recipe (kelpmeal, gypsum, rock phosphate, etc.) he says are for "best results," but they were all far too expensive for me. I've been thinking of collecting coffee grounds to save some money next time I make a batch. No shortage of coffee shops around here. The seedmeal was the most expensive part ($38 for 50 lbs).

Last month I amended about 650 square feet with my basic COF and ~1/2" municipal compost, which is made exclusively from street tree leaves. I don't consider it very high quality, but it at least adds some organic matter to my clayey garden soil, plus it's cheap ($16/yard). Probably not a great carbon to nitrogen ratio, though.

Guess we'll see how it works in the next few months. This month I've planted potatoes, tomatoes, hot peppers, beans, and squash, mostly spaced according to Solomon's dry gardening suggestions.

I may have the opportunity to plant another 1500+ square feet in the next couple weeks, and may use the same COF + cheap compost mix. Anybody have a better suggestion? I'll be planting an area that's been in grass/weeds for many years.

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

Post deleted

[kpeavey]

pedalling_faster wrote:$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'i') just finished a 4 week class in composting taught by a soil scientist.

[Jupidu]

Thank you for the link! There are really a lot of articles about Fukuoka.

[alokin]

Does anyone has experience with COF?
Does the crops grow any better than if you use a complete organic fertilizer??
As a city dweller I have to buy everything in the local produce shop and I reckon it will cost me twice the price than my complete organic fertilizer I pay $18 (AUD) a bag of 15 kg.
And the problems not getting all ingredients and then when you replace the fertilizer won't work as good.

The second thing I really doubt about is that he not recommends the overuse of compost/manure/mulch. This is exactly the opposite what you read in other gardening books. Any comments?

[careinke]

Solomon is writing for a Marine (Pacific Northwest) environment. If you use mulch here you end up with a slugfest in your garden. That said, I use both COF and a lot of compost in my gardens. I don't mulch.

Cliff (Start a rEVOLution, grow a garden)

[pedalling_faster]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kpeavey', 'p')edalling_faster wrote:$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'i') just finished a 4 week class in composting taught by a soil scientist.

[allenwrench]

$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?

[kpeavey]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('allenwrench', 'I') use Plantone organics. $22 for 50 pounds.

[Fredrik]

It won't take long before governments are forced to subsidize fertilizer, pesticide and diesel purchases for their farmers regardless of cost, or face famine. After people have more or less gotten used to improvised public transit and constant blackouts, survival of food production will be of primary importance for everyone.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t's estimated that one third of the protein consumed by humans is a result of fertilizer.

[Sys1]

1/3 from fertilizer,1/3 from pesticide and 1/3 from mechanical harvesting ;-p

[RedStateGreen]

What I'm thinking of are the soil amendments. In particular, does anyone know how to make blood meal at home?

I've read that soaking rusty cans gives you water that can be used in place of commercial iron supplementation.

Worm castings and worm tea are a good overall fertilizer.

Compost and compost tea are good for plants also.

ETA: Urine at a 1:10 dilution is a great source of nitrogen and phosphorus. With rock phosphorus 'peaking', this is a good alternative.

Let's brainstorm here and see what else we come up with.

[diemaker]

Here's a company that seems to working on the problem. http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080415/cltu ... &printer=1

[oxj]

I thought the reasone one used calcium to fix the urine was to produce calcium urate, a precipitant, which prevents the nitrogen from being washed away, holding it in the soil so the plants could use it. Otherwise, uric acid will wash away. This was a particular problem solved in the past by using rock phosphate. You could read about this in a 1918(?) edition of Lippincott's Productive Farm Soils.

Calcium is generally the cheapest and most widely available source of an ion which will form a precipitant.

[socrates1fan]

left over veggies and fruits seem to work well.

[Grifter]

I just posted this on Spec's sort of companion planting thread

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')omfrey is an excellent plant but depending on the size of your garden I'd limit the number of plants you establish. I have 2 well established plants. Composted Comfrey contains a lot of nitrogen which is good for leafy growth. Too much nitrogen can make plants very sappy though and you can get massive infestations of aphids. Also Borage, once established, can start sprouting up everywhere, I avoid it now except for growing in pots.

Nettles are very good for drawing magnesium from the soil so if you have a patch with nettles in try to keep a small area of them as they will recycle magnesium.

Adding a lot of leafy material from these plants to compost will give you a very good fertilizer for brassica plants like caggage, brussels, caulliflower etc. These need magnesium to grow well. Energy wise I'm not sure these plants are great but without good fibre in the diet you won't absorb other good nutrients properly and they also, of course, contain good levels of micronutrients themselves. (btw I still haven't been successful with caulli's)

Comfrey brewed in water will make a good tomato feed and the mush left over can still be used for compost.

Potatoes like phosphorus I believe but I don't know what plants other than seaweed help to add this to the soil, maybe someone else can help

[kuidaskassikaeb]

I've been wondering for some time about bone meal. (If you don't know bones are 75% calcium phosphate, with collegen protien for the remainder) We have dogs and they chew up a lot of bones. I have tried to break them up but cow thighs are tough. I looked up on the internet and it says that that bone collegen becomes soluble at 60C. Has anybody tried to boil bones and crush them or just throw them in a fire and crush them. The road kill alone around here would keep my farm going.

[burtonridr]

Not really a new thing to everyone here....

Farmers need to start implementing Aquaponics systems, its probably the most sustainable way to grow food in large quantities...

You use a solar system to power a single pump add water and ta-da!

You have a self sustaining system with little outside input.

Or they could get us off the stupid wasteful landfill BS and start re-using things and using food scraps/landscape trimmings for compost/fertilizer.

Our system is just so wasteful.

[green_achers]

Mother Earth News did a comparison of organic fertilizers in a recent issue. They used N as their standard and found that the best bargain was grass clippings, at $0/#N. The best commercial source was alfalfa pellets. The worst was the commercial worm casting liquid, at about $40,000/#N.

I collect grass clippings and other yard waste everywhere I can find it.