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Old 08-23-2009, 12:00 AM   #75 (permalink)
momoese
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Default Re: Oil and Water.(Conventional vs. Organic)

Quote:
Originally Posted by supermario View Post
Excellent! Now, it seems your working with excellent soil to begin with. I live in South Florida. Mother Nature designed for this area to be a swampland. Man decided to make canals and drain all the water...then level any uneven soil with rocks and build the house we suburbian Miamians live on. In some spots in my yard, I need a jack hammer to dig more than a few inches!

I've found Pepsi cans from the 70's, wooden fence posts, chain fence posts, orange construction netting, glass beer bottles, shoes, milk jugs, roof tiles and other construction materials, a leather glove, a sock, rope, and a ton of small budweiser beer cans in my yard while digging holes for my trees and veggie garden.

My point is that "organic" practices have best results in places with rich soil to begin with. What about those in nutrient defficient soils? Jaboticaba is native to Brazil while Figs are from the Mediterranean, yet they are both growing in my yard. The Jaboticaba has far more nutrient needs here than most figs for obvious reasons.

So, how could I meet the nutrient demand for my different trees without resorting to a convenient, cheap fertilizer?
Our soil is hard packed clay with undesirable debris from years back as well. It has to be wet to dig........well it used to be that way before years of amending and mulching. Now it's soft, dark and easy to dig. When I plant I go deep and mix my new stuff 50/50 with the exsisting soil after removing the large concrete bits, bricks, glass, wooden fence posts, childrens toys, etc. Maybe not the mess you have but still plenty of unwanted crap in there. If you had a pot and wanted to grow your fig in an organic soil mix what would you do, the same thing you'd do in your planting beds, just on a smaller scale. For the beds you have to import large amounts of organic matter and blend it with the existing soil. If not you'll have to use the chemical ferts or something else.

One of the things I like about growing organic the way I do is that I never have to break out a calculator to avoid burning the plants with chemical ferts. I could grow bananas right in my compost pile just fine, and if I spill a whole 5 gallon bucket of compost tea on a plant no biggie!
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