I understand. There doesn't seem to be much sympathy for people on a budget or people who don't have easy access to organic products; but I understand where you're coming from.
Since my fav organic nursery closed two years ago, it's been difficult to get organic products, and no one place seems to carry more than one or two, so I end up driving all over the place.
Ad not all the big box stores like Lowe's and Home Depot carry all the same items, so if they don't appear to have a market for organic products in an area, that store won't carry them. Both the Lowe's and the Home Depot nearest me don't carry much in the way of organic products. I have to go to a Home Depot almost 25 miles away to get to one that does, and even then, the choices are limited. It hard work to stay organic around here!
I used to make all my own, but I'm not retired, so free time is the limiting factor for me.
I have difficulty with the idea of organic soil amendments that have the word product included. Sure dried blood, bone meal etc. and other products are costly. But is it not a fundamental idea to put back into the soil more than we take out. Aside Bone meal and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease scary. How to do it becomes the issue. Cover crops, manures, anything once alive. I favor wood chips as I get them delivered for free. Then there are the trips about to barber shops to take the waste hair. Making friends with the local high cafeteria folks to take the garbage. Keeping those teaming microbes alive and well so we can eat off the top of the chain. Bill wondering why my eyelid is itching. :))
Why? Not everyone has the time or the free access you appear to have to organic...er...materials. Should they be banned from trying to garden organically?
I don't use bone meal or blood meal for much the same reason. I did go quite a long distance this spring to get a bag of pelleted soil amendment that was made from a blend of cotton seed meal and other goodies like that because it didn't use bone or blood meal. It's still kinda high in nitrogen, though, so I used it on the lawn this spring, and set aside a bit to till into the vegetable garden this winter. I figure it will have been broken down enough by spring that the nitrogen won't be a problem.
Maria has already described the steps she takes to incorporate compost and yard clippings into her garden. I use horse manure, although I have no one to deliver it, and must find the time to go and load lots of buckets and trash cans, as many as I can fit into my car. Both of us still find a need for store bought products once in a while.
I don't use cover crops or green manures because I find the horse manure already raises the nitrogen in the soil higher than makes me happy. I can't get yard litter from the city compost pile anymore, it proved to be such a popular item that the city charges for it, even for a few grocery bagfuls. Well, I shouldn't say "can't", I could, but I refuse to pay what they're charging for a product of marginal quality.
As to begging for...um...materials from cafeteria employees, high or cold sober, for me it's mostly a time issue. Bully for you that you have the luxury of time to do things like that. I don't right now.
I would like you to explain the difference to the bacteria, fungi, and the like between store bought organic products and...uh...materials you sponged off someone for free?
Begging na just saving. You may not have time is a misnomer. Slow and steady comes to mind and forget instant gratification. Takes time and work your job or your hand.
I provide with less effort. Sponged just earned you my disrespect.
Brought over in about 1650. I note the forest has changed due to red worms and the way the forest recycles leaves. Still 400 years ago? I'd worry about great lake bilges from world wide shipping traffic.
Why do you insert your life / lifestyle over that of the thread originator? She said she was retired. I would think the purpose of this thread is to discuss all options / alternatives. After all, we landed on greensand as a better substitute to her original query on Ironite.
It's no contest with red worms, they prefer garbage any day. Perhaps you're foolish enough to feed them store bought produce? ;)
The forests have not all changed. There was an article in a National Geographic about a fern whose numbers are dropping in Minnisota, I think. It's a "canary in the coal mine" for the spread of _Lumbricus rubellus_.
The recommendations I've found suggest freezing all earthworm castings for several days to a week to kill the worms and cocoons. I've been trying to find out more information on native earthworms here in South Carolina and see if I can adapt some sort of vermiculture to their use. Other than, you know, the compost piled on the ground.
How can you get completely hysterical about the damage that one product does to the enviroment but not give a flaming fart about another product that is causing the extinction of understory plants in some of our forests?
Not everyone has your lack of social graces. Maybe you could put a sheet plastic wrap over your screen and then remove it when your spittle load becomes too thick to read through.
And while you were waxing poetic over your heroin's efforts to face the cruel vagaries of fate, you might have mentioned to the OP to try and incorporate small bits of junk iron into their soil to improve its' iron content or did your expose to rabies affect your mind as well? ;O)
Gardening shouldn't be a great effort, but then maybe some of that equine manure rubbed off on you.
You really are a steaming pile of equine excrement. He never said that. you attributed it to him. Do voices tell you these things? Maybe you should put your foil hat back on, bwahaha ;O)
Oh, I use the Ironite once a year. It's turned over with the fertilizer and organic matter. I'll see what Seaweed costs. I may not be able to afford to spray a 900 to 100 sq. ft of garden every 10 days with it. To spray the plants lightly takes 3 to 4 gallons of water. More organic fertilizers are now being priced outside our budget. I can no longer afford bone and blood meal. Organic gardening is becoming something for those of higher incomes, not for the retired.
I' d be more honored if they ate their natural diet and not my veggies. Wild turkeys were out under the pear tree today munching on the fallen pears. Actually we don't suffer too much damage from animals.
The product is $14.75 and shipping is $11.50 = $27.25!
If I ever play and win the Lottery maybe I can afford some of this high priced organic stuff. :)
I'm in Lowe's and Home Depot regularly and yet haven't seen any of these organic fertilizers. Perhaps there isn't enough call for them here. Or they're so expensive people wont pay the price. Twice I bought the liquid Iron and twice it turned into a tinny smelling liquid once opened, with white stuff like scale in it at the bottom. That was when I switched to Ironite.
I called all over looking for greensand and no one knew what I was talking about. I was offered play sand for kids sandboxes and coarse sand to mix with concrete. The Nursery in a nearby city knew what it was, but they don't carry it and can't (or wont) order small amounts. The people on this NG apparently are wealthy enough to buy all these expensive organic products and have them shipped. I simply cannot afford that. The cost of gardening would be so prohibitive it wouldn't pay to garden at all. We're lucky we found the place to get free mulch to compost... only $4 for the gas to get there and back with a load.
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