OK to use ammonia on edible plants.

[Cal Who]

We use ammonia solution to kill slugs on plants but have been avoiding vegatables because we don't know if it is safe on edible plants.

Is it?

[Billy]

Why don't you just use "Draino"? Both will give you hydroxide which is easy enough to wash off, if your plant should happen to survive.

A better choice would be a snail and slug bait whose active ingredient is iron phosphate (technically that should be ferric phosphate). It is sold as Sluggo, and Home Despot has a in house brand that is a little cheaper. Iron phosphate will kill snails and slugs, but is safe for humans and pets (unless your pet is a snail or slug ;O)

[Frank]

Assuming you don't douse the plant with it, it is safe to use and residue in soil will be fertilizer.

Think I used to put salt on slugs but if you want to avoid poison baits you could always use the saucer of beer trick or put out boards for slugs to crawl under in the day and just overturn and pick them off.

[David Hare-Scott]

I think you will find that Draino contains sodium hydroxide which is a very strong alkali that will harm you, your plants and your soil, as will the sodium ions in it. Ammonia solution is much less toxic and less permanent as the ammonia gas will fairly soon disperse leaving water. Ammonia gas is actually used as a fertiliser applied directly to the soil. I am not recommending it for that in this case but saying that to point out it is relatively harmless.

Agreed.

David

[Billy]

NH3 + H2O NH4(+) + OH(-)[also called the hydroxide ion] as in sodium hydroxide (NaOH) + H2O ---> Na(+) + OH(-) + H2O Strength is only a matter of concentration.

Most ammonia gas escapes into the atmosphere, otherwise it easily runs off in aqueous solution. Very little os mineralized into the soil for use by the plants, which here is mostly GMO dent corn plants.

Got that chook confined yet?

"The best fertilizer is the gardener's shadow." - Anon

2nd best may be a politician. Most seem to come full of manure.

[David Hare-Scott]

Not entirely, it also depends on the degree of dissociation of the ions, this is the technical difference between strong bases and weak bases, not the concentration of solute. Sodium hydroxide is a strong base and ammonium hydroxide is a weak one. But why are we going on about this when nobody is thinking of using draino?

True but I was not recommending it for that purpose was I (or at all).

Other work has dragged me away from completing chook yards. Like so many things - it's on the list.

David

[songbird]

Billy wrote: ...

is it safe for worms?

songbird

[songbird]

i like the board method the best.

once in a while the raccoons come through and flip the boards looking for goodies.

songbird

[Billy]

Because the active agent is hydroxide in both. If one were to use one form of hydroxide, why not another? I found it to be a bad idea, and was using an analogy to make my point.

"The best fertilizer is the gardener's shadow." - Anon

Jobs Not Wars

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[Gunner]

Weasle word BS.

• "Anhydrous ammonia would stay in the gas form and be lost to the atmosphere if it did not react quickly with moisture in the soil.When AA is released in the soil, it is retained in the soil by various chemical and physical mechanisms.The most common are reactions with free hydrogen ions in the soil (function of pH) and with water.The result of these reactions is ammonium being formed, held to exchange sites, and not subject to loss in the soil."

[Gunner]

Go with Frank on this one. It is safe on all but the most tender if mixed properly. So it will depend on the strength of the ammonia and the dilution you have bottled. Household Ammonia is ~ 10% strength.

A fairly safe mix is 1 part household ammonia with 5 parts of non- chlorinated, non-softened water and make sure you test a small patch before wide spread use. I'm sure there are many other formulas touted but you need to test it first and take precautionary measure like not spraying in the heat of the day or when extremely dry. I have read 1:2 but that seems a bit strong

I don't know WTH the Drano comment is about other than as a lead-in for billy's political propaganda.

[Frank]

billy's part of the new breed of chemists that are afraid of chemicals. I'm old school ;)

[Billy]

Not afraid of most of them, Frank, just respectful.

2010, Scientific American p. 30 Chemical Controls

Congress needs to give federal agencies greater authority to test and regulate chemicals by the EDITORS

This January the Food and Drug Administration warned parents not to pour hot liquids into plastic baby bottles and also to discard bottles that get scratched. Otherwise, a potentially harmful chemical might leach out of the plastic. This warning was the agency's first, tentative acknowledgment of an emerging scientific consensus: many widely used chemicals once deemed safe may not be.

But a warning was all the FDA could offer worried consumers. The agency does not have the power to force baby-bottle makers to stop using the chemical in question?bisphenol A, better known as BPA. Nor is the FDA alone. The Environmental Protection Agency's administrator Lisa Jackson testified to Congress last September that her agency lacks the muscle to restrict the manufacture of BPA and other chemicals. The relevant law, the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, is simply too weak. It must be strengthened.

As the law stands, the EPA cannot be proactive in vetting chemical safety. It can require companies to test chemicals thought to pose a health risk only when there is explicit evidence of harm. Of the 21,000 chemicals registered under the law's requirements, only 15 percent have been submitted with health and safety data?and the EPA is nearly powerless to require such data. The law allows companies to claim confidentiality about a new chemical, preventing outside evaluation from filling this data gap; some 95 percent of new submissions fall under this veil of secrecy. Even when evidence of harm is clear, the law sets legal hurdles that can make action impossible. For instance, federal courts have overturned all the EPA's attempts to restrict asbestos manufacture, despite demonstrable human health hazard.

Consequently, of the more than 80,000 chemicals in use in the U.S., only five have been either restricted or banned. Not 5 percent, five. The EPA has been able to force health and safety testing for only around

200.

[Gunner]

(Ignorant propaganda attempt at diversion for a F/U snipped)

You just can't stop digging can you?

[Cal Who]

[Cal Who]

Thanks

Go with Frank on this one. It is safe on all but the most tender if mixed properly. So it will depend on the strength of the ammonia and the dilution you have bottled. Household Ammonia is ~ 10% strength.

A fairly safe mix is 1 part household ammonia with 5 parts of non- chlorinated, non-softened water and make sure you test a small patch before wide spread use. I'm sure there are many other formulas touted but you need to test it first and take precautionary measure like not spraying in the heat of the day or when extremely dry. I have read 1:2 but that seems a bit strong

I don't know WTH the Drano comment is about other than as a lead-in for billy's political propaganda.

[Billy]

If you don't like my political propaganda, then you must be one of Gov. Walker's stooges, just another capitalist shill, undermining American values by trying to distract from the corporate coup d'Etat taking place in America now. I'd heard that a lot of you were hired recently.

"Cal Who" doesn't trust Americans, and tries to do his own little COINTEL by discrediting the presentation of facts that differ from the seditious beliefs of his corporate masters, who supports Wall Street investment banks, environmental polluters, pointless & endless wars, and the Bush/Obama administration.

Why are you UN-American,"Cal Who"?

"Cal Who", why do you hate America?

You "Brown Shirts" are all the same, dumb. You're days are numbered. When you're no longer useful, you're gone. Real gone, Bozo.

Up yours "Cal Who".

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Bush's 3rd term: Obama

Bush's 4th term: another empty corporate suit

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THE ECONOMIC CRISIS Capitalist Fools Behind the debate over remaking U.S. financial policy will be a debate over who¹s to blame. It¹s crucial to get the history right, writes a Nobel-laureate economist, identifying five key mistakes?under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II?and one national delusion. BY JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ (American economist, a professor at Columbia University, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979), the former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank.) JANUARY 2009

There will come a moment when the most urgent threats posed by the credit crisis have eased and the larger task before us will be to chart a direction for the economic steps ahead. This will be a dangerous moment. Behind the debates over future policy is a debate over history?a debate over the causes of our current situation. The battle for the past will determine the battle for the present. So it¹s crucial to get the history straight.

What were the critical decisions that led to the crisis? Mistakes were made at every fork in the road?we had what engineers call a ³system failure,² when not a single decision but a cascade of decisions produce a tragic result. Let¹s look at five key moments.

No. 1: Firing the Chairman In 1987 the Reagan administration decided to remove Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and appoint Alan Greenspan in his place. Volcker had done what central bankers are supposed to do. On his watch, inflation had been brought down from more than 11 percent to under 4 percent. In the world of central banking, that should have earned him a grade of A+++ and assured his re-appointment. But Volcker also understood that financial markets need to be regulated. Reagan wanted someone who did not believe any such thing, and he found him in a devotee of the objectivist philosopher and free-market zealot Ayn Rand (Alan Greenspan).

To read the complete story, pick up a copy of The Great Hangover: 21 Tales of the New Recession from the Pages of Vanity Fair (Harper Perennial), available online and at better booksellers now.

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JUAN GONZALEZ: What about this issue of the government¹s bailout being aimed primarily at the financial institutions rather than the homeowners who?and the defaults that are at the root of the crisis?

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS: Yes. Well, it suggests that the bailout is either incompetence or fraud, because the problem, according to the government, is the defaulting mortgages, so the money should be directed at refinancing the mortgages and paying off the foreclosed ones. And that would restore the value of the mortgage-backed securities that are threatening the financial institutions. If the value was restored, the crisis would be over. So **there¹s no connection between the government¹s explanation of the crisis and its solution to the crisis**.

(Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department in the Reagan administration and a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has taught at Georgetown University and Stanford University and is the author of many books, including Supply-Side Revolution: An Insider¹s Account of Policymaking in Washington.)

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Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) by David Cay Johnston

(Available at a library near you.)

12 FREE LUNCH In the past quarter century or so our government has enacted new rules that have created not only free markets, but rigged ones. These rules have weakened and even destroyed consumer protections while increasing the power of the already powerful.

The distribution of incomes also reflects the tools that society provides citizens to support themselves. Children who go to schools with minimally competent teachers, outdated textbooks, and asphalt play- grounds are unlikely to have the same economic success as children who attend schools with master teachers, the latest books supplemented by music, arts, and laboratories, and expanses of lawn for play.

We do not live in a laissez-faire economy in 'which there is no inter- ference from government and people are allowed to do as they please, operating the economy by making contracts with one another. We have rules. Over the past three decades the rules affecting who wins and who loses economically have been quietly and subtly rewritten.

The richest Americans and the corporations they control shaped and

MR. REAGAN'S QUESTION 13

often wrote these new rules and regulations under which our economy now functions. The rich and their lobbyists have taken firm control of the levers of power in Washington and the state capitals while remaking the rules in their own interests. They have also imbued private organizations with the power to make rules that few outside of the process understand, but that influence the distribution of income. These same people also just happen to be the primary source of the campaign donations that put politicians in office and keep them there. Politicians, as lawmakers, enact the rules. As presidents and governors they appoint both the administrators who decide when to enforce the rules and many of the judges who interpret them.

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Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline. Young people today are staring at a future in which they will be less well off than their elders, a reversal of fortune that should send a shudder through everyone.

Nearly 14 million Americans are jobless and the outlook for many of them is grim. Since there is just one job available for every five individuals looking for work, four of the five are out of luck. Instead of a land of opportunity, the U.S. is increasingly becoming a place of limited expectations.

the Economic Policy Institute has reported, the richest 10 percent of Americans received an unconscionable 100 percent of the average income growth in the years 2000 to 2007

G.E. is the nation¹s largest corporation. Its chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, is the leader of President Obama¹s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. You can understand how ordinary workers might look at this cozy corporate-government arrangement and conclude that it is not fully committed to the best interests of working people. Overwhelming imbalances in wealth and income inevitably result in enormous imbalances of political power. So the corporations and the very wealthy continue to do well. The employment crisis never gets addressed. The wars never end. And nation-building never gets a foothold here at home.

-

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation¹s income?an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret. BY JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ (American economist, a professor at Columbia University, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979), the former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank.) MAY 2011

It¹s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation¹s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous?12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades?and more?has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.

-

If you like weekends (8 hr./day & 40 hr./week), then thank a labor union. They paid for it in blood.

Anybody not understand what unions have done for us, and our country? They protected us from capitalist vultures.

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[Steve Peek]

It's safe for anything that doesn't become a moth or butterfly, for those larvae it's deadly.

[Doug Freyburger]

Intelligent people come to different political stances. Sincere people understand this and respect the political differences of others. Your post said more about your sincerity than you probably wanted it to.

There's all sorts of political discussion in American. There always has been. Across time the amount of partisan vitriol was gone up and down. That part is nothing new.

Here's what I think gets too little discussion -

The US form of government in specific and the republic model in general was evolved in a time when corporations did not exist and when corporations were new. The republic model does not take into account that corporations are immortal in addition to governments. Either corporations or governments can die, but they can also live for extremely long times. History has shown that as governments age their size has grown and their oppression has grown. History is replete with revolutions because of this. So far revolutions have not yet been explicitly about corporations growing in that manner. I think recent revolutions have been implicitly about that.

Anti-trust laws were an early attempt to deal with this trend. They did not span governments. We need some other method of dealing with this trend. The republic form of government slows the growth of governments but does not solve the problem. Anti-trust laws slowed the growth of corporations but did not solve the problem. Constitutional forms further slowed the growth but did not solve the problem.

I don't have an innovate solution to both of these overlapping trends but I do know that the current debate about capitalism versus socialism is not going to help. That's just another pendulum swinging back and forth across history, and I don't think that trend is as new as those words. Looking back across history the trend exists as far back as history exists.

But corporations as immortal legal entities go back a much shorter time. The Hudson Bay Trading Company was the first one according to what I was taught in school. Companies existed before then but the form was different.

[Billy]

Doug, my rant has nothing to do with the form of government per se. It has nothing to do with with corporations per se. It has to do with the corrupting effect of the top 1%'s wealth on the health and well being of the other 99% of the citizens.

The old excuse was the "Protestant Work Ethic". If your labors were rewarded, it was a sign that you were among God's elect, regardless of your behavior. Then, if your labors were rewarded, it became "Survival of the fittest" a la Darwin, regardless of your behavior. Now the "I" has been removed from the equation, and it is all about "Free-Markets", which allows the Pontius Pilots of the world to wash their hands of the results of their behavior (re: greed).

You know my fondness for quotes, so let me offer one from the capitalist's boogyman.

"Capital that has such good reasons for denying the sufferings of the legions of workers that surround it, is in practice moved as much and as little by the sight of the coming degradation and final depopulation of the human race, as by the probable fall of the earth into the sun. In every stockjobbing swindle every one knows that some time or other the crash must come, but every one hopes that it may fall on the head of his neighbour, after he himself has caught the shower of gold and placed it in safety. Apres moi le deluge! [After me, the flood] is the watchword of every capitalist and of every capitalist nation. Hence Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless under compulsion from society. [81] To the out-cry as to the physical and mental degradation, the premature death, the torture of over-work, it answers: Ought these to trouble us since they increase our profits?" - Karl Marx, the Capital (Vol. 1, Part III, Chapter Ten, Section 5)

If you like weekends (8 hr./day & 40 hr./week), then thank a labor union. They paid for it in blood.

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