Fertilizing rocky soil where it's half soil half stones (and no dirt)

On 09/07/2016 12:24 PM, Cindy Hamilton wrote: ...

Decent possibility although not necessarily...

Reply to
dpb
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Sort of. The size - NOT composition - of the weathered rock determines its nomenclature... boulder>cobble>gravel>sand>silt>clay>colloid Colloquially, the last three would be "mud". I would characterize what you have as coarse soil.

The fact that composition does not enter into it means that "sand" can be ANY mineral, not just quartz.

If you want to get a better idea of the size ratio in what you have, put some of it in a glass jar, add 4-5 times as much water, stit it up and let it settle for a couple of days. The "rocks" and sand will be fairly obvious. If you want to get an idea of the silt - top layer - use a pipette or turkey baster to suck up a bit from the top layer and see how it feels between your teeth. Pretty gritty=coarse silt, gritty but not all that much=medium silt, barely gritty=fine silt.

Reply to
dadiOH

Different meanings for different sciences. It pays also to consider that word usage is sort of like dictionary definitions. Both describe how words are being used and not necessarily how they *should* be used.

I would say that you would start with minerals and when several minerals are mixed together into a solid chunk it is rock no matter the size. Stone can be removed from a rock quarry and seems to imply that stone is serving some useful purpose as building material for instance. River rocks are often used in decorative building material, but it doesn't mean that they cease being rock just because they are used like stone.

I had heard that there is a progression from sands (clay, silt, sand) when dead boilogical material is added it is termed 'dirt' and when living biological material is added it becomes termed as 'soil', but then again different sciences may make different distinctions.

Reply to
FromTheRafters

...

looks good! investigate under that pile a bit to see how it is breaking down, if there are any fungi in there (white strands/masses of hyphae), etc.

you won't likely need to bring in any compost at all if you have partially decayed wood chips available in quantity. :)

great. :) i could use all of those in an afternoon...

arid climates can be like that, but you can speed things up by digging a trench, adding layers of wood chips and dirt in about equal measures and keeping it moist. if you have waste water from the sink or drains from the roof you can use some of that and not have an impact on your water bills... very useful stuff after a few years. :)

by putting them below ground you keep more moisture in there and that will speed things up.

after a few years plant squash in there and keep it well watered and watch it go...

songbird

Reply to
songbird

dadiOH wrote: ...

worms won't like a hot compost pile, but after a while when things cool off worms will break it down faster. as will pill bugs or any of the many other detritovores. if there's any moisture in those piles he's probably already got something going on in there. just a matter of looking...

songbird

Reply to
songbird

My mistake for not being clear. What I mean is that the tomato plant you see here was grown from a Costco tomato food scrap. I acted like a cuckoo bird by burying the tomato in the wife's basil pot with the full knowledge that I was making her feed my experiment.

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In very short order, she started remarking "Did you put something in my basil pot?" to which I avoided her gaze until I could no longer. She is still taking care of the tomato plant, even as it crowded out her basil.

But the darn thing has no tomatoes.

We don't know why. Are Costco tomatoes infertile? Or are the bees not doing their job?

I did the same with pepper food scraps:

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No peppers either.

Are food scraps infertile?

Reply to
Danny D.

i've been studying soil sciences, gardening, microbiology, ecosystems, and many related topics for many years (agroecology, permaculture and regenerative agriculture are intersting topics :) ).

if anyone refers you to a university or agricultural school you will get the chem-ag approach to farming in mass production. many master gardeners programs use similar materials and philosophy and it is all through the gardening references and web-sites. it is often expensive and damaging in many ways. much more expensive than it needs to be.

songbird

Reply to
songbird

Nope.

Bees pollinate the flower allowing the plant to form fruit. In the case of tomatoes, they are most commonly wind pollinated:

While tomato flowers are typically wind pollinated, and occasionally by bees, the lack of air movement or low insect numbers can inhibit the natural pollination process. In these situations, you may need to hand pollinate tomatoes to ensure pollination takes place so your tomato plants bear fruit.

Same deal with peppers.

Nope.

Reply to
Dan Espen

...

not entirely true...

they are a long term energy source, also a large surface area, a storage medium for both nutrients and water, a home for fungi and bacteria and many other animals of the soil community.

i raise them to break down food scraps and to be used in the gardens like what you see above.

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by the time i take them out to the gardens in the spring there's about 150,000 - 200,000 worms. which i keep 10-20 percent for restarting the cycle.

i need so many buckets because Ma cooks for quite a few people at times and so i need enough capacity to absorb the scraps from making a fruit salad for

50 people or whatever she's up to.

while many worm composters only use the red wriggler composting worms, i use a mix of about six species (i no longer count or sort them out) including earthworms. so if i have a bone or meat scrap i can bury it in the bucket and the worms will break it down eventually. this is not commonly done (because rotting meat in an organic only worm bin will stink - something buried in the dirt will not stink if you put it down several inches deep).

i have all these bins here in my room, they only smell when i'm disturbing them and usually it's not a horrible smell. sometimes a little swampy if i get a bucket too wet (worms don't care how wet as long as it isn't actually swimming in there). since i'm only four months into the cycle there's probably only 100,000 worms here and most are likely to be fairly small, but they keep on going all the time. very good helpers and keeping them indoors during the winter frozen months means they keep on working when everything else outside is fairly quiet.

no, that was pretty plain unamended soil mixed with some extra sand. clay is not loose, when dry it can be as hard as a brick. if i showed you that same garden now it's a few shades darker and is currently covered by squash plants with vines about 30ft long. they're growing in mounds with piles of leaves and other organic matter, ashes and clay layered, plenty of half-decomposed wood chips in there too. i still have about half the area to do the same thing to to raise it up and give it some things for the worms to chew on.

the dark stuff in the trench came out of one of my worm buckets. i put it down in trenches where i'm planting, it's full of nutrients from 12 months of worm activity.

songbird

Reply to
songbird

they take a while to get going sometimes. but can also be like what i say above. too much N, the plant doesn't produce as much other than green growth.

some plants need certain types of insects or conditions to be fertile. some need other plants (i.e. they are not self-fertile or do much better when crossed with a relative).

songbird

Reply to
songbird

could be pollination or temperature or a mutation/hybrid which isn't very self-fertile.

some days when it's really hot i'll water the whole plant to make sure the flowers get dinged (pollinate themselves).

songbird

Reply to
songbird

Heh heh ... I like to pee outside. Makes me feel like I'm out in nature.

I had buried some leftover food waste spaghetti squash seeds in the wife's mint planter, which took over, but which seems to be resiliant to my attempt at fertilizing it with urine! :)

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If only she knew ... she'd kill me!

PS: Only one spaghetti squash ever resulted, even though these things had beautiful male and female yellow flowers (mostly female it seemed). Again, I think the bees aren't doing their job.

Reply to
Danny D.

That makes too much sense for a Usenet post! :)

Reply to
Danny D.

I once drank from the Lehigh river, not too far from the Susquehanna (depends on what "far" means). I was hiking along the Appalachian, as I recall (it was very many years ago so I might have the details wrong) and I didn't get sick. I was shocked.

The water alone out there is good fertilizer!

(jk)

Reply to
Danny D.

not only do they harbor nitrogen fixing bacteria they can also encourage other bacteria and fungi.

experience, study, observation. and like i noted elsewheres a moment ago (in another post) red peppers seem to do better with more nutrients while green peppers don't. there are many other kinds of peppers i've not even grown so i don't know what their needs are yet.

i grow many different kinds of beans too, and some seem to grow about anywhere i plant them and do ok, others are more finicky and demanding to produce well.

that and are habitat for the many other creatures. in compacted subsoils there is no room for the complex soil community so it is less fertile. every organism is an energy source/nutrient source for something else (eventually one way or another). plants can use various nutrients in the soil, but they also encourage bacteria and fungi in various ways to trade nutrients. in subsoil without much organic material you won't see such networks (this is why no-till practices are interesting to study).

it is certainly fitting to my experiences and results. so far a few instances of diseases and pests have been corrected by amending the garden with wood chips or with worm compost.

...

we've had a long dry summer that finally improved the past few weeks. normal for us is about 3 inches of rain per month. we had four months with that total rainfall. i had to water the veggie gardens every three or four days. last year i hardly had to water at all.

i consider it mostly an expensive fad but some people do find it easier with things being up higher. i don't want my gardens isolated from the subsoil/minerals/worm hiding places, etc. every edge or container is just to me yet another thing to maintain. when you have almost an acre of such things the fewer number of things the better. i can work a larger garden much easier than many smaller ones. able to rotate or change where i plant following crops, reuse pathways or whatever. much easier to weed along one edge than around four edges of a smaller garden. and all the wasted space in pathways that i can use instead for production. much nicer. i'm gradually taking out extra useless pathways and consolidating smaller gardens into larger areas. what i don't have is enough fill and organic materials to bring up the elevation yet in some spots where they can flash flood. eventually it will get done... :)

better than nothing, but if you can capture water and hold it underground then you don't lose as much from evaporation. as long as your ground doesn't slip when saturated...

that's harsh, but do you have control of any upslope areas? there's things that can be done which will hold water back and soak it in and then that can be a source of a spring further down the slope eventually. some changes can take years to see obvious results, but are worth it.

if you have buried organic materials around they can also act as a reservior for moisture.

i think the major problem in many arid areas is that any growth during the wetter times becomes a fuel source during wild fire times. that's another good reason to get things buried. :)

:)

songbird

Reply to
songbird

dadiOH wrote: ...

there are predatory nematodes which will help out any other nematode problems.

songbird

Reply to
songbird

Yeah, except that I run my own gas station at home. There's no gas at Costco almaden (but man, I *love* the nearby combination of side-by-side Home Depot and Hardware Freight!

So, if I go to Costco Almaden, I go there first, before the Costco opens, and then after Costco, I get my milk and eggs at the next-door Trader Joes, so I have it all worked out.

If I need to fill up on 70 gallons of gasoline, I go to Costco Coleman.

BTW, Costco Coleman is building next year an entire *new* gas station, up the road a bit, in the opposite corner of the parking lot closer to the railroad tracks (my "buddies" always chat with me there since they see me come by once a month for my 70-gallon fill).

Yeah. Same name. Different road. Wait until you drive any road with "Saratoga" in the name out here! :)

And, the one word that means the *opposite* of what it is, is the California word "expressway". Back east, the BQE is an "expressway". Out here, they call some Spanish Saint an expressway but it's nothing of the sort. It's riddled with lights.

Reply to
Danny D.

When people apply fertilizer to a lawn, what do they do? Within a week, the lawn is greening up. What you put on top makes it to the roots fairly quickly.

Yes, you can mix it in, if you have that option. But I wouldn't waste fertilizer by mixing it into 50 lbs of soil and then filling pots with it where the roots won't get to the fertilizer at the bottom before most of it is watered out. Getting it into the first few inches would help.

Reply to
trader_4

Maybe the lack of frost is the issue. Thanks.

I can't completely blame the bees anyway, because the Kumquat trees bear fruit (and their flowers smell *great*!).

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Speaking of kumquats, I can't imagine this tree will survive, but it has been surviving for years (Costco tree).

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There is almost zero bark left at the base. Dunno why.

But it lives.

Reply to
Danny D.

That's a great description. I don't disagree that it's "course soil". At this point, since it's displaced, it's "course dirt". :)

I look at sand all the time under the microsope just for fun. The quartz is the light white stuff but there's darker reddish stuff and black stuff too.

Nice test! Stokes law.

I already have a Costco peaches jar ready to settle the issue once and for all!

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Interestingly, there was a cloud of dust that the picture doesn't capture, but it was "smoking" with dust like it was the remains of a smouldering fire, so there must be plenty of very fine grains in there too!

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Ug.

Reply to
Danny D.

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