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

Rock -> stone -> sand -> mud -> clay -> and then back to rock via the metamorphic process of sand -> sandstone -> slate, etc.

Reply to
Danny D.
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Interesting. I *did* mix in the meats but maybe I should have kept the veggies separate.

The wife says my compost sucks (only she says it in a much sweeter way than that). She won't use it anymore. She says even weeds won't grow in it.

Maybe it's because I mixed in *everything*?

Reply to
Danny D.

The Costco garlic just turns brown. I don't think the hairy bottoms ever get green sprouts on them.

Rosemary you are correct on! You just can't kill that stuff out here.

We never water it but it grows (and grows, and grows, and grows).

We've got more rosemary than we know what to do with, probably, easily, a hundred yards of rosemary scattered about in wide swaths all over the place!

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The wife makes (what I call) rosemary pizza with it though ...

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Very fragrant!

PS: Those are bay leaves in the background, soaking in water, for our bay-leaf tea! You can't kill a bay tree either. Just not possible.

Reply to
Danny D.

If you can explain why it's cooler in the summer (even though I get about 4 more hours of sunlight than does San Jose, from about 6am to about 10am) and warmer in the winter (my BMW dings when I get down to the bottom and I can see frost on the grass on the bottom - where it's ten degrees colder).

Part of it must be due to having no shadow whatsoever (sun I have plenty of), but some of it must be due to the height and to the wind factors.

As for the geology of the soil, I don't want to pinpoint my exact location on the Internet (who knows what cuckoos lurk herein), but, suffice to say that anyone who knows the local geology can pinpoint me just as well as they pinpointed Osama Bin Laden from the Tora Bora background pictures.

Here's a picture I snapped today of the roadcut on my land:

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Notice that the "soil" is Franciscan "ribbon chert" for a thousand or more feet thick!

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That's what I'm dealing with.

Reply to
Danny D.

Here's a picture of the Franciscan ribbon chert on a road cut on my land.

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It does grow stuff on the top few inches.

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So, even though it never rains in the summer, it must get enough water to grow oak and manzanita and bays.

Reply to
Danny D.

Yes. There is tons of fungi on the *bottom* of that pile. I've been meaning to get to the bottom of it for years! :)

Tons and tons and tons of wood chips do I have. And every year, more and more as they do free wood chipping out here, for fire reasons.

Come and get 'em! :)

Kitchen scrap squash seeds *do* seem to grow very fast with really big leaves and big yellow flowers!

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Reply to
Danny D.

Ah, you mixed in sand. I could see the grains.

My soil seems to be 'dusty'. I noticed the dust, like smoke, when I filled this Costco peaches jar to run the stokes settling experiment.

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Reply to
Danny D.

Fair enough. You can even see the stripes of darker green sometimes. So it must diffuse.

Fair enough.

Reply to
Danny D.

I was more referring to inorganic, organic(dead), organic(living), but yes there is a rock cycle of sorts. Even including minerals used by organisms falling to the ocean floor when they die and eventually becoming limestone. Nothing exists in a vacuum.

Reply to
FromTheRafters

i think there's some pea gravel in there too. :)

i'm not familiar with that experiment, but a simple soil analysis whereby you mix a soil sample and some water and then see what settles out quickly(sand and coarser particles) what settles out medium term (silt) and what settles out eventually (clays or finer particles). some organic matter may float and give you an idea of how much of that is in there (trace amounts in most subsoils).

songbird

Reply to
songbird

it's gold! great! :) you have all the organic materials you can ever use. partially decayed to fully decayed are best for using in established gardens that need some OM added. wood chips are well used as a top mulch to hold moisture and to limit weed growth (and if by chance weeds do get started they're a lot easier to pull out of wood chips than that hard subsoil).

if i had property with really poor soil and tons of wood chips i'd be spreading them all over (and making sure they can't float away when it does rain enough to have water flows), shape your land to capture any water it gets, use the wood chips to keep the surface covered, within a few years you have a good start on topsoil and will be able to grow plenty of good stuff.

if i were close enough i would. for sure. :)

yes, they do, i have some vines going 40ft now. starting to finally fade a bit as we are getting some cooler nights.

songbird

Reply to
songbird

It was suggested by someone else, and easy enough to try. I was kind of surprised how much *smoke* there was, so, that tells me there are some *extremely* fine grains there.

Probably because the dirt is so dry...

Reply to
Danny D.

That's the plan. I have a few acres to go though!

Wow. 40 feet. The wife's vine hugs the ground and goes about 10 feet, with one squash on the end out of about a dozen big yellow flowers.

Her bees are lazy.

Reply to
Danny D.

:)

Lawrence was a spanish saint? Actually, a bit of trivia - there was originally a town called Lawrence about where I280 and the Lawrence Expressay meet. Hence the name. (Saw this on a circa 1920 bay area map at the British Museum :-)

(And yes, I realize you're referring to the San Tomas expressway, which out here, must be compared to surface streets, not the BQE).

Reply to
Scott Lurndal

Google "Inversion Layer".

Reply to
Scott Lurndal

As you said, it is a melange consisting of a considerable variety of rock types both metamorphic and sedimentary. That variety gives rise to a number of soil types.

This link to the statigraphy of Mendocino County...

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near the bottom shows some. The nearest in appearance to the type you linked is the Redvine Sandy Clay Loam. Above that - about halfway down - is a location map.with which you should be able to get close to your location.

Reply to
dadiOH

Google is your friend. Really. Here's what turned up when I googled temperature tomatoes set fruit

Several conditions can cause tomatoes to not set fruit. Too much nitrogen f ertilizer, nighttime temperatures over 70 degrees F., low temperatures belo w 50 degrees F., irregular watering, insects such as thrips or planting the wrong variety may result in poor fruit set.

Peppers, like tomatoes, are sensitive to temperature. Most peppers will dro p their blooms when daytime temperatures get much above 90 degrees F. in co mbination with night temperatures above 75 degrees F. They will also drop t heir blooms in the early spring if temperatures remain cool for extended pe riods. Hot peppers, such as jalapenos, withstand hot weather fairly well an d can often produce fruit through the summer in most areas. Optimum tempera tures fall between 70 degrees and 80 degrees F. for bell-type peppers and b etween 70 degrees and 85 degrees F. for hot varieties.

Cindy Hamilton

Reply to
Cindy Hamilton

It might be irradiated to prevent sprouting.

The hairy bottoms are where the roots grow. The green sprouts come from the middle of each clove.

Cindy Hamilton

Reply to
Cindy Hamilton

Speaking off "organic" dead plant material, do people ever just sprinkle "flour" in the soil?

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Seems to me that 50-pound Costco bag of flour would be the perfect thing to give organically poor soil some readily available organics.

What do you think?

Reply to
Danny D.

Wild garlic sounds good. I used to pluck wild onions back east. Here the mustard grows wild ...

Reply to
Danny D.

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