Gardening at the Edge of Magic

Much of my introduction to organic gardening, the only kind of gardening I have ever engaged in, was made possible by a fellow by the name of Gary Kline. From his garden store on the shores of Black Lake I carried with me a heavy weight of knowledge, and a fair wage of experience. It was incredibly good fortune for me to have had those opportunities.

In the years that I worked at Black Lake Organic, I met nearly every organic gardener in this part of Washington. Interestingly, I was the stand up fellow who attempted to answer questions and provide guidance to many who were senior to me in age and experience. I had behind me several shelves of thick and thorough books about gardening and pests and soil science. From them I drew strands of knowledge that provided many of the answers I was sent searching for.

In time, my conversations with our customers began to fill me with answers to questions I would not have posed to me for years to come. When winter came, and there were not funds to pay me with federal reserve notes, I acquired copies of many of those books for my own shelf. I also acquired many of the tools I still wield today. When I teeter at the top of an orchard ladder, steadying myself with a thin branch pressed between my fingers, at the end of my arm, cradled comfortably in my rough hand, are the Felco pruning sheers I was so happy to acquire fifteen or so years ago in exchange for my hours in that shop.

I am leading you to this small cedar building built on a hand poured cement slab at the shores of Blake Lake in Washington State. In the door and around the corner to the shelves that hold the simple organic fertilizers that help form the foundation of organic agriculture. They are naturally separated into three categories; animal, vegetable and mineral. The basic animal meals; bone, blood, feather and fish. The basic plant meals; soybean, alfalfa and kelp. The basic ground minerals; rock phosphate, agricultural limestone and gypsum.

When it comes to fertilizing your garden, it is important to remember that you are undertaking an ancient and sacred activity. The first cultivators of land began to understand the complexities of its management. They might have been striking the first blows from human hands against this glorious planet. If they failed to understand well enough the cost to the land of their agriculture, they might have moved on, or perished. In most cases we do not have the luxuries that they enjoyed. We are often left to garden in marginal land. Too many trees to the south. Big rocks. Heavy clay. Or it just stays wet late into the spring. When gardening in these places, it is that much more important to work hard to understand what we do when we attempt to improve fertility and increase our yields.

An element too of fertilization is its ability to increase the nutritional value of our food. When the first assessments of human health were made on a country wide basis in the US to fulfill the needs of the growing army, it was found that many health problems were locally severe, and elsewhere non existent. There were not super markets at the time to mask the local nutritional deficiencies in the soils and water. What the soil offered to the plants, the plants offered to the people. What the soil did not offer to the plants, the plants could not offer to the people.

Another interesting anecdote concerns the range of the Buffalo. A mammoth beast, that stormed across the range. Only eating grass. What grass must have nourished these beasts? What soil must have fed these grasses? They knew well where to end their graze, if they wished to continue to pound the terrain. The most fertile soils in the world could be found beneath the feet of the Buffalo.

What did those soils have that the marginal soils do not? Maybe most importantly is calcium, at just the right saturation percentages to maximize the production of protein in plants. This perfect ratio was the result of parent rock that had nutrients ready to be dissolved, and weather that would coax it out of the rock in the ideal concentrations. With just enough rain to quench the thirst of the plants, without washing away their valuable nourishment.

If the mineral balance of the soil is in this ideal range, everything else will begin to come easily. Microbes and plants living and dead will release nitrogen, phosphorous and sulfur. These microbes and the earthworm they assist will flourish, processing and refining organic matter into humus. Humus, this final product of aerobic decomposition, not dirt, not compost, humus. It is the nexus of life on this planet.

Curiously, humus and clay have a lot in common. They both hold a positive charge, that attracts cation elements. The total charge in a given soil represents the capacity of a soil to hold these nutrients against leaching. A sandy soil has a very low capacity to hold cation nutrients. A clay soil or a soil high in organic matter has a larger capacity. There is a minimum quantity of these cation nutrients that must be available for a plant to grow. There is also an ideal relative concentration of these nutrients in a given soil based on that soils capacity to hold them.

The three primary cation nutrients are calcium, magnesium and potassium. Calcium should represent 70% of the saturation, magnesium about 10% and potassium around 3%. In different soils you may find advantage in adjusting that magnesium number, but the 70% calcium number is a target in all soils. If cation nutrients occupied 100% of the capacity in a given soil, that soil would be pH neutral. In a properly managed soil for agriculture, the pH should be about 6.7. This allowing some unsatisfied or potential capacity in the soil. It also allows some acids in the soil to continue the decomposition of minerals.

Agricultural limestone is the ideal material for raising the calcium concentration in soil, and thus raising the pH. If the pH is too high already, but a need for calcium exists, then gypsum is an alternative source. It should also be remembered when applying rock phosphate that there is a significant amount of calcium in it as well. As with all organic fertilizer, you are getting a natural material, with a variety of elemental components. Look too see what other nutrients you may be adding along with the one you intend to add.

If the intent of the gardener is to nourish herself, then great attention must be paid to calcium. We are deceived into believing that the way to plant growth is NPK. Though these nutrients are consumed in great quantity by plants, the determiner of their efficiency in doing so and their nutritional value in the end is more accurately found to be calcium.

When studying that soil analysis you have done by the extension office, (after first carefully reading the description of how to collect the soil sample and following all of the directions to the letter), look to the base saturation percentages to determine your need for calcium. If you have the agent recommend fertilizer applications, and they call for dolomite lime instead of agricultural lime, be sure to examine this recommendation carefully. It is almost always in error. Unless there is a distinct need for magnesium, do not use dolomite lime to raise your pH.

If you have been adding phosphorous, whether you knew it or not, you likely do not need any more this year, take a break. If you do need phosphorous, composted chicken manure is a great source, as long as you need the accompanying nitrogen. All around it is a great fertilizer for corn and squash and other high consumption crops. Steer manure is a much lower nitrogen alternative. Be aware that much of the manure today is contaminated with persistent herbicides. Cow manure and horse manure most notably. Persistent meaning they will not biodegrade. Ask your supplier if they have tested or are aware of any concern about the chemical clorpyralid. If they cannot address this concern, move on.

I am cautious about advising people use soybean meal for nitrogen, and I warn people against ever using conventional cotton seed meal. The former does not always show good results, and is almost certainly genetically engineered soybean. The latter is not regulated as a food crop and so is soaked in pesticides and herbicides. Rumor is that the oil extracted from the seed meal for potato chip production carries all of the pesticide residue with it. This keeps me from eating cottonseed oil, but does not encourage me to use the meal as fertilizer.

I like the animal meals, especially since they are not now used for feed. Blood meal is an excellent quick source of nitrogen and iron, even in cold and wet soils. Feather meal is a bit slower, and carries with it compounds that may slow its becoming available for plants. Steamed bone meal is an excellent source of phosphorous and calcium, though it also contains lead. They will all attract animals. I have planted hundreds of bulbs into beds using bone meal only to return the next day to find each one meticulously removed by patient little fingers so that the little beast could devour every precious flake of that steamed bone meal.