[MittleiderMethodGardening] Are Soil Tests Important or Necessary for the Home Gardener
"My husband is convinced I need a soil test of my beds before I start adding weekly feed to them. What say ye? Is a soil test to determine base nutrient levels in the beds worth the $30?" In 1972 when Jacob Mittleider published the book Food For Everyone he was still conducting soil tests on every project he did. Over the years he discovered that virtually all soils were deficient in at least some of the nutrients, and that even if there is nutrition in the soil it is most often "fixed" or adhered to the soil particles and only very slowly available to the plants. Jacob further learned that tests for pH were unnecessary because everywhere annual rainfall was above 20" the pH was below 7 and everywhere annual rainfall was below 18" pH was above 7. And the only thing the grower needs to do is to use lime on soils with pH below 7 and use gypsum on soils with pH above 7. SIMPLE! And the amounts of fertilizer we apply to the soil are so small that they never HURT either the soil or the plants, no matter how much or how little nutrition there might already be in the soil. Consider this: The manure user adds a couple of hundred pounds of manure to a 30'-long bed or box. This amounts to somewhere between 10 POUNDS and 15 POUNDS of fertilizer SALTS. And it is added all at once at the beginning of the season - often burning tiny new seedlings as they are getting started. The Mittleider system of growing adds 7 OUNCES of fertilizer salts in that same space at the beginning, and then adds 7 oz per week - just when the plants need it - several times over the course of the growing season. Follow this proven RECIPE (the Mittleider Method as taught in The Mittleider Gardening Course book - available at Growfood.com » Products - and you will have a great garden! Jim Kennard
|
small.jpg?96,96,0,100,80,3759744807)
__._,_.___
Posted by: jim@growfood.com
| Reply via web post | • | Reply to sender | • | Reply to group | • | Start a New Topic | • | Messages in this topic (1) |
.
__,_._,___
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment