"... he gives the following recipe for garden soil, which is
rather more complicated:
1 - bale (6 cubic feet / 170 litres) peat moss
1 - large bag (4 cu ft / 113.25 L) coarse vermiculite
3 cubic feet (25 gal / 85 L ) sand
5 gallons (4.1 L) wood ashes..."
............................................
I say WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wouldnt add 5 gallons( or is it 4.1 liters( which
is really a little over a gallon) of wood ashes to ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That's way too much i htink.
.........Plus the lime already mentioned ---????? going to wreak havoc in
that mix. I'd check to amounts again , if same ,then editor of Mel's book
was asleep at his typewriter.
4 L is not the same as 5 gallons! Maybe it should be one gallon -- that
would make more sense.
Barbara M. Martin
Current Mid-Atlantic Garden Report: "Call Me Mulch Queen (Mulch Makes Good
Eats)"
http://nationalgardening.com/regional/report13.html
Now at Cottage Garden: "Mulching: Mimicry or Murder"
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/253/92387
Co-Owner, Gardens List http://www.kiva.net/~dorsettm/notes.html
but worthwhile IMO]
which
That's still alot of ash's, I think... I would be careful...
Maybe it should be one gallon -- that
would make more sense.
I am pretty shocked at all this. Square foot gardening sounds great - just the same as French intensive gardening, which is what Europeans love, having so little land...
But I am really against having to buy all this crazy stuff! I don't know if peat moss is the kind that looks like soil? which in my book is pretty good in a houseplant recipe, but I wouldn't use it normally for vegetables. And the rest of the stuff I wouldn't use either. NO WAY!!! Both because it is not necessary or because it's harmful.
We have something we call raw clay, and I do have some in my garden which has been uncovered in the last couple of days, as I start making war on the area in front of the cherry tree. If I were to grow something there (I won't) I would just put a pile of leaves on the soil and wait until the next spring, in which case I no longer would have raw clay. It's SO easy! You put leaves on (or grass or compost or whatever you have including kitchen scraps) and the worms move in. Worms move in, microherd follows. You get a dark crumbly soil. Part of mine was like that the spring after I moved in, and more and more gets dark and crumbly. The raw clay grows great vegetables, but tends to dry out very badly in a drought such as we have now. Hard to dig...
Carol
> 4 L is not the same as 5 gallons! Maybe it should be one gallon -- that
> would make more sense.
> Barbara M. Martin
Yes, a liter is just slightly more than a quart, so you could say 4 1/2 quarts wood ashes, which would make more sense.
Carol
Bill wrote:
which
> is really a little over a gallon) of wood ashes to ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> That's way too much i htink.
Okay, a bit of a conversion error on my part, plus an editing omission. I
wrote the post rather late at night, so I think I'm entitled to some leeway.
: )
Should read:
"5 gallons (18.9L) wood ashes and charcoal"
As for whether that's too much...well...hm. We have 170L of peat moss, whic
h is a bit acidic in itself, in addition to about a kilogram of lime and 5
gallons of ash and charcoal.
Wood ashes are apparently about half as alkaline as agricultural limestone,
but much more readily available, which makes both equally effective in
altering soil pH.
The recommendation I usually see is about 5 lb. of wood ashes per 100 square
feet in - and this is important - *established garden soil*. Since you're
actually making soil from scratch here, maybe it isn't so strange. Of a
total soil volume produced of over 470 litres (or about 0.6 cubic yards),
just shy of 19L are wood ash and charcoal, and just about 1L is lime itself.
That's about all I can do with this one, as it's quite late, and I'm very
tired. Anyone else want to figure out how much the peat, lime and ashes
will alter the pH of the mixture?
Jason
