Rainy Day Beach Farming

The garlic is growing.

Some more eager than others. 'Music,' a porcelain strain, is always slow to start but is better for it.

Here, the earliest of varieties -Turban strain 'Thai Purple.' To the right, another Turban 'Xian.'

'Xian' is a much desired Chinese strain. Turban garlic has always grown quite well for me, but with this lot nearly every clove has rotted. I must remember to contact the farm. Contact the farm (reminder).

'Japanese' or 'Sakura,' another desired strain of the Asiatic variety, has been showing signs of weakness, but nowhere near as much as 'Xian.' It is also a very eager grower.

The regulars at the garden are now calling me the scientist. I am experimenting with mixing my own fertilizers, which I think is a good thing, although despite their claims I am not being scientific (measuring, observing, recording) but I am using my soil test results as the basis for my additions. Above you see Feather Meal (long term nitrogen), Humic Acids (micronutrients), Langbeinite (potassium), Corn Gluten Meal (nitrogen and wee bit of phosphorous) and blood meal (nitrogen). 

Prior experience with corn gluten meal at the fowl-heavy beach farm warns me of the feast and stomp of local geese. Pretty heavy, they do significant damage while chomping down on bits of corn. My reasoning is (hello scientist) that I will be able to discourage them via the scent of bird feather meal (aka dead birds). No, there isn't a significant odor to it, but neither is there to the cornmeal and somehow the geese still find it.

Each row then got a pass of the rake, breaking the winter-skinned soil. After spreading the fertilizing mixture I made another pass of the rake to fix it in place and hope the birds will fear the feathers of the fallen (much doubt).

We had several nights well below freezing lately; it doesn't feel like a month has passed since there was snow on these plots. But soil temperatures are up, above 50 degrees F, and ready for potatoes.

Reds and yellows placed in a trench easily dug thanks to the saturated (by sandy beach farm standards) soil. Afterward I covered with a couple of inches of composted manure and the remains of my fertilizer mix.

Grow potato grow.

Spring's Curmudgeon

Spring break is an opportunity to tackle too much that is undone. Yesterday's tasks, under warmer temperatures and gentler breezes, was to pick the trash out of the apartment's garden, pay the Fed for this year's plots, and spread some fertilizers at the beach farm because, after all, there is only two months between today and the beginning of garlic harvest. Well, I do expect to harvest later than usual this year, barring an insanely rapid rise in temperature (which I feel is rather unlikely), but still the organic fertilizers need time to activate and there's little reason for delay.

I've come over the last three years of growing a quantity and variety of garlic to expect disappointment. Serious food farmers are not interested in disappointment, it is a waste of time and money, and accordingly tend to grow the hardiest of garlic. I, with my interest in variety and shelf-life, the slightest shifts in flavor and heat, have to get comfortable with failure. And failure comes, like clockwork, each spring.

Today, I pulled out almost all of the Asiatic strain 'Japanese' (sometimes called 'Sakura') and a good amount of the Turban strain 'Xian' due to rot. Although there was consistent snow cover, and therefore moisture, our beach farm soil is exceptionally drained. I detected no insect, such as the corn seed maggot, saw no apparent mold, just stunted, browning growth and leaves easily separated from the rotting clove below. My guess is botrytis that came with the seed garlic, but I cannot be sure. So, what can I do? Simply dig out the offending plants and hope that the others hold out.

One of the difficulties of gardening in New York City is getting nutrient-specific fertilizers. There is no point in trying out the box stores (I know this because I do anyway). It doesn't help that the clerks at our city's garden centers appear to know little beyond fertilizer basics. Why is it so easy to confound them by asking for K, potassium, or potash (all names for the same thing)? After all, K is one of the big three, like Ford, GM, and um, what's the other one...? So N-P-K, you know nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium, should roll off the tongue of a garden clerk like Ford, GM, and Chrysler rolls off the tongue of the UAW. 

So I need K, potassium, and the problem is that I want to stick to best organic practice, it should be OMRI listed at the least. Okay, good enough, there are several naturally derived substances with K (kelp and fish meals, for instance) but, according to my soil tests, I need between 50 and 100 lbs of K per acre for each of my three plots, which means that I need a lot of kelp meal. Kelp typically comes with a K rating of 2, which means I would need over 50 lbs of Kelp Meal ($99.99 + shipping at Groworganic.com) for my 600 square feet. Clearly I need a source with a higher K rating than Kelp. Fortunately I can order Langbeinite (sometimes called SulPoMag), a mined salt that carries a K rating of 22, requiring just under 5 pounds ($8.99+ shipping Groworganic) for my 600 square feet.

At the risk of getting whiny, I prefer not to buy these organic fertilizers from California (or Maine, etc.) and have them shipped, often doubling the price. I would love to walk into a gardening supply store in NYC, where the clerk knows what I'm looking for, and walk out carrying organic supplements. Instead, what I find are myriad synthetics, some Espoma products (I do use these), toxic-sounding Hi Yield, random liquid fish and bat guano. It is much easier to find organic nitrogen and phosphorous, both covered well by Espoma. The K, however, is muriate of potash (also known as potassium chloride or KCl) with a K rating 0-0-60 and not desirable under organic standards because of the chlorine it adds to the soil.

I know that space is a problem in our small city garden centers, so they can't carry everything. Still, there are none that fully cater to an organic gardening customer (hydroponic stores offer some solutions). Part of the problem is the customer. They want flowers, they want vegetables, but they don't have time for soil science and soil tests. And when they do get their soil tested, the results are hard to understand. So when they go to buy fertilizers, they do it in an uninformed way, and go for the all-in-one solution. For most people, the numbers on the bag communicate more or less N-P-K, but that's about it.

If gardeners think of fertilizer as only food for plants, then what harm is there in putting down more than is required? The plants will either grow bigger or simply won't "eat" what they don't need, right? This dumbing down isn't helpful at all. If you want to properly fertilize, you need to understand a little chemistry, because that is really what it is -so much more than hungry plants. In the meantime, before you earn that degree in chemistry, just get a soil test and see what the people who understand that stuff say about your soil. Certain labs (I use the UMass Extension Center For Agriculture because the instructions are simple and the cost affordable) will give you pounds per acre recommendations on N-P-K which you can then put into this exceptional calculator to derive how much commercially available fertilizer you will need for each nutrient. A soil test and N-P-K calculator takes the guess work (and the math) out of your fertilizer problem, helping us become knowledgeable customers and gardening stores better supplied.

A Little Color

After an inordinate amount of time searching for OMRI listed sources of Potassium for the beach farm, and not purchasing any, I needed to leave the apartment. I had seen the pale blue crocus in bloom on the warm day before the cold day, but had no time to stop and admire them, electronically. Today, however, I caught these larger, more robust flowers recently emerged from the leafy mat, and just before shadow took the corner.

Stepping into the side yard, the path stones squished under my weight, a season's worth of frost heave visible and then, the acrid bouquet of a season's worth of feline manure. I considered, briefly, picking up the winter's twigs, leaves, and trash deposits, but moved on to my intentions, sure enough there would be another 45 degree day for that.

Steal This Fertilizer

I had been passing this store, just off the Long Island Expressway in Queens, for years, as long as I can remember, but I never stopped, never went in. Why? As a dirt gardener, a practitioner of geoponics, maybe I had figured that a store dedicated to the dark arts of indoor growing would not be all that useful. I may have imagined it as a pot-growing mini mart full of magic beans and crystals. I mean garden centers have hard enough time surviving, how is it a hydroponics store has survived? Hmm? 

There is very little online information about boron fertilizing, and in fact, the majority are on forums dedicated to hydroponic cannabis growing. After all, it is the hydroponicists that had to do their homework on nutrients. Although most nutrients are available in most soils, hydroponic growing uses no soil so that practitioners were forced to experiment with different nutrients and micro-nutrients in varying quantities and ratios until they figured out what works. I knew that if I was going to get my hands on a boron supplement quickly, I needed to head out to Flushing to that red and yellow sign off the highway. 

Soon after walking through the front door I was taken by the variety of garden items: Seeds of Change seeds, worm castings, guano, manure growing trays -so many of the things you rarely see in the average city garden center. I thought I'd have a look around, see what other things this store might have for farming or gardening. A young man in black t-shirt passed by and asked if he could help me with anything (you will not go long in this store without that happening). Of course, I said, I'm looking for a boron foliar.

"Um, that would be over here, although I don't really know which one of these has it, but one most likely does. Here, this chart shows you which product has boron." As I look over the chart (oh look, Miracle Grow has it) to figure my best shot at an adequate supplement (none are boron only products), the man asks why I think I need boron. Uh oh. 

Now here's the kind of customer I am in three words -leave me be. If I need help I'll ask, but I won't volunteer more than is necessary. In other words, do not second guess my decision to seek what I seek. In this case -show me what has boron and is a foliar. I'll even find it myself if you do not mind me reading every bottle on your racks. My experience has been that over eager store clerks can send you down the wrong path in a heart beat and you just may leave with something you weren't looking for or nothing at all.

But, okay, fine. I have had a soil test that shows zero boron and my plants are showing signs of boron deficiency. "What are these signs -are you sure boron will do the job?" says the clerk. Look, I've had Cornell take a look at my field and they agree this is a reasonable action based on the evidence." Oh, you know, let me get someone else to help you." 

Oh. No.

Standing between two chrome racks of sparsely stocked mystery products I'm approached by an older man, but he's probably my age or only a little older, it's just that he looks this way because of the bald patch and the untucked Hawaiian shirt. "So, you say you're looking for boron. Why do you need boron?"

Well, my field is showing distinctive signs of boron deficiency and my soil test shows...

Those were probably the last words I got in edgewise. Even if I could remember the long-winded diatribes, the conspiracies, the hippie magic, the anti-corporate anti government waves of malcontent that were breaking over my simple needs, I wouldn't waste my blogging time with it. You can imagine, can't you? I had to continue to interrupt his speech to bring him back on track to my simple need - a foliar with boron, which he had well decided I did not need (remember what I said about over eager store clerks?). In each of several attempts to redirect this one way street toward my need I was redirected to different products, none of which were the proper substitute for understanding and properly preparing the soil mind you (should a clerk chastise you for not using compost, for getting soil tests, for communicating at all with Land Grant institutions?), with ridiculous names like Ecolizer (a terrible name for an agricultural soil supplement) or Magical. 

Not completely ignorant of the book from which he preached, I saw the potential of these two products, but I did not feel that they were targeted to my problem. Often these products appear like snake oil, especially when buttressed by a salesman pitching their absolute effectiveness for everything from insect control to productivity.  Their labels are too often reminiscent of a product called Superthrive, something I bought when I was young and ignorant. Maybe you did too? Do these work? I do not know. 

This is the line, isn't it? Does it work, does it do anything? I suspect there is so much gray area around the circumstances of their effectiveness that it may prove to never work unless your conditions are such that you never really needed it in the first place. Added compost would have been a good thing to do, or for that matter two years of cover cropping. But that simply doesn't matter at this point. I'm looking for a band aid now and I'm okay with that. 

After accepting his two suggestions he relaxed his missionary zeal just enough to show me the foliar section (there's a foliar section!), but none of these would he recommend for my particular problem (which he was very sure of despite knowing virtually nothing of it). Fully apprised of my role now, I pumped his ego by suggesting he is the only person to carry Fertrell products anywhere around here. It's because I'm old school, says he. Fertrell is a brand of organic fertilizers out of southern Pennsylvania, and the one I had eyed is a fish and kelp product in a gallon jug. I pick up the foggy brown container to scan the label. Boron. Yes. Only point zero two percent, but God damn, I'll take it. 

Only 10 minutes left before close, I asked if I could peruse the rest of his offerings (drip components, soil ammendments, greenhouse fans, grow lights, canning and beer making supplies, and books). He led me on a tour. At closing time, register about to be closed, I was allowed a peaceful exit, but not before I heard, wait, don't go! from the rear of the store. As I pushed open the door into the fresh air of the LIE service road, his outstretched, bare arm handed me an old, newsprint copy of Acres, USA subheading The Voice of Eco-Agriculture.

Blossom End Rot

"Where's my vitamins?"

Bones

When I entered the foyer there was the scent suggestion of rotting fish heads, and by any stretch this is not so unusual in my building. But then I had the thought -had my fish bones arrived? Are they in our apartment? No, they weren't, and just as I passed our apartment door, I heard my neighbor opening hers. I looked outside and asked her, "Did you get a package, does it smell like fish?"

"Yes, yes, please come and take it," she said in her nightgown. Who could blame her eagerness to rid herself of it. I told her it was only fertilizer, and not to worry, but as soon as I put it in our place, its fishhead funk was so powerful that I had to return it to the hall, with a promise to put it in our van the next morning.

After reading about the interaction of phosphates and soil-bound lead in stories about sewage sludge, and then again in last year's article in the NYTimes about fish bones used, alternatively, to reduce the impact of lead in garden soils, I decided to do some research of my own. There must be a source of free fish bones somewhere in the northeast, right?

Well, I couldn't find any, but I did find the scientists working on the fishbone formula. They sell their own fishbone meal (Apatite II) for use in a lead abatement process. Further along, I noticed that many organic producers have shifted away from ruminant bone meal (mad cow worries) to fish bone meal in their phosphorous fertilizers. After reading, and then some more reading, I decided to go with a fish bone meal from an organic producer that came in considerably, considerably, less than the Apatite II sold by the ton. I do not know how much I need, but I know it's not a ton. I bought 30 pounds. For the record, the 'inventors' of Apatite II say you must use their product for real results. 

In as simple terms as I can concoct, the phosphates (they are negatively charged, so an anion) will bond to the lead ions (they are positively charged, a cation) and create what is called new 'phosphate phases' (Apatite, the mineral) that are stable, or highly insoluble. I'm no scientist, and my research, is, well, on the internet, so I am not here to claim some miracle cure for high soil lead content. However, it was worth the try.

I applied the fish bone meal to the beach farm last Sunday. Why the beach farm? Last autumn I had the soil tested, and received my results this January. The lead was higher than I would like, way under the residential limits, mind you, but high enough to leave me disappointed. A turning in of a slow-releasing, high phosphate fertilizer seemed the least I could do to try to diminish our exposure to lead. 

Where plants were already in the ground, I could only rake the meal into the surface. Young garlic takes well to a fine-tined leaf rake. The lettuce-then-tomato and other empty beds received copious fish bone turned into the soil to a depth of about 10 inches.

The odor was of decaying fish, but that seemed perfectly natural as the breezes blew in from the ocean only three hundred yards away. It was an enhancement.

The beds raked, I then went over to the large, now empty, paper sack. I looked it over as if, perhaps, I had missed something that would be entirely too late to correct. I found the finest of fine prints on the back of the sack, down toward the bottom. It read "Information regarding the contents and level of metals in this product is available on the internet at http://www.aapfco.org/metals"

Yikes. I'm adding fish bones to my soil to improve the metals content, not add to it! When I got home, I went to the site. At first I couldn't find any useful information, but the site did lead me to another: http://www.aapfco.org/rules.html. On that page there is the startling information below.

"fertilizers that contain guaranteed amounts of phosphates and/or micronutrients are adulterated when they contain metals in amounts greater than the levels of metals established by the following table:" 

Metals	ppm per 1% P2O5	ppm per 1% Micronutrients3
1. Arsenic	13	112
2. Cadmium	10	83
3. Cobalt	1366	22286
4. Lead	61	463
5. Mercury	1	6
6. Molybdenum	42	3004
7. Nickel	250	1,900
8. Selenium	26	180
9. Zinc	420	2,9004

To use the Table chose one of the following three situations:

1. Fertilizers with a phosphate guarantee; but, no micro-nutrient guarantee:

Multiply the percent guaranteed P₂O₅ in the product by the values in the table to obtain the maximum allowable concentration of each metal. The minimum value for P₂O₅ utilized as a multiplier shall be 6.0.
2. Fertilizers with one or more micro-nutrient guarantees; but, no phosphate guarantee:
Multiply the sum of the guaranteed percentages of all micro-nutrients (as defined by AAPFCO's Official Fertilizer Term, T-9) in the product by the value in the appropriate column in the Table to obtain the maximum allowable concentration (ppm) of each metal. The minimum value for micro-nutrients utilized as a multiplier shall be 1.
3. Fertilizers with both a phosphate and a micro-nutrient guarantee:
A.  Multiply the guaranteed percent P₂O₅ by the value in the appropriate column. The minimum value for P₂O₅ utilized as a multiplier shall be 6.0. Then,
B.  Multiply the sum of the guaranteed percentages of the micro-nutrients by the value in the appropriate column. The minimum value for micro-nutrients utilized as a multiplier shall be 1. Then,
C.  Utilize the higher of the two resulting values as the maximum allowable concentration (ppm) of each metal. 

My fish bone fertilizer has a phosphate guarantee of 18%, but not micro-nutrients (#1, above). According to their information, I need to multiply 18 by 61 (for lead quantities) to reveal the parts per million of lead in my fish bone meal. WHAT? That is outrageous. This would mean that my natural fish bone meal has 1098 ppm of lead? What about cobalt? 2448 ppm! And remember, it says that the fertilizer is considered adulterated only if the amounts are actually higher than these.

This can't be right, yet this is where I found myself after following the link on the bag. So I sent Dr. Earth an email to ask about this, but guess what, the good doctor must be busy, because a week later he still hasn't responded to my concerns.

Today, I realized that the link given on the bag was incorrect (I've corrected it above). I found the site which it intended to link, which then lead to three western state agencies (why are they better at this?) that test fertilizers for certain heavy metals.

The Washington State results for my fishbone meal.
The Oregon State results for my fish bone meal.
The California results appear to be unlinkable, but their results can be seen by following the main link above the chart.

All three states had somewhat different test results. Washington had the most comprehensive test. The numbers are extremely low compared to the numbers achieved by the formula given by the Association of American Plant Food Control Officials or AAPFCO.

So where does all that leave me? Scratching my head. I will retest my soil in a couple of months to see if or how the levels have changed. 

.

Not Enough Phos For Us

An interesting post on the shrinking reserves of mined phosphorous at Infranetlab. If you've never thought of where that P in your N-P-K fertilizer was coming from, think now. Go over to the site and check out the photos of strip mines. As for us gardeners who aren't wholly dependent on a high output of vegetables, we can continue to use bone meal, or possibly use pee for our P (the element was discovered in urine).