This old sugar tree came down a few years ago. It cracked like an egg where it hit the ground
Animals have been making use of it for nesting and storing food, notably acorns. Now, it's my turn to get in on the action.
Good Humus
soil
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.
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.
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.
Three Year Soil
Soil Matters
I recently finished James Nardi's Life in the Soil, a gift from a year or so ago* I found it easy to read, but that may just be because I really need to know more since I began working with less than ideal soil for my garlic trials. I was also nudged into finishing this book by my recent experiments with compost down at the beach farm. I've been digging holes around the plot so to dump a week's worth of coffee grinds, egg shells, vegetable scraps, etc. Things had grown 50% larger near the compost holes. Meanwhile I had spread bagged compost all over the plot and I can't say I saw any difference in the growth over last year. Life in the soil. It matters.
Nardi's book goes over the basics, working his way through soil chemistry, microscopic biota, then way up to large mammals and their relationship with the soil. There are so much bacteria in the soil that slightly larger organisms actually produce antibiotics to tame soil bacteria populations. If you ever wondered what those bugs were underneath your compost or leaf litter, you'll find them in this book. He even rates many of the organisms (fungi, bacteria, insects, etc.) value to the soil and to your gardening.
Soil science can be dry stuff, yet I was able to finish this book in about 10 days of subway commuting from middle Brooklyn to Columbus Circle (I am not a quick reader). Nothing used to make my head spin more than anions and cations, but I think I have the hang of it now, which is great, because I am knee deep in hydrogen ions. Anions (an-eye-ahnz) are negatively-charged particles and cations (cat-eye-ahnz) are positively-charged particles.
The particles that make up clay and humus soils happen to have many negatively-charged ions. In fact, humus has the greatest number of negatively-charged ions thanks to the many nooks and crannies of its irregularly shaped particles. These negative charges attract positive ions, cations, like:
Potassium Iron Copper
Zinc Calcium Magnesium
Manganese Nickel
Nitrogen Phosphorus Sulfur
Boron Molybdenum Chlorine
If your soil is nutrient poor, it may not have enough cations to bind to all those negatively charged soil particles. In their absence, positively charged hydrogen ions take their place. Soil bound with too many hydrogen ions is acid soil, which is less favorable to most of our food and garden plants. When we lime our soil, we are adding minerals like calcium and magnesium which are positively charged cations intended to displace the hydrogen ions.
There will be a test next week.
So Hard, Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah, So Hard...
Catchy. Icy. The garden soil is hard like it hasn't been since, maybe, 2004. On Long Island, USDA zone 6a, as a child, I remember winter soil, rock hard, bleached by cold wind's parching. This isn't that, but closest it's come in a long while. I got lazy, took averages of late for new norms. Ah, throw a twist into it, wontchya! It'll be fine, really and of all those pathogens in the soil, maybe some'll die off. Here's to hoping. The big question is, will the salvia elegans survive the deep freeze? Its roots are probably pretty deep by now, but if the crown doesn't make it...And what about those potted herbs?
Cornell Cranky About Article
I picked up this blog posting about the NYTimes Lead Article at the Cornell Cooperative Extension Community Horticulture blog. It seems they were a little peeved about misquotes or misinformation in the article. They also mentioned my blog -how nice! I quote:
"Murray McBride of CSS and the Cornell Waste Management Institute was quoted. A little alarmist, with some significant misquotes - we are not in fact offering free soil testing, though we have gotten four calls as of yesterday inquiring about such a service… but generally not quite as sensational or inaccurate as we feared, but a bit too much for our taste. We are in the process of writing a letter to the editor with hope that we could turn this into a learning moment."
The Cornell Waste Management Institute has a page regarding soil quality. I will link to this permanently on my resources listing.
Lead Belly
This is the soil under my vegetable planters
I have received my soil test results from the ESAC. I had a sense that things weren't good over in the side garden, but I didn't think it would be as bad as it is. Although I suppose it could've been worse. I didn't test the front yard mostly because I do not plant veggies over there, but now I am thinking I will test it. In addition to the side yard analysis, I sent in my planter box compost, which is a mixture of Farfard product and an "I can't remember brand" of seaside compost I bought from Gowanus Nursery last year. I did this as a sort of control group, something to compare the yard earth to.
The good Dr. Cheng analyzed my soil himself. Below are the results, please click on the image to zoom in.
- Calcium (Ca) is 5 x greater in the compost (probably because of sea life in it)
- Magnesium (Mg) is 4 x greater in the compost
- Phosphates (P) are 24 x greater in the compost
- Iron (Fe) and Potassium (K) are just a bit more in the compost
- Manganese (Mn) is 3 x greater in the compost
- Copper (Cu) is about 23 % less in the compost
- Zinc (Zn) is about 95 % less in the compost
What does all this mean? Well, we can see that the compost has a greater nutrient load than the common soil. It also has a balance PH compared with the common soil. Only copper and zinc are lower in the compost over the side yard soil.
Clearly the side yard soil has much elevated Lead (Pb). Close to 1/10 of a percent of the analyzed soil is lead or put another way, for every 10000 particles of soil, there is one particle of lead.
EPA guidelines put Lead safely at 400 ppm, my soil is well over 900 ppm. Then there's the Mercury, Cadmium, Chromium, and really, who knows what else?
Soil Testing Update
After receiving my soil sample, Dr. Cheng at Brooklyn College has made some minor changes to the pricing structure and added a couple of more instructions to the sampling procedure page.
Toxic metals will now be tested separately from the micro-nutrients, and PH analysis will only be available as a separate test. See the new sheet or click on the SOIL TESTING SERVICE link to the right.
Toxic metals will now be tested separately from the micro-nutrients, and PH analysis will only be available as a separate test. See the new sheet or click on the SOIL TESTING SERVICE link to the right.
My Soil Test
Today I sent in my garden soil to be tested at the Environmental Sciences Analytical Center at Brooklyn College.
You can get these boxes (and envelopes) for free from the post office. Don't forget to type up a sheet with the tests you want completed and a check. Tests I'm getting done: Standard Nutrient and Toxic Metals Analysis, Soluble Salts, Organic Matter Content, and for the side garden only -Soil Texture Analysis. This last test I could do well on my own with a jar of water and soil added, but I thought I should try out all the tests ESAC offers.
If you want your soil tested, click on the link SOIL TESTING SERVICE at right.
Garden Soil Testing
For any questions regarding the ESAC soil testing service, click on the link below. I have used this soil-testing service, and you can see how I put my sample together here and the results of my tests here. For other thoughts on lead in our soils, read this post and that post. See my page above for other testing services.
Any Questions:
Contact: Dr. Joshua Cheng
Phone: (718) 951-5000 ext. 2647
Fax: (718) 951-4753
Email: zcheng@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Brooklyn College Environmental Sciences Analytical Center
2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11210
Mutterings on the Mutter (thats mooter to you ter)
One of the side trips of our 36 hours in Philadelphia was a return to the Mutter Museum, part of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. It is a small and gruesome display of medical maladies and oddities collected over the years. As was the case for me and my wife, the blown glass display cases and low lighting, not to mention the subject, leads the visitor towards feeling a little woozy. I was interested to go for a second time because they had a small exhibit on the effects of lead on humans throughout history.
I use lead white paint in the studio, but not so much that I should worry about it. However, I was interested to read about painters and makers of paint back in the day who became ill due to their exposure to lead. One symptom of their disease was limp wrists, leading me to speculate on the origin of the phrase "limp-wristed artist." There was also a section on the association of lead with Saturn and melancholia. This in mind, I read Goya's painting anew -this time it is melancholy devouring his offspring, melancholy destroying what it created.
As the exhibition winds down it crosses into lead as a poison and then its use as a pesticide. What? Yep, pesticide. Funny, so often you hear that pesticides were a product of WWI or WWII chemical industries. But previous generations were looking for pesticides of their own and lead was brewed into lead arsenate for their purpose. Apparently, we in the good ol' U S of A have used lead arsenate as late as 1988. Lead makes for a great pesticide partly because it sticks real good to the leaves, just as lead-based paints stick real good to the trim. As mentioned in a previous post, lead stays put in the soil and is taken up by leafy greens more than fruiting bodies.
I use lead white paint in the studio, but not so much that I should worry about it. However, I was interested to read about painters and makers of paint back in the day who became ill due to their exposure to lead. One symptom of their disease was limp wrists, leading me to speculate on the origin of the phrase "limp-wristed artist." There was also a section on the association of lead with Saturn and melancholia. This in mind, I read Goya's painting anew -this time it is melancholy devouring his offspring, melancholy destroying what it created.
As the exhibition winds down it crosses into lead as a poison and then its use as a pesticide. What? Yep, pesticide. Funny, so often you hear that pesticides were a product of WWI or WWII chemical industries. But previous generations were looking for pesticides of their own and lead was brewed into lead arsenate for their purpose. Apparently, we in the good ol' U S of A have used lead arsenate as late as 1988. Lead makes for a great pesticide partly because it sticks real good to the leaves, just as lead-based paints stick real good to the trim. As mentioned in a previous post, lead stays put in the soil and is taken up by leafy greens more than fruiting bodies.
A final display shows Mexican candy (lead sweetener???) and mentions that lead arsenate is still used in Mexico as a pesticide (but where else???). One thing I never understand is why all those kids are eating lead paint chips. I had no idea that lead mixed with acetic acid (lead acetate) created a sweet tasting substance. Anything sweet is good to a kid. But the adults, they even used it in wine!!! And skin creams, but that's another story.
By the way, as a painter I use the white pigment titanium dioxide more than the lead or zinc whites. This titanium pigment ends up in skin creams too, but also food products like cream cheese, mozzarella, and other must-be-super-white foods.
Recently I received a comment on my Bio page from a professor , Dr. Joshua (Zhongqi) Cheng, Director of the Environmental Sciences Analytical Center at CUNY Brooklyn. In our brief exchange, he expressed interest in getting the word out about his lab.
In a subsequent email, Dr. Cheng told me:
"My lab can analyze heavy metals for all kinds of samples (soil, plants, vegetables, sediments, etc.). Another lab I associate with can do hydrocarbons. The price for heavy metals are $10-20 per sample, depending on the number of samples."
These are exceptional prices for these services and done locally, supporting Brooklyn College employees. For those of us who garden in front and back yards with questionable histories, like the storage of CCA and Creosote treated telephone poles for instance, this can help create some peace of mind. I have asked Dr. Cheng for a list of lab services and pricing. If he agrees, I will add this info to the RESOURCES listing. I plan on sending him some samples of my soil soon.
My Farm
Have you heard of this business -MyFarmSF.
It operates like this: You pay a one time fee ($600-1000), they come in and install a vegetable garden in your yard. You pay them a weekly maintenance fee ($35+/-), they come by once a week to maintain it. They harvest vegetables and give you some or all of the produce. This is a for profit venture. For people who want home-grown vegetables but are so busy they cannot do it themselves, yet can pay for it.
Anyone willing to do this here in NYC? Call it PSA, Personally Supported Agriculture.
What have been people's experiences with the soil in their backyards? I've been doing research on companies that do soil testing for hydrocarbons (like gasoline, benzene, toluene) or heavy metals (like lead or cadmium). Accurate Building Inspectors, also known as the Ubells of The Guru's of How-To on the Leanoard Lopate Show offer these services. They offer many tests, but the charges are real high.
I had some of these tests done 6 years ago for a landscape job I was doing on 15th Street around Park Slope, yet I don't remember the company name, but I do remember that the results told me little of what the compounds meant to a gardener. I ended up excavating much of the fill that was present and replacing it a hundred cubic yards of compost/soil mix from Nature's Choice in Jersey. We didn't grow any vegetables either.
Apparently, a major metal to be on the look out for is lead. Natural accumulations in soil average 10 parts per million. The EPA considers 300 parts per million to be the upper limit of allowable. With lead, its the children we most worry about as it is absorbed more by their guts than those of adults. Fruit (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, etc.) do not tend to store lead. But the non-fruiting parts of vegetables, and leafy greens do uptake and store lead. The upper level of soil holds the most lead. Therefore, any soil-contacting vegetable (like carrots, turnips, radishes) will have lead on it's surface should there be a problem with lead in your soil.
Where does lead most likely come from in your yard. Two places: Old house paint (old renovation debris stored on site or chipping exterior paint) and car exhaust. Of course, lead has since been removed from these sources, but the problem with lead is that it doesn't migrate through the soil. It stays put, no matter how many years are between your soil and the lead contamination.
The University of Minnesota Extension has a page dedicated to soil lead with some suggestions for remediation. A similar page at Cornell.
But I have friends who simply vegetable garden their urban plots. Best we do is see that the lot was always used for a residence. You can do this via old fire insurance maps of NYC. There can be rather obvious signs of potential problems like dirty fill or construction debris, buried rusty auto parts, or that no plants or weeds are growing there, or even that the soil smells "chemically."
I'd love to hear stories of people's back yards. What are they like? What's your soil like? Do you grow vegetables? Would you pay someone else to do it for you in your own yard?
It operates like this: You pay a one time fee ($600-1000), they come in and install a vegetable garden in your yard. You pay them a weekly maintenance fee ($35+/-), they come by once a week to maintain it. They harvest vegetables and give you some or all of the produce. This is a for profit venture. For people who want home-grown vegetables but are so busy they cannot do it themselves, yet can pay for it.
Anyone willing to do this here in NYC? Call it PSA, Personally Supported Agriculture.
What have been people's experiences with the soil in their backyards? I've been doing research on companies that do soil testing for hydrocarbons (like gasoline, benzene, toluene) or heavy metals (like lead or cadmium). Accurate Building Inspectors, also known as the Ubells of The Guru's of How-To on the Leanoard Lopate Show offer these services. They offer many tests, but the charges are real high.
I had some of these tests done 6 years ago for a landscape job I was doing on 15th Street around Park Slope, yet I don't remember the company name, but I do remember that the results told me little of what the compounds meant to a gardener. I ended up excavating much of the fill that was present and replacing it a hundred cubic yards of compost/soil mix from Nature's Choice in Jersey. We didn't grow any vegetables either.
Apparently, a major metal to be on the look out for is lead. Natural accumulations in soil average 10 parts per million. The EPA considers 300 parts per million to be the upper limit of allowable. With lead, its the children we most worry about as it is absorbed more by their guts than those of adults. Fruit (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, etc.) do not tend to store lead. But the non-fruiting parts of vegetables, and leafy greens do uptake and store lead. The upper level of soil holds the most lead. Therefore, any soil-contacting vegetable (like carrots, turnips, radishes) will have lead on it's surface should there be a problem with lead in your soil.
Where does lead most likely come from in your yard. Two places: Old house paint (old renovation debris stored on site or chipping exterior paint) and car exhaust. Of course, lead has since been removed from these sources, but the problem with lead is that it doesn't migrate through the soil. It stays put, no matter how many years are between your soil and the lead contamination.
The University of Minnesota Extension has a page dedicated to soil lead with some suggestions for remediation. A similar page at Cornell.
But I have friends who simply vegetable garden their urban plots. Best we do is see that the lot was always used for a residence. You can do this via old fire insurance maps of NYC. There can be rather obvious signs of potential problems like dirty fill or construction debris, buried rusty auto parts, or that no plants or weeds are growing there, or even that the soil smells "chemically."
I'd love to hear stories of people's back yards. What are they like? What's your soil like? Do you grow vegetables? Would you pay someone else to do it for you in your own yard?