A Day At The Beach



Despite the warm temperatures in the city, or rather because of them, a strong onshore flow had developed. The temperatures at the beach farm were in the low sixties. A great day for hunkering down close to the soil.

Nettle, clover, and assorted grasses bearing down on garlic's wall.

The garlic is growing two or three inches a week now. I spread my remaining corn gluten (that's the yellow stuff) for its easy-going nitrogen, and had almost forgotten its seedling-suppressing ways as I began to sprinkle some onto my mixed green sprouts. Tragedy closely averted.

Speaking of seedlings, I have to mention how difficult cilantro always has been for me to grow, yet here it has self-seeded all over its quadrant of the beach farm. The white powder on the leaves is drift from last weekend's fish bone meal. It hasn't rained at all and there is still no water to wash the leaves clean.

A few swiss chard have survived the winter quite well.

The greens mix, scattered haphazardly two weeks ago. The only thing slowing it down is the lack of moisture.

These are the Allium vineale I pulled from the fields around the garden last fall. They've started to size up, but nowhere near the size of the vineale I see in the woods around the city. They curl in the open sun, unlike the woodland population.

And, on my walk around the greater garden I noticed this splotch of brown.

A closer look revealed the ants. They've been active quite early this year.

And so have the other community gardeners. I was visited by friendly neighbors and gardeners I've never met. Lots of complaint about the tilling in October, and opinions abound about all corners of our lot. I met, for the first time, the harborer of miracle-gro soil sacks by the dozen. She was fenced-in, much as her garden is, and had many things to lob over it. She blamed another gardener for the tilling idea, and then offered her strategic device for derailing it -tilling chops up the worms. I have at least a few good reasons not to till, but that wasn't one of them. Yet, she encouraged me to stick to her ploy, disparaged the idea of new pvc pipes (said they will crack), and said roofing rubber is the best thing ever to cover your plot with (she had tried tar paper!). I didn't worry her with the notion of pulling weeds.


Another gardener whom I've never seen, but has a plot two away from us came to complain about another's plot that he felt had too much garlic. He doesn't like garlic that much and simply couldn't understand why someone would grow so much. He belabored the issue, and I held my tongue. Ahh, community.  I couldn't organize this bunch with a baseball bat, and wouldn't even try. 


Unusual Light



No, it's that there are more things in bloom and leafed out than there usually are when the sun is at this azimuth.

 In that light, the species tulips glow. I always prefer them closed to open.

And much like the daffodils near the park, these are gaining aphids. With so little soft vegetation for all those winter-surviving aphids to tap, they've been found in the less than usual places. Chrysanthemum stems, daffodils, and now the species tulips.


What Is Needed


Some much needed rain appears to be on its way. It's been a seriously dry winter in the metro area. Can you remember a winter with so many stretches of sunny days? With the warm and dry soil, we could be heading into a drought. Lets hope not, and that things normalize. The rain shouldn't be heavy or long-lasting. In fact, seems to be drying out before reaching our area.

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. 


.


Summer In March



I sit in my van, watching thunderheads rise to the west and the northeast over minor mountains, venti ice coffee in the holder, bottle of water at my side.

I broke a sweat today, felt the burn of the sun on my neck as I pulled the smallest of weeds and sprouts of grass from each garlic bed. All the garlic and shallots are up and growing. Half the straw mulch had blown to other gullies and beds. I replaced it as it appears to keep the soil cooler and moist on these hot March days. It will be in the 80s later in the week. No rain in sight but for these steaming vents blowing up over the mountains.

I applied corn gluten meal to rows both empty of straw and full of it. Seems to make no difference to its application. I am at the right time with it -warming, dry days ahead, early spring, just as the weeds begin to sprout. And garlic enjoys a spring hit of nitrogen that corn protein has in spades.

I received a speeding ticket on my way up to the farm this morning. Not a soul on the Taconic Parkway, I was lost in thought, and didn't even see the cop who pulled out in front of me, forcing me toward the shoulder. He asked why I was speeding and I said I was not aware if it. I was dreaming as one can do on a lonely highway. I hope it's not one of those 300 dollar fines. Twenty five years of driving and never a speeding ticket. Until now. I'll take the Thruway back because 70 is apparently okay west of the Hudson River.




In Search Of

Chicks at the Agway. No corn gluten meal, however. Off to the next Agway on my way to the garlic farm.

Grass Is Stinkier On The Other Side



Yep, I know, Parks -it's cheaper maintenance and it is always green, sort of. But, when the wind blows from the north or northwest, it stinks to high heaven like some kind of chemical bath. It's hard to imagine breathing deeply while playing soccer over this stuff. It's simply rotten.

I walk by this twice a day on my way to and from the train. Several blocks long and no escape from its hard-to-define smell. If you've ever lived with or near wet outdoor carpeting, its that smell. While it may be more expensive, and it may not survive the beating, I love the smell of cut lawn grass. Love it.

So, as I see it, Parks chose between rotten and love, and they went with rotten. Sorry to be so hard, I get your reasons, but there's simply no love there.


Other Things



The daffodills, yes. They are up and out and either dumb or tough, or both. Most other plants seems to be hanging back in my garden.


The veronica is always early. In this spot, within the mesh covered side yard where last year's fern and dicentra were smashed to smithereens by an unknown entity, the veronica has volunteered.


Less Grocer


More fancy market?

I went to our local C-town today because they always have a wide variety of meats. But something was different. The beers had moved, and this end cap -it had quail eggs?! I wrapped the corner and ah, I see, 1/4 aisle of organic and fancy. Well, kudos to C-town for adapting. Foodtown, at the other end of the hood, tried years ago with a renovation that simply grossed me out (dust everywhere, but store open!). I only go to Foodtown for the Murray's chicken and self-checkout -yes, I like to check myself out. Who doesn't? But check that out -quail eggs from Canada at C-town. Times they are a changin.