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Solomon's COF, woodash seadmeals and GMO

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Location: Zone 10a, Australia

posted 7 years ago

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I read about COF and wonder were I get all these magic ingredients...
The only fertilizer I get for free is woodash and it does not appear in his COF recipe of course I want to use my woodash! How can I incoorporate it?
Second he recommends seadmeals canola cotton etc, and they are all GMO.

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Travis Johnson

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posted 7 years ago

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Angelika Maier wrote:I read about COF and wonder were I get all these magic ingredients...
The only fertilizer I get for free is woodash and it does not appear in his COF recipe of course I want to use my woodash! How can I incoorporate it?
Second he recommends seadmeals canola cotton etc, and they are all GMO.

Wood ash is called "poor mans fertilizer" for a reason, it is a fertilizer, but not a very good one. In terms of NPK it has 0-1-3. Because those are percentages, it does not matter the volume of ash you produce; whether it be pounds or tons.

In terms of incorporation, wow that is a tough one. Without tilling, a person can only put about 1 ton to the acre before it starts to smother the sward.

James Freyr

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posted 7 years ago

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Here's what I've discovered about canola and cotton seed. There are GMO seeds for both. There are also non-GMO seeds for both. It's no longer possible to find organic cottonseed meal in the states, the NOP (National Organic Program) here in America has deemed all cottonseed contaminated with GMO genes. Sad, huh? I'm not sure if this holds true elsewhere in the world. I've been on the hunt for cottonseed meal that I know won't be labeled organic, but if I could just find some conventional seed that has been grown without the use of chemicals, that would be good enough for me. So far, I have been unsuccessful.

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Bryant RedHawk

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Location: Arkansas - Zone 7B/8A stoney, sandy loam soil pH 6.5

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posted 7 years ago

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In the USA the only way to acquire non contaminated (both pesticide and herbicide) cotton seed is to grow your own with seed sourced from other countries (Egypt for example) or find a seed bank that has some pre 1950's cotton seed available, or if you can find the colored cottons (green, blue) in seed catalogs.
In the 1950's the cotton growers started wanting plants that could be harvested with the new machinery and that lead to the cotton varieties grown now. To harvest they first have to defoliate the plants and they spray from bloom time on to keep the bollweevil population "under control".

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Angelika Maier

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Location: Zone 10a, Australia

posted 7 years ago

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Thanks, but woodash I have and I have to use it somehow.....The numbers (even I can see that) are not great indeed, mostly a source of K (Kalium/potassium). I will go more in the numbers later.
As for the GMO Solomon thinks it is more important to nourish the soil than that bit of GMO residue, however cotton leftovers I think is maybe really questionable as it is not produced for food and thus sprayed even more heavily.

Medicinal herbs, kitchen herbs, perennial edibles and berries: https://mountainherbs.net/ grown in the Blue Mountains, Australia

Bryant RedHawk

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how about this for using the wood ash? Buy the contaminated cotton meal and treat it with the wood ash to remediate the contamination.
You would need to treat the meal in batches by layering meal, ash, meal, ash, till your container was almost full then add water to soak for a day.
The wood ash will leach out lye which will bind with the contaminates, stir it up, use something like a "spider" to gather up the cotton seed meal and spread it out to dry somewhat before adding it to your gardens.

Angelika Maier

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Location: Zone 10a, Australia

posted 7 years ago

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and what do I do with the water then? and the charcoal?

Medicinal herbs, kitchen herbs, perennial edibles and berries: https://mountainherbs.net/ grown in the Blue Mountains, Australia

Roberto pokachinni

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posted 7 years ago

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I really like Steve Solomon for his knowledge of plants and gardening, but not so much his use of such a 'necessary' mix of amendments. I was shocked when reading his books that it basically came down to this. People have gardened for thousands of years without his magic formula, and have done so successfully because they have created methods that incorporate what they have locally, or they can easily obtain regionally.

If you have a lot of wood ash, you can dust it into your garden if it needs it (meaning you have acidic ph and would like to neutralize it a bit).

I have a friend who has a successful nursery business and he uses a similar formula to Solomon's for his bedding plants. He incorporates on a very small amount of ash from his woodstove in his mix.

I have another friend who sells her plants on a smaller scale with just compost and sand in her pots When I get her plants, they often come with worms and these plants thrive in my soil, whereas the other friend's plants are hit and miss, even with his large nursery business success.

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Bryant RedHawk

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Location: Arkansas - Zone 7B/8A stoney, sandy loam soil pH 6.5

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Angelika Maier wrote:and what do I do with the water then? and the charcoal?

Both can be used in a fungi bed or to get one started, the hyphae of the fungi will clean up the residues and the charcoal will end up as biochar in the soil there.

Angelika Maier

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Posts: 1475

Location: Zone 10a, Australia

posted 7 years ago

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The thing with Solomon is that really you have to buy a lot of stuff I don't even know where to get it from. On the other hand side of course mankind has farmed for thousands of years without it but they died often from malnutrittion. And the best soils are under suburbiua these days and most backyard gardeners have to deal with what they have, in my case one meter of fill(!!!) over a swamp, nothing ideal here, but this is all you can get. I wonder weather you can ammed the soil in the beginning (well I work on it for about 7 years now, there was NO soil in the forst place) and then try to hold the nutrients via biological measures.
I would like a bit a more flexible recipe for the COF were you can put in things you can come by more easily. I'll do a soil test, but still I will have to figure out a recipe and the ingredients are difficult.

Medicinal herbs, kitchen herbs, perennial edibles and berries: https://mountainherbs.net/ grown in the Blue Mountains, Australia

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