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Part Nakota, part Irish. The Nakota took over long ago but still lives in two worlds, the European world and the first people's world. He lives on a small (15 + acres) piece of mother earth deep in the woods. Was trained in the cooper's arts as a child, since the family owned a cooperage. He has been a carpenter, and timber wright but love all aspects of farming.He holds a BS in Chemistry and Biology and a MS in Horticulture. Worked for the USDA for 16 years. Then PHD in Microbiology defended. Redhawk and his wife Wolf are setting up to be fully self sustaining, growing all their own foods and collecting rain water. "Soon we will be self sustaining and closer to being off the grid" he said when asked about future plans. They continue their own research both in Agriculture and soils with the hope to make the world more like it used to be, before mankind began screwing up the Earth Mother. This is the only way humankind will survive, we must fix what we have broken.
Sean Govan wrote:Dr. Redhawk, after reading this thread I have a bunch more questions. Thanks again for putting this out there.
1. Would regular driveway salt (you know, for melting ice) work as a soil amendment if it is 100% halite? Halite has all the same 90 minerals as regular sea salt, right? I ask because this is cheap and abundant at Menards.
2. The bags of halite that I have contain some grayish/blackish chunks. Is this hydrocarbon contamination? If so, will that be a problem for my soil, veggies, or meat?
3. Since beginning rotational grazing this year, I've discovered that I need to scythe under the fence a lot to keep it from shorting out. What do you think of pouring a line of halite under my permanent fencelines to reduce scything? I'm thinking it might keep the plant growth down for a few years, while the minerals slowly spread toward the middle of the pasture through leaching and the food web. Maybe the concentrated salty area would also benefit insects and other wildlife. Or is this a bad idea?
4. Some sites selling sea salt for soil seem to say that all the first 92 elements (of the periodic table) are necessary for optimum plant and animal health. What about things like lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury, and aluminum? Are these things beneficial in any amount, in any way at all?
5. How to deal with old junkpiles on our property, containing everything from rusty barb wire to asphalt roofing shingles? Bury it in a giant pile of topsoil and wood chips?
6. You mentioned that synthetic nutrients make the soil microbes "fat and lazy" because the plants can just suck up the nutrients. Is that the case for urine?
(The reason I'm using urine is, that I spread some sawdust soaked in cow manure on the garden last winter. Our pigs tilled it into the soil, and then the plants we put there got yellow leaves. So I started pouring diluted urine at the base of the plants every day, and they started greening back up. And now there's huge amounts of mushrooms growing under the shade of the plants. So I feel like the urine activated the mushrooms and they're breaking down the sawdust.)
Thanks for your time,
Sean
Hans Quistorff wrote:Having a large area of grass field available and straw that can be trusted not available I use a riding lawnmower with a pick up tube directed into a cart behind which I dump on the area to be developed.
The clay is based on white volcanic ash like what came out of Mount St. Helens eruption. It is filled with quack grass rhizomes which are very persistent and hard to remove. I have roles of wall to wall carpet that have been removed from home renovations which I roll out on top which blocks all light but allows rain to penetrate. Every thing rots down except the grass rhizomes which in their determination to survive grow in great swirls on the surface of the soil looking for light.
Bonnie Kuhlman wrote:
rectangular bales of clean, non-sprayed wheat straw
Thank you, Dr. RedHawk, for all of your work that you share. Several years and I am still gleaning knowledge from you.
Realizing we are in different states, do you have any advice on finding non-sprayed straw?
Bonnie
Sarah Lennie wrote:I have a very basic question for the experienced folks in this thread- which end of the bales go down? Do you want the hay oriented as it was when growing, or laying on its side? I can see some logic to each orientation but was hoping someone with experience had a definitive opinion on the matter.
Tim B Smith wrote:I am working on a class project following nitrogen fixation and this thread has had more useful information than anything I have found to date. Thank you all for your input in the past. Hopefully this is still accessible to you all.
We are testing hypotheses, so we don't need to be right but we need to make good, testable guesses about how nitrogen and nitrogen fixers might be moving around in plants. The underlying goal is to transfer the maximum amount of nitrogen possible into our tree targets.
I have past student projects that found "pools" of fixed nitrogen (N15 depleted) around sweet clover and lupine. Currently we have a cover crop of hairy vetch and winter rye. We are still working toward the experimental design, but we want to test various ways to transfer rhizobium (and nitrogen) in a garden plot.
It's mid March and the vetch has nodules but is not activated. I have found patches of activated vetch on the school grounds. I have permission to move the soils and the vetch for experiments.
I think we are going to plant small (very small) trees in the plot so we can follow them for a year or two (the point right now is to understand nitrogen fixation, not to grow a crop). I think we have time to put down inoculated vetch. We can also move soil from the area where we have activated vetch. I can also move the wild, activated vetch.
The kicker is that we can trace the movement of N by measuring the level of depletion in N15 in plant tissues. For a couple of hundred dollars we can map the whole process with replicated experiments. We have a small budget so that is possible.
Since they are long lived we can follow the trees for over a year. New growth will contain recent sources of nitrogen.
So...where are we likely to mess this up? What hypotheses would you absolutely test? Where are you curious and what would you warn us away from?
Tyler Ludens wrote:So far I'm not impressed with these Superworms. I had a big die off (low temperatures?) and the bin became infested with small flies. I had to move it outside, so it may soon become colonized by Black Soldier Flies.
Seems like after a decent start the Superworms have stopped eating the styrofoam and are now mostly eating their fallen comrades. I've added some Red Wigglers to the bin to see if they can clean it up some.
Still have not found a lab to test for styrene residue.
