Soil preparation is the foundation of any successful garden. Too often, the eagerness to get our seeds in the ground, to watch those first sprouts reach up towards the sky – soaking in the sun’s rays – exclaiming victory to the gardener in our quest to create new life, sustenance and nutrition for our family causes us to neglect the most basic (and often the most labor intensive) component of the process – dirt.
Some years ago, I was in wine
country in Rutherford, California on a tour of an organic vineyard. As friends of the owner, our group was
invited on a personal tour through the vegetable garden and then out into the
vineyard. While at the edge of the property,
the proud vintner grabbed a shovel that had been left resting on a fence line
and handed it to a member of our party.
He asked her to scoop a shovel-full of soil from between the rows of cabernet. She gently pushed the spade into the ground
and came up with a rich, dark, loamy scoop of the subterranean ecosystem. We were each asked to grab a handful and run
it through our fingers, to smell it and describe it. The soil was alive. It smelled earthy and moist, felt warm and sifted
smoothly between our fingers.
The vintner then asked the
woman from my tour group to walk ten steps over the property line into the
neighboring, non-organic vineyard and take a scoop-full of their soil. The tip of the shovel bounced off the
hard-packed dirt with a metallic clang.
He explained to us how this was the direct result of using chemical fertilizers
versus promoting a living, rich biosphere in the soil and surrounding
environment. While the purpose that day
was to promote the full flavor of their organic cabernet sauvignon (which I
tested and retested to the greatest extent of my abilities), the same
principals apply to all cultivation.
Fertilizers come in two basic
flavors – chemical and organic.
Fertilizers are used when the soil’s natural nutrient density is not
enough to sustain the growth of the plants being cultivated. This is even more crucial in the case of
vegetables and other food plants because of the rapid rate at which they grow.
Chemical fertilizers are made
by isolating and concentrating the primary nutrients Nitrogen, Phosphate and Potash
from natural ingredients through mechanical or chemical processes. Because you don’t need to wait for natural
processes to break them down, they are immediately available for use by the
plants. While this provides you with the
ability to be extremely accurate in their application, it does nothing for the
soil itself. In fact, the high
concentrations and application methods often result in the complete destruction
of the local soil ecology and can even leach into neighboring soil and ground
water. This hard-packed, dense dirt
prevents the plants from developing a healthy, deep root structure, making them
reliant upon frequent reapplication of the chemical fertilizers, increasing
water runoff and killing beneficial microbes which would otherwise create and
store additional nutrients for the plants.
Organic fertilizers, by
contrast, are derived from naturally occurring ingredients which have undergone
little to no processing. They are
sourced from mineral and biological materials such as salts (Epsom, saltpeter),
fish emulsion, bone and blood meal, decomposed plant material and animal manure. Since the nutrients in organic materials are
locked in the biological or chemical structures, they are typically
slow-release fertilizers requiring natural processes (chemical and biological)
to break them down. Some of these
processes include exposure to sun, air and water, microbial fermentation, and
invertebrate digestion (worms and insects).
Organic fertilizers can be
further described in two flavors of their own: “hot” and “cold”. A “hot” fertilizer is one which has a high
ratio of the three key nutrients (nitrogen “N”, phosphate “P” and potash “K”)
to their carbon and moisture content.
The high concentration of nitrogen can “burn” the plants, causing withering
of leaves, stunted growth and death.
Because of this, hot fertilizers need to first be composted with other
carbon-rich materials such as straw, wood chips or other plant matter thereby
allowing natural processes to break down and distribute the nutrients at lower
concentrations throughout the whole of the material. Alternately, “cold” fertilizers have a much
higher ratio of carbon and moisture to N, P and K, which allows them to be
placed right onto or mixed into the planting area without first being
composted.
As demonstrated by my alcohol
fueled lesson in Northern California’s wine country, organic fertilizers are
far superior to chemical fertilizers, primarily due to their additional benefit
of providing composition - organic and inorganic – to the soil, which helps to
hold in moisture, provide structure, and create a healthy ecological niche for
microbes and other life. A chemical
fertilizer, due to its caustic concentration, can kill any piece of the
subterranean biosphere and collapse the entire local web of life in the single
metallic clank of a shovel.
Which brings us to rabbit
poop.
Rabbit poop really is the
shit. As reflected in the table below, it’s
saturated in nitrogen that promotes healthy leaf growth, high in phosphorous which
is needed for flowering and setting fruit or vegetables, and contains many
beneficial trace elements such as calcium, magnesium, boron, zinc, manganese,
sulfur, copper, and cobalt. Because it
is a cold fertilizer, its application directly to the soil provides excellent
structure.
Nutrient breakdown of some
common manures:
Manures
|
% Nitrogen
|
% Phosphate
|
% Potash
|
Rabbit (fresh)
|
2.4
|
1.4
|
0.6
|
Bat
|
6.0
|
9.0
|
3.0
|
Cow (fresh)
|
0.6
|
0.4
|
0.5
|
Cow (dry)
|
1.2
|
2.0
|
2.1
|
Chicken (fresh)
|
0.9
|
0.5
|
0.5
|
Chicken (dry)
|
1.6
|
1.8
|
2.0
|
Hog (fresh)
|
0.6
|
0.3
|
0.4
|
Hog (dry)
|
2.2
|
2.1
|
1.0
|
Horse (fresh)
|
0.6
|
0.3
|
0.5
|
Turkey (fresh)
|
1.3
|
0.7
|
0.5
|
© Erv Evans | Consumer Horticulturist | NC State
University
For me, one of the key
elements of sustainable permaculture on any scale is simplicity. I love rabbit poop because it is readily available
(assuming one has rabbits (or access to them) – the benefits of which I will
explore in a future post), requires no curing time before use, doesn’t smell
and is packaged into little skittles of convenience. Worms love it too! I sprinkle mine directly around the base of
the plant. As I water, the decomposing
manure mulches into the soil in a perfect slow release throughout the growing
season.
Application
methods:- Direct application of pellets
- Compost tea
- Compost pile
- Worm towers
- Minimal disease/parasite risk as with similar manures.
- Plant nutrition
- Waste disposal
- Rabbit meat
- Worm cultivation
References:
http://crossroadsrabbitry.com/rabbit-manure-info/
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer/quickref/fertilizer/nutrient_content.html
http://riseandshinerabbitry.com/2012/03/31/the-benefits-and-uses-of-rabbit-manure/
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer/quickref/fertilizer/nutrient_content.html
http://riseandshinerabbitry.com/2012/03/31/the-benefits-and-uses-of-rabbit-manure/
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