Make your own fertilizer...

[Silvercreek Farmer]

Interesting article I came across when researching bone ash...

http://www.uaf.edu/files/ces/publica.../HGA-00131.pdf

[geo in mi]

I like the caution: "This will attract bears, dogs, and other creatures."

geo

[rambler]

While it is a good paper, I guess I am troubled by it. It is not sustainable.

Fish bits come from a lake or ocean, need to haul that in?

Bones, to have enough to burn to make a useful amount of fertilizer also need to come from somewhere.

And wood ash too, you need to cut down trees, burn them, and then harvest the ash.

So, you might be building up your 100 foot by 100 foot garden, and doing a good job of it, but you are harvesting minerals from 100s of acres of ocean, pasture, and forest robbing them of those minerals to build up your small garden.

Just not sustainable?

Paul

[fishhead]

It looks like the homesteader probably already has the ingredients for the fertilizer.

Every summer I get hundreds of pounds of fish waste from a resort for my compost pile. They get added to the 1,000-2,000 lbs of goat bedding and wasted hay.

If I hadn't picked up the fish waste it would have been locked up in the landfill for a hundred years or more.

[jwal10]

Originally Posted by rambler

While it is a good paper, I guess I am troubled by it. It is not sustainable.

Fish bits come from a lake or ocean, need to haul that in?

Bones, to have enough to burn to make a useful amount of fertilizer also need to come from somewhere.

And wood ash too, you need to cut down trees, burn them, and then harvest the ash.

So, you might be building up your 100 foot by 100 foot garden, and doing a good job of it, but you are harvesting minerals from 100s of acres of ocean, pasture, and forest robbing them of those minerals to build up your small garden.

Just not sustainable?

Paul

No, but since they are all waste products it is good recycling, at least it isn't all hauled to the dump. Wouldn't work if everyone did it....James

[YamahaRick]

Originally Posted by rambler

Fish bits come from a lake or ocean, need to haul that in?

Bones, to have enough to burn to make a useful amount of fertilizer also need to come from somewhere.

And wood ash too, you need to cut down trees, burn them, and then harvest the ash.

The paper is from Alaska; the hearty folks up there may have an easier time getting stuff like bones, fish bits, etc., to their farms than those of us in the Lower 48.

[gilberte]

Been doin' this for years. I put all my fish cleanings in a fifteen gallon barrel, add water and human urine and let it sit till it's ripe. I burn all bones in the woodstove and later add it into the compost pile.

[CesumPec]

Originally Posted by rambler

While it is a good paper, I guess I am troubled by it. It is not sustainable.

Fish bits come from a lake or ocean, need to haul that in?

Bones, to have enough to burn to make a useful amount of fertilizer also need to come from somewhere.

And wood ash too, you need to cut down trees, burn them, and then harvest the ash.

So, you might be building up your 100 foot by 100 foot garden, and doing a good job of it, but you are harvesting minerals from 100s of acres of ocean, pasture, and forest robbing them of those minerals to build up your small garden.

Just not sustainable?

Paul

Unless you are talking about a post-petroleum fueled world, I disagree. Read the extreme composting thread. Forerunner and others compost animals from sale barns ending up with rich compost and big barrels of pulverized bone dust. I pick up at least one road kill a week that goes into my compost piles. Someone brought home a couple of hundred pounds of fish waste from a processor. My neighbor just scored 20 tons of less than perfect potatoes from a processor. The worst ones are being composted, most are feeding the pigs before becoming compost.

Forerunner gathers tree waste from the river after spring floods. That is a never ending supply. I'm getting 15 tons / week of dried sludge (contains 1-1-1 NPK, lots of calcium and other trace nutrients) from a municipal dump. If I don't haul it to my farm, it goes into the landfil. One extreme composter recently found a mountain of sawdust he is bringing home a truck load at a time.

I get wood ash from having logged my acreage. After the loggers were done I ended up with two 4 acre piles, 3 ft high, of branches and tops. Some of that is being composted. Where I needed productive pasture sooner, I burned and spread ash.

There are lots of sustainable fertilizer sources that are going to waste because people aren't bothering to use them. Getting all this "waste" out of dumps is a big plus for the farm and the dump.

[rambler]

I think these are all wonderful, good, and cool ways to fertilize your crops.

If you look into it tho, you are robbing some other ecosystem to feed yours. It still is not sustainable....

Hauling stuff to the dump is just silly. I know it is done, but - wasteful.

The only sustainable thing on your list is using human wastes, that completes the cycle....

Picking up trees from the river bottom means you took nutrients away from that land; and the tree may have floated in from someplace else, so that place lost nutrients. You gain nutrients by importing that tree, but you are taking them from some place else that is losing out. You are moving nutrients. This is not a sustainable thing.

Now, its a good way to raise your gardens or farms, a good system, I like it! Good farming. Big farmers do the same types of things where possible.

Don't be confused by my comment, I'm not opposed to it rather it is the only way to be a good farmer, whatever size you are! The only thing is, you are importing nutrients from somewhere else, making somewhere else poorer to enrich your plot.... So while good and cool and a great plan, it stil is not sustainable in the big picture. It is robbing one ecosystem to improve your ecosystem....

Paul

[unregistered168043]

Originally Posted by rambler

While it is a good paper, I guess I am troubled by it. It is not sustainable.

Fish bits come from a lake or ocean, need to haul that in?

Bones, to have enough to burn to make a useful amount of fertilizer also need to come from somewhere.

And wood ash too, you need to cut down trees, burn them, and then harvest the ash.

So, you might be building up your 100 foot by 100 foot garden, and doing a good job of it, but you are harvesting minerals from 100s of acres of ocean, pasture, and forest robbing them of those minerals to build up your small garden.

Just not sustainable?

Paul

plenty sustainable since we are already producing bones, wood ash, and etc in massive quantities, why not do something useful with it?

[CesumPec]

Originally Posted by rambler

If you look into it tho, you are robbing some other ecosystem to feed yours. It still is not sustainable....

Well you got me to thinking that maybe i didn't know what sustainable means. So I looked it up: sustainable

The most relevant definition seems to be this one: (Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Environmental Science) (of economic development, energy sources, etc.) capable of being maintained at a steady level without exhausting natural resources or causing severe ecological damage

When you are using the waste stream of some human endeavor, like logging, milling timber, processing fish, disposing of garbage, I just don't know how you can say that is not sustainable. Unless you are arguing that the first process is not sustainable. In my case, the logging was on a pine plantation, planted so you and I would have nice soft paper to wipe noses and backsides.

As to moving nutrients from one enviro location to another, that train left the station about one day after the earth was formed. Nutrients leave the best run farm in the form of meat, fruits, veggies. In the most natural of circumstances, trees get washed down river in a flood. And in the worst of situations, nutrients left million year old great plains top soil when farmers started tilling. Bringing some of those nutrients back to the farm is not only helping the farmer, but the land as well.

[rambler]

Originally Posted by Darntootin

plenty sustainable since we are already producing bones, wood ash, and etc in massive quantities, why not do something useful with it?

?

No.

You are making use of waste products which is good.

But those waste products are being stolen from someplace else, so you are not -sustainable-.

The wood ash should be returned to the forest; the fish bones should be returned to the marshes and shores; the kelp and seaweed should be returned to the waters. The manure from a stockyard or horse farm should be returned to the hay meadow it came from. That is where the nutrients come from.

Using them on your farm is fine, but it is not -sustainable-. Good practices, but not sustainable in the definition of the word?

You are robbing those nutrients from some other farm, or woodland, or waters.

Cycling manures or bones created on your farm back onto your farm is sustainable.

But the folks here are talking about pulling in products from other places and applying to their fields.

And that just is not really truly the definition of -sustainability.- it's good, its good use of those products, its the way all farming works.....

But it is not in any way shape or form -sustainable.- You take nutrients from a river bottom, or hay meadow, or forest to apply to your land and you are enriching your place, while decreasing the other place. As your land becomes better, the river bottom, forest, and hay meadow become poorer......

Making land poorer is not the definition of -sustainable.-

Paul

[rambler]

Originally Posted by CesumPec

Well you got me to thinking that maybe i didn't know what sustainable means. So I looked it up:

Ok. Certainly I understand what you are saying. And I agree with the points you are making. Thanks for the dialog.

If you allow as how taking trees, animals, kelp, and such products from a far land, and applying them to your property is sustainable.....

Then is it any different than a farmer taking some phosphorous and potassium mined from a far land and applying it to their property?

Is not one the equal to the other in principle, in that these products are being mined or taken from one property and applied to another property to enhance the 2nd property at the expense of the 1st property?

In both cases we import nutrients to improve the land we have.

Are both situations sustainable, are both doing the same thing? If not, why not?

Paul

[Forerunner]

Humans are a wasteful lot, especially the ones who flock to a mechanized, societal form of existence.

Therefore, making use of their waste is not only sustainable, but just good earth stewardship.

Agreed, the day will come when the wasteful masses will be forced to change their ways.
Good stewards, by that time, will have fertlie soil, and the means and the wisdom to manage that soil without the wasteful masses.

That said, were we to suddenly cease all "unsustainable" activities on this earth, there would be a lot more dirt under our fingernails, and no computers, or time to spend sharing information thereon.

So, let's hear it for the upper extremity of humanity's latest obsession with unsustainability, before the pendulum returns us to the stone age.

[fishhead]

Our population is so out of control now the only way we can feed ourselves is to mine stored nutrients and transport them across the planet. If petroleum become unavailable it will mean starvation for millions of people.

As far as moving nutrients it's nuts to turn them into pollutants and flush them into the nearest river instead of keeping them in the area and enriching the land.

[CesumPec]

Originally Posted by rambler

If you allow as how taking trees, animals, kelp, and such products from a far land, and applying them to your property is sustainable.....

Then is it any different than a farmer taking some phosphorous and potassium mined from a far land and applying it to their property?

Is not one the equal to the other in principle, in that these products are being mined or taken from one property and applied to another property to enhance the 2nd property at the expense of the 1st property?

In both cases we import nutrients to improve the land we have.

Are both situations sustainable, are both doing the same thing? If not, why not?

A good question. My answer - I don't think they are equal at all. If the plant and animal wastes were being created for the purpose of fertilizing some far off farm, I think the analogy would hold - at least in part. Kelp harvesting might be more similar to phosphorous mining. The difference is the items I listed are waste products of some other (arguably) sustainable practice and the wastes usually have to be relocated somewhere.

With "sustainability" the idea is we aren't wearing out the natural resource. Hu-poo, wood wastes from sustainably harvested trees, dead animals from road kill or sale barns are sustainable at current rates of harvest.

Again, if you are arguing that the use of petroleum in the relocation process is what makes it unsustainable, OK. I won't argue that point. Pretty much nothing we do in a modern economy is sustainable if the only consideration is oil.

[rambler]

Alright then, I'll quit on this. Has nothing to do with oil. its about stealing assets from one area to enrich another area. I still think I'm right, but doesn't look like I can make my point in a clear enough fashion. Thanks for playing along anyhow.

Paul

[CesumPec]

The assets were already stolen. We're just putting them back in a useful, if not original place. By reusing/repurposing a waste stream, we are avoiding the theft of more assets.

Why do you think that everything is in the right place right now?

[Forlane]

How is it not sustainable? Plants photosynthesize using the sun to create something from a 3 part input, one being nutrients locked in the soil (water included in this), one being air and one being the sun. Last time I checked, the sun wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. It seems to me and my limited capacity for of being omnipotent that, 33% of the equation is renewable. If you take 66% of the plant material you grow and put it back into the earth the other remaining part would be replenished when the sun did its job.

I could be way off base with this theory but please correct me if I am wrong. As inquiring minds do wonder.

[maverickxxx]

I see the other argument being a more natural cycle as oppesed to substainabile.