RE: IPM for the Home Garden.
March 13, 2012 at 9:52 am
(This post was last modified: March 13, 2012 at 9:56 am by KichigaiNeko.)
Sand sterile?? Not on your nellie dear rhythm....you would not believe what grows in this shit called "Aussie sand". .
The rule of thumb here is ..."Got Clay?= Add organic matter" "Got Sandy loam? = Add organic matter" "got Western Australian Sand? = Add organic matter"
This country has not had the millennia of people shitting and dying on it, it is very poor soil. The pH is mostly alkaline and salinity is very high. Add phosphorus and you will KILL most if not ALL of the native vegetation. The rare places that the soil is of acid pH you will find Eucalypts that ONLY grow in that type of soil and NO WHERE ELSE IN THE FUCKING COUNTRY !!
Farming here is a nightmare... my heartfelt kudos to our farmers who can eck out a crop from this poor excuse for a soil and I understand why the "flooding" is so important to our inland rivers and ALL our rivers flow inland, very very few flow to the sea.
So...my task is (should I choose to not give in) is to improve the sand/soil that I have with a product called Vermiculture and SeaSol and adding as much in the way of "Organic Matter" in the form of unprocessed compost as I can. Maybe, just maybe in a year or two I may have something of a vege-patch worthy of the name.
So depressing for one who has lived her life on Wianamatta shale (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wianamatta_shale) clay ...otherwise known as "The Cow Pastures" of New South Wales Australia. Quite a lovely area of the Sydney Basin..I think you would like it, at least it would be a soil you could relate to.
The other thing that bothers me is the high level of limestone with no organic/colloidal structure for it to interact with ..it is like trying to plant in straight lime..... I had one conversation with a knowledgeable nursery person who said that he..." never had to sell a plant/ tree without having to sell a bag of soil to plant it in before he came to this side of the country". Remember we are on the other side of the "Wallace line" Whatever our mining exploits dig up has an impact on the atmospherics of our plantations and gardens. We are in a desert community far worse than 'Whateverist' has to deal with.... Arizona would be a picnic by comparison.
I did find a soil profile for the area and came to the conclusion that it is 'Sand all the way down' high aluminium content and very high salt table. Zen was out at a place called New Norcia where there is a wonderful 'Salt lake' (no doubt ready for harvest) on the weekend. For anything that you may find remotely resembling soil one has to go to a place called Harvey and the Margaret River and continue further south to Albany... there is the only 'soil' you would recognise as such.
So Google the sites I have mentioned and if you can find any soil surveys/profiles on these areas plase post them to this thread.
Cheers
Kichi
The rule of thumb here is ..."Got Clay?= Add organic matter" "Got Sandy loam? = Add organic matter" "got Western Australian Sand? = Add organic matter"
This country has not had the millennia of people shitting and dying on it, it is very poor soil. The pH is mostly alkaline and salinity is very high. Add phosphorus and you will KILL most if not ALL of the native vegetation. The rare places that the soil is of acid pH you will find Eucalypts that ONLY grow in that type of soil and NO WHERE ELSE IN THE FUCKING COUNTRY !!
Farming here is a nightmare... my heartfelt kudos to our farmers who can eck out a crop from this poor excuse for a soil and I understand why the "flooding" is so important to our inland rivers and ALL our rivers flow inland, very very few flow to the sea.
So...my task is (should I choose to not give in) is to improve the sand/soil that I have with a product called Vermiculture and SeaSol and adding as much in the way of "Organic Matter" in the form of unprocessed compost as I can. Maybe, just maybe in a year or two I may have something of a vege-patch worthy of the name.
So depressing for one who has lived her life on Wianamatta shale (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wianamatta_shale) clay ...otherwise known as "The Cow Pastures" of New South Wales Australia. Quite a lovely area of the Sydney Basin..I think you would like it, at least it would be a soil you could relate to.
The other thing that bothers me is the high level of limestone with no organic/colloidal structure for it to interact with ..it is like trying to plant in straight lime..... I had one conversation with a knowledgeable nursery person who said that he..." never had to sell a plant/ tree without having to sell a bag of soil to plant it in before he came to this side of the country". Remember we are on the other side of the "Wallace line" Whatever our mining exploits dig up has an impact on the atmospherics of our plantations and gardens. We are in a desert community far worse than 'Whateverist' has to deal with.... Arizona would be a picnic by comparison.
I did find a soil profile for the area and came to the conclusion that it is 'Sand all the way down' high aluminium content and very high salt table. Zen was out at a place called New Norcia where there is a wonderful 'Salt lake' (no doubt ready for harvest) on the weekend. For anything that you may find remotely resembling soil one has to go to a place called Harvey and the Margaret River and continue further south to Albany... there is the only 'soil' you would recognise as such.
So Google the sites I have mentioned and if you can find any soil surveys/profiles on these areas plase post them to this thread.
Cheers
Kichi
"The Universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements: energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest." G'Kar-B5
