Re: [tomato] Tomato Digest V1 #154
Thomas Giannou (Tomato@GlobalGarden.com)
Sat, 27 Feb 1999 16:16:00 -0800
-----Original Message-----
From: Kuczwanski@aol.com <Kuczwanski@aol.com>
To: Tomato@GlobalGarden.com <Tomato@GlobalGarden.com>
Date: Saturday, February 27, 1999 11:49 AM
Subject: Re: [tomato] Tomato Digest V1 #154
>In a message dated 2/27/99 12:18:46 PM Central Standard Time,
>thomas@tandjenterprises.com writes:
>
><< I am sharing my personal gardening experiences. >>
>
>
>And I, for one, am glad you did. It is sometimes difficult to share your
>thoughts about your personal experience on many of the gardening lists
because
>a couple of the rudest people are on nearly all of the gardening lists and
>behave the same way on all of the ones they are on. Their rude comments
are
>apparently based on nothing but what they think about other people's
>experience which counts for nothing compared to theirs. While I am most
>grateful to Chuck for recommending and sharing some of his seeds, which are
>the only seeds I plan to grow this year, he has also offered to sell his
>products on this list and has offered no scientific studies, only his own
>experience to "prove" their worth.
Thank's for your insight Linda. I have found, over the years, that the
things that work for me, are the best things to share with other people.
It's a principle that applies to a lot of different things in life... no
matter what the technology that is involved. My experience has been in
computer technology and government finance software solutions for years...
but my passion has been gardening and my heritage has been gardening.... not
that I have been good at it, but have always had a desire for it. I'm not
trying to "sell a product here". But there are a couple of things I am
trying to sell here... they both have to do with something called "cultural
practices." One of those cultrual practices I have a lot of personal
concern about is the routine use of chemical fertilizers on our home lawns
and gardens. I was talking to a person in the fertilizer division of the
Washington State Department of Agriculture a couple days ago and she had
said she had read a study that 60-70% of the ground water pollution that
exists in the USA comes from home lawns and gardens. I'm going to have to
call her back next week and see what the source of that study was and then
see what the basis or foundational principles are behind those findings.
It's interesting to me that our friends across the street had the best
results with VAM fungi that I have been able to observe with Tomato's. They
never at any time have ever used any commercial fertilizers in their garden.
They have put aged compost in their garden and built up the organic
material. They used .16 to .20 worth of VAM fungi on their tomato plants
and got really outstanding results. Those tomato's were producing
continuously from late July clear through to the frost. They had about 6
tomato plants in their garden and couldn't give enough of them away there
were so many tomato's. Their main input of organic material into that
garden was aged compost from steer manure and aged compost from leaves,
grass clippings and whatever else they chose to throw in their barrels of
"cooking compost." Believe me, I am not an environmentalist. But when I
KNOW there is a solution to polluting our ground waters and I KNOW that
solution produces really excellent results, then I figgured it is time for
me to take responsibility and not contribute to that pollution problem by
continuing to use chemical fertilizers.
Before I started using VAM fungi inoculants with organic fertilizers, I
could find no option that would produce decent results. The resposibility
lies in the hands of home owners and gardeners, in the hands of farmers,
with our Schools, with our city parks and golf courses and cemetaries, with
the state governments, with the federal government, and with people who are
ripping up the environment and need to restore a balance to the damage they
have done and are doing. This problem of polluting our soils with chemical
fertilizers runs all through our society. Until now, there really has not
been a replacement for the chemical fertilizer routine... except for
knowledge that only a small element of our society is able to put into
effective use. go figure...
Thomas Giannou