It just takes some advanced composting. You can replace ferts all together with a good compost pile.
Start a safe compost pile consisting of fruit scraps veggis also kelp crab shell for cal for exampl and the scraps will give you good K value. This is a good compost to add to promote fruiting in plants. There is also trace elements and vitms from composting that. I think we can make strong high quality compost.
You can even just add to water and shake and add right to your potted plants just like a fert.

I use the shrimp/kelp compost (store bought)as an ingredient in my compost tea. I put several shovels of my mature compost and a scoop of the shrimp/kelp compost into a burlap bag and put it into 40 gal barrel of rain water. After several days I put this mixture on all growing plants. I do this from spring through the fall crops. It's cheap, fun and seems to be extremely effective.

Organics or teas would just add to the soil.
And salts.

With the right tea there is no need for pestisides,ect..because the tea builds the cell wall of the plant so much it in impossable to penitrate by any insect or bacteria,ect...
That's simply not true.

Your heart's in the right place but try not to go over the top.

if you look at a.. say...maple syrup "farm" they feed them ferts and use pestiside..thats why you can buy ORGANIC MAPLE SYRUP. The trees obviusly dont have salt build up in 20 years because they are differnt. Im talking small food crops friend go look up smoe info before making a fool of yourself on here :]. If you have an outside plot and you continu to use chemi ferts you kill all living things in the ground after a while things get bad. You dont know too much about plants or the earth do you? Do you know why the BEE population is almost gone? Do you know what Bees do? Chemi requirs "badages" micro additivs that are chemicals. the same chemicals for in good compost but the petrol based is BAD! Go do some reading and see why we will not have farmable land in 30 years. Its a FACT.
You say there is salts from organic teas lol yea but the microbes that are not dead from chemis eat break that salt down.
If I wanted to show off my skills with some potted plants I would go Chemi.
If I wanted to grow for a long time in the soil I would go Organic.
You are funny when you say organic tea dont build up the plants immune system...you are funny .. salts go into the ground water from ferts...compost ADDS to the SOIL. Crop rotation=slow more expensive end result(ppl dont want to pay!) ferts = good fast results ending in useless farm land. i know economics just as much as i know farming.
O and I will go over the top and save the earth. Thank you.

You dont know too much about plants or the earth do you?
Nope, I don't have a clue.

If I wanted to show off my skills with some potted plants I would go Chemi.
Oh No! Not chemistry! My poor little brain couldn't take it!

O and I will go over the top and save the earth. Thank you.
Good luck with that. You're obviously very well equipped.

404

I am guessing that if you learned composting from the Master Gardeners' Program, you aren't really doing Advanced Composting yet. For instance, misinformation that the Master Composters' program spreads is that meat, fat and sugar can't be composted. That's hooey.

Anyway, your enthusiasm is cute, and very welcome here.

Hydroponics save water.

With teas you can achive higher results than using just soil to grow in....you can have a super drainage grow medium that is not to fertal but has extreme drainage. Now you add your "veg" tea for growth and your bloom tea for fruiting depending on what your growing theses could be mixed..now say i added no tea..my soil/meduim would have to have all the organic matter/food in the soil/meduim...this resulting in bad drainag(soil).. crop rotation would be ideal although hydroponics can save the futur aswell.
You can dig a hole place food scraps cover over then let rot and then plant right on top;) my fav way to grow!!!

Compost takes a bad toll on the eviroment in Factoty Farming!! The fuel it takes to move all that compost around uses way more fuel then to spray w ferts..(farms are gas relient there machines ect.....). So these organic farmrs are polluting more than chemi..I know economics to well..mass crop productoin could not just use compost that would not be economical..now to make a strong tea that can be sprayed like ferts Would Not effect the soil as bad as ferts do although would be better to just crop rotate.
Either crop rotation outdoor
Or organic stablized teas in hydroponic greenhouses.

Now in your back yard or even a smaller production garden i could see moving around the compost easy its how it should be....
Fact I could achive more healthy productive results using a good tea system then i could using just compost.
Why= Fertility+soil and composition/drainage.

Hydroponic medium=drainage no fertility/food
compost/soil=bad drainage good ferility

example: flood and drain hydroponics plants have 2-3 or more flood and drain or you could say 3 dry spouts a day soil can have a dry spout 2 times a week or more fact is Oxygen to the roots is just as important as water to the roots. That is why hydro is more productive than soil cause compost/soil will keep roots wet too long. Now this is how plants have growning forever but we where not this overpopulated either..get me?

The site you refer to seems quite sensible but your interpretaton of the information is very confusing.

Could you set out clearly what you are trying to share with us?

I just wanted to here
A what do you guys think we should do for the better of the farming future

B What and how do you make your own compost at home and do you make diff ones for diff applications

Thank you flora_uk for that point. I am just rambling on aren't I ;).

I make four types of compost, maybe five. I'll list them.

Leaf mold. I make it in bags in the woods or in bags I place around the foundation of my chicken houses for winter insulation. It generally takes two years to become beautiful; I often can't resist it before it's of chocolate cake consistency and will spread it as mulch before then.

I run a few hot piles when I can. I make those in one day with ingredients I've gathered off property---at the landfill or the seashore. I generally make the hot piles in the fall.

I run two cold piles through the summer. These take the majority of my and my neighbor's kitchen waste. I add straw, chicken litter, seaweed, what ever I can when I can. These piles are built all season, flipped once or twice, and spread in the fall on my sleeping garden whether they are ready or not.

I raise my chicken using the deep litter method. It's basically composting in the chicken house with a large component of manure. That's my fourth method, except that I'm abandoning the way I harvest it. I now mix it into my compost piles rather than applying it directly. Kim convinced me it needs longer curing than the fresh manures I used (and loved) my whole gardening life.

I make rough compost in a dip in the woods. That pile consists of things I don't want in my regular piles---branches, brambles, diseased things. I've never actually harvested from that pile, but I would if I needed it.

Oh, and I guess I'll count my new method of yard management. This was my third or fourth year of it. I pick a spot in my yard whose soil I want to improve, don't care how unsightly it is and where I don't intend, on purpose, to grow anything that year. So right now, my yard across the street is covered under 2 or 3 feet of leaves, now compressed; about 80 pumpkins; a truckload of seaweed; three or four bales of straw; pine needles; woodash; anything I could get my hands on last fall. I am only doing it to build rich soil there for the future, but I know that I'll have a bumper crop of pumpkins growing into the road this summer. I intend to keep rotating my yard employing this effortless soil improvement method.

My whole garden focus now is to Make My Yard Attractive to Earth Worms. I figure "Build it and they will come," and when they come, And Boy! do they come! they will fertilize, and work the soil for me.

Like you, I make teas, but I use them as much as an imagined way to control pests and disease, as fertilize. My compost, which I apply as mulches, is my primary method of fertilization. I will spot apply fish emulsion fertilizers in the summer.

I have five large bins right now. Three of them are immediately harvestable and were hot piles last fall. The last two were my winter piles and will be combined with the litter from my chicken houses when I get the time, then used mid-summer as a mulch somewhere.

Welcome to the forum. You're going to love it.

Thank you so much for righting. I found it very interesting I hope to have livestock like you some day. I would like to thank you for stating that you use compost tea as a pesticide. I like how you say earthworms till the land for you that is a big advantage of organic farming.

Again Thanks.

Also please keep in mind that you're on a GARDENING site. You keep talking about farming and commercial scale greenhouse production. While those topics are interesting folks on here are mostly concerned with how to grow a few veggies for their own families and have compost piles that reflect that level of use. If you want to talk about farming that's fine but you keep jumping between farming and gardening without explaining well which one you are talking about. They're very different...

Hydroponics on the home scale is much more wasteful of limited resources than organic gardening in the ground. To start with you need lots of containers (usually plastic), piping or tubing, and a grow medium. Manufacturing and shipping all those things use up a lot of resources. Then you need electricity to run the pump to keep your water moving...another big use of a valuable resource (maybe you can set this up on a solar system but most home growers don't have that). Then there is the nutrients you need to add to the system. Most hydroponic systems use chemicals for that. I know you can set them up on an organic system. I don't know enough about the system to know if just compost tea can provide all the nutrients a hydroponic system needs or not, I suspect it's more complicated than that.

Compare this to organic gardening. You might buy some wood to make a bed (although you don't even need to do that) so material costs to get started are pretty low. Nutrients come from the soil. Compost is added to the soil to improve it and add nutrients the plants need. Some people do add all kinds on nutrients to the soil, but I suspect most are like me and have only added a few things (like compost and manure). Sure you can buy these things out of a bag in a big box store but you can also create them right at home and find local sources of manure...so no/limited resources needed to process and ship them. Other fertilizers aren't needed most of the time. There is no electricity needed.

So overall which is really better?

You are right this is the wrong forum to talk about mass farming but I still thank you for the insight on it.A large scale investment of greenhouses would be ideal just look at alot of contries that practice(germany, canada, Netherlands,ect..).
Now like you said for just small time, ppl producing their own food(in a perfect world) i believe regular crop rotation/organic would be best. your right organics and hydroponics doesnt mix although they do have 100%organic hydroponics but it is not economical yet.

I know I have changed the subject many times in this but it is a related in some way. Thank you for responding.

There are such things as sustainable farming practices in many countries even this one and they produce fruits at a commercial rate go buy a bottle of Naked fruit juice or odwalla and read the label on the back

"Synthetics are cheap and grow even more productive plants than organic however after 20 years the land is salt.
You are a baboon and if the ground were salt would probably extract it to put in salt shakers "
I said this was an over exaggeration it simply destroys the land.

Go read the post called Angry Beneficial Microbes in the Permaculture Forum. Im just saying fertilizer applications harm the living soil.

And yes I am a baboon ;)

(standing red-faced, wringing hat-in-hand)
I have been a secret admirer but now (stammering)
confess outright love, 'tho hopes dashed, instead
as I do compost bread.

Hope you get a load of hay or a silver spoon.

(No one else, though.)

Lloyd

For the record, the only reason MGs might discourage use of dairy, bones, fats, etc. in compost is because the typical home composter does not generate sufficient heat that is needed to break down those items. This can result in rotting, smell, and rodents. That is why most purchased compost bins tell you not to add those items, and why some municipalities prohibit composting altogether.

I see what you are saying. I am only a gardener that would like to use MG1 as my name. Are you saying I can not use this name on here? I do not know of anything you are talking about. Composting fats??? What has been going on for the last mil. years?? So are you saying I cant use this name? You have to be certified to be a "Master Gardener"?
What makes a master gardener? Because from my experience I am a master gardener.

Thanks.

Some MG groups have much less rigorous training requirements; but the standard is in being able to accurately identify problems, and search credible sources for sustainable and science-based answers.

I do not know if there is a trademark for the title Master Gardener in the US. However, since the 1970s MGs have become an international organization providing gardening information to the public. The title elicits a certain expectation from the public as well as those who have invested much time and effort to become trained volunteers.I hope this answers your question.

TheMasterGardener1, yes, you certainly may use that moniker. There are no rules regarding what we may call ourselves here.

I would also have to agree with AlaskaChris. I have read several of the 63 posts you have participated in within the last week, and find myself confused as to whether or not you have a compost pile of your own, or if the information you provide in an authoritative tone is just from something you've read. I'm finding your posts hard to follow because of the use of many abbreviations, spelling errors, and improper grammar. I am in no way condemning someone if they are unable to spell. However, is it possible if you typed slower and used less abbreviations, I'd be able to comprehend what it is you're trying to say?

Welcome to Garden Web, BTW. =:)

"TheMasterGardener1, just out of curiosity is "realmaster" a neighbor of yours?
Lloyd"

could be
they're both in the nozone

I thank you for that. I plan to write somthing soon lol.

www.advancedcomposting.com/advanced.html

All the best,
-Patrick
(the composter's DJ)

I'm going to try to redeem myself two ways. Don't I type swell? a.) and b.) I spread a whole heck of a lot of annpat's pretty wonderful compost today.

I planted peas, carrots, beets, borage (for the bees, alphonse) snapdragons (for the bees, alphonse), etc.

The Diana Krall version. :)

Just yesterday I discovered a source for the CDs by a Dutch band, coincidentally named Boulevard of Broken Dreams, who beautifully recorded that tune and many other old standards. Will be sending several your way soon, Ann dear.

All the best,
-Patrick

And as a side question, how did you get uppercase letters in your screen name? GW unceremoniously converted us all to lower case letters years ago.