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Re: [GWL]: A New Rant

Right on! Jeff!  You add sand and gravel to clay and you get concrete.  It
as simple as that!  About amending soil in a hole to set a tree---B.S.  The
tree roots will stay there and not venture out into the clay where the good
nutrients are.  Clay may be heavy, it may be sticky, it may be hard to
drain, but it does contains ample amounts of phosphorous and trace elements.
It also has enough nitrogen.  Clay gets a bad rap.  It's what you do on top
of the clay that counts--the piling of good stuff like compost, peat,
manures and chopped vegetation.  This does more to improve the clay that
mixing it all up with sand and gravel.  I spent 21 years gardening in the
clay belt of the country where gumbo is not a Cajun stew but a soil.  You
learn to live with it and capitalize on the good parts of it.  End of my
rant....  Whew!  That felt good.  It's been a  very bad day here.
Doreen Howard

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Ball <jeffball@starband.net>
To: Gardenwriters@topica.com <Gardenwriters@topica.com>
Date: Thursday, January 24, 2002 8:42 PM
Subject: [GWL]: A New Rant


>There is nothing we can do about this problem, but I have to get it off my
>chest.
>The problem is the continuing spread of bad information by a few garden
>writers and many too many non-garden writers assigned gardening topics in
>newspapers, magazines, press releases, and books.
>Back ten years ago a garden writer did an article in a national magazine
>about how we should not use peat moss because it is not a renewable
>resource.  She had done little homework because she was referring to the
>peat moss harvest in parts of Europe which in fact is not renewable.  She
>never noted that Canadian sphagnum peat moss was what is sold mostly in the
>United States. In fact it is a renewable resource.  The Canadian Sphagnum
>Peat Moss Association has spent many thousands of dollars and untold hours
>since then trying to kill that bad story; it keeps coming up year after
year
>in the national media.
>My current rant is the issue of adding sand, gravel, or Profile to clay
soil
>to make it drain better.  It is not true that you can change the structure
>of clay by adding material with larger particles than found in the clay.
At
>GWAA in Philadelphia I think it was we had an expert from Kansas State give
>us very clear reasons why that was a bad idea.  He also killed the value of
>any gravel in the bottom of a container.  I've checked a few states
>including my own, Michigan, and the County Extension folks are agreed that
>such amendments to clay either does no good or does damage to the soil's
>ability to drain.  The story keeps coming back.
>Nancy and I are working on a new book about trees and shrubs and again we
>are finding far too many references in print and on the web that still
>recommend amending the soil when planting a tree and not making it clear
>that the hole is saucer shaped not pail shaped.  We recently got a press
>release saying to dig the hole twice the depth of the root ball and add
>organic material to the hole until the root ball was at the right height.
>The American Arborist Association and the American Nurseryman's Association
>have taken strong stands years ago but the inaccurate story persists.
>All that and I'm not even mentioning the damage in bad information that
>Jerry Baker has offered over the past 20 years (grin).
>On one side, the Internet is a blessing of access to data and information
>never before so readily available.  On the other side, it looks like the
>Internet is a vehicle custom made for spreading the bad information along
>with the good.
>Yes, gardening is as much art as it is science.  But there is some really
>good science being overlooked, ignored, or misunderstood by what seems to
me
>to be too many writers not doing their homework.  Yes, newspapers and
>magazines are assigning gardening stories to young inexpensive and
>inexperienced writers who don't know what roots do, but still.....
>I know there is nothing to do but to keep on trying in any way I can to put
>out what I believe to be, after professional research, the proper story.
>And I know that most everyone else in the garden writing business is doing
>exactly the same thing.  As my son would say, "Suck it up Dad, you're not
>going to change everything in the world".  Ah such wisdom from someone only
>35 years old.
>End of rant for the day
>Still Frustrated
>Jeff Ball
>
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