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Re: ants

The following is from an article titled "Garden Bloopers" by Peter V.
Fossel:

"American farmers went wrong 50 years ago, I believe, when they began
feeding their plants instead of feeding the soil.  Home gardeners
followed suit.  However, the greatest gift you can give a garden is
organically rich soil full of nutrients, microorganisms, earthworms,
trace elements, and such.  This you will have to build up over time, but
fertile soil does more than any other single thing to ensure a garden
free of pests, disease and competition from weeds.  That isn't to say
you won't have vine borers and leaf mosaic; you will.  But your flowers
and vegetables will be so healthy they'll all bu shrug off such
annoyances.  In a garden, as anywhere else in Nature, predators go after
the weak, not the strong.
    Oh you can buy chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and the
like if you have the money and don't mind eating the plants you've fed
this to.  But the only amendments we purchase for our gardens are
greensand, lime, bone meal and occasionally blood meal, and we've yet to
have a bothersome infestation of pests or disease.  Everything else that
goes into our gardens is free. The list includes leaves (in great
quantity), pine needles, grass clippings, seaweed, rotten hay or straw,
horse manure, chicken manure, compost and kitchen swill.  Virtually any
plant matter we can find that decomposes within a year goes in the
gardens.  The soil here gets richer and deeper by the year, and we've
never needed chemical fertilizers."

The article was not in _Organic Gardening_, but in the August 1997
_Country Journal_.

Ada
AdaDavis@prodigy.net

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