Re: Re: CULT: mulch/alfalfa and weed preventer

John  --  I tossed the empty bags last time I used them, but I'll check the
next time I'm at the feed store.  --  Griff

----- Original Message -----
From: "John I Jones" <jijones@usjoneses.com>
To: <iris@hort.net>
Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2004 6:58 PM
Subject: Re: [iris] Re: CULT: mulch/alfalfa and weed preventer


> Grif,
>
> Please check the rabbit chow bag and see if it contains any corn or
> corn by products.
>
> Thx
>
> John
> On Jul 8, 2004, at 3:41 PM, J. Griffin Crump wrote:
>
> > Several years ago, after being fed up with having to mix my own 6-24-24
> > fertilizer because the ready-mixed can't be obtained in the Washington
> > area
> > (like so many things), I took the advice of Nancy Szmuriga, who had
> > been using
> > Rabbit Chow as a top dressing on her seldom-turned urban beds in New
> > Jersey.
> >
> > Apply some in the fall, and again in the late winter/early spring.  It
> > worked
> > very nicely.  I decided to incorporate it as a tilled-in mix in
> > preparing new
> > beds, and again it worked very well.
> >
> > Then, 2 years ago, my newly set-out seedling sprouts suddenly went
> > nowhere  --
> > just sat there for months looking like they did when they were first
> > set out,
> > and only one of the few hundred bloomed the following spring.
> > Subsequent to
> > that, somone of our list correspondents praised alfalfa but warned
> > against the
> > use of Rabbit Chow, saying  --  if I remember correctly  -- that it
> > contains
> > salt, which inhibits growth.  Looking at my seedlings, I wondered if
> > that
> > explained the no-growth of a year's crop  --  that perhaps some kind
> > of toxic
> > salt had been added to the Rabbit Chow recently, since it had been
> > working
> > nicely up till that crop.  There was, however, another possibility  --
> >  that
> > the pre-germinant weed controller I had used on the beds, "Snapshot",
> > was the
> > culprit.  Again, however, I had been using it for some years without a
> > problem.  That year, however, my supplier had sent me a product with a
> > new
> > name, "TG2" or something like that, the packaging and contents looking
> > so
> > otherwise identical that I thought it was just a product name change.
> > So, I
> > pulled the left-over bag out of the shed and read the accompanying
> > information
> > very, very carefully.  Sure enough, there was a warning to the effect:
> > Don't
> > use on seedling beds.  I talked to my supplier and he apologized for
> > sending
> > the wrong product  --  "Snapshot" was indeed still available  --
> > however, the
> > price had gone up from $135 for 50lbs to $189.  I decided to resume
> > using
> > Preen.
> >
> > This year I was scheduled to create several new beds and dig and renew
> > some
> > old ones, so I decided to bite the bullet and pay the king's ransom
> > for one
> > sack of the Snapshot.  (The area where I raise some of my seedlings is
> > rife
> > with morning glorys, and Preen doesn't prevent them, but Snapshot
> > does.)
> > Just in case, I read the Snapshot instructions very carefully, as I
> > had, in
> > fact, when I first began using it.  And a good thing I did!  Here was
> > a whole
> > new paragraph not only warning not to use Snapshot on seedling beds,
> > but to
> > avoid using it on beds into which adult plants were to be set until
> > the soil
> > had "cured" for some time (my word, not theirs).  In the past, I had
> > used this
> > product in both situations for several seasons with no adverse
> > consequences.
> > Apparently, whatever bad thing is in "TG2" has also now been put into
> > Snapshot.  So the wrapup on the pregerminant weedkillers is this:  I
> > put the
> > Preen on the new seedling beds and the new transplant beds, and used
> > the
> > Snapshot on the established beds.  Everything is working fine in both
> > situations, and when the morning glorys pop up in the beds awaiting the
> > transplants, they get a shot of Roundup.
> >
> > So, now, what about the Rabbit Chow?  Even though I had by now
> > concluded that
> > it had gotten a bum rap in Iris-talk and Iris-photos and had almost
> > taken the
> > fall here for the real culprit, "TG2", I decided to experiment.  I
> > mixed
> > alfalfa pellets into the soil of half of the new seedling beds and
> > Rabbit Chow
> > into the other half.  Result?  They're both growing like gangbusters
> > and I
> > can't see any difference between them.  What Rabbit Chow has that
> > alfalfa
> > doesn't is antibiotics, so I'll be sticking with it.  --  Griff
> >
> > zone 7 in Virginia
> >
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> >
> John                | "There be dragons here"
>                           |  Annotation used by ancient cartographers
>                           |  to indicate the edge of the known world.
>
> List owner iris@hort.net and iris-photos@yahoogroups.com
> ________________________________________________
> USDA zone 8/9 (coastal, bay)
> Fremont, California, USA
> Director, American Iris Society
> Chairman, AIS Committee for Electronic Member Services
>
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