Question from Chris:

Answer from Pat:
Thanks so much for writing. First, I want to encourage you in your desire to get an internship in Panama on a new sustainable community.

A glance at the site indicates that this community may be early in its development, may offer great learning and service opportunities, and may be an exciting adventure as well as one of lasting value. When and if you arrive there, you will doubtless have opportunities to learn a great deal about the area and the work required of you to make your 5 acres into a productive farm or garden while growing plants adapted to the climate in Panama and recycling back into the land all the organic waste products from the animals you raise and the plants that you grow.

I’m sorry I do not know of other organic farms in Panama, but once you arrive there I would suppose you will have the opportunity to meet other gardeners and learn from them the rhythm of farming and gardening there, what crops to grow, and when to plant and harvest. Every climate offers its advantages and drawbacks, but timing is all-important. The best way to learn these things is to talk to long-time organic farmers in the area. If there are none then you will have to rely on books and scholarship to know what to do when. In the 1940′s, my mother purchased and then ran an organic farm mainly by reading “Rodale’s Organic Farming and Gardening Magazine” and also a current, multi-volume encyclopedia of farming. Then she would have us all do exactly what that magazine (which was very good in those days) and also the encyclopedia said to do. She also wrote lists of tasks and then crossed them out as we accomplished these items. Another way she learned was from the County Agent, which was the name in those days of the Farm Advisor. I doubt you will have anyone like that in Panama, but it is important to listen to experts whenever you can and to learn from them.

When we had our farm we were living in a cold-winter climate. You will be in a tropical one and tropical gardening offers totally different and new challenges. In Africa several years ago I flew over a large area of small individually farmed and owned “strip farms” Each one was about an acre in size. These were hugely productive, but this one area (near Lake Victoria) had a nearly ideal growing climate with ample year-round rain. Torrential rains can ruin crops and rot seeds and roots, just as longtime drought can kill crops also. Dealing with insect and animal pests and plant diseases organically in Panama may also present challenges and be quite different from anything you have faced prior.

You say the soil is good and that is excellent news, but your task as an organic gardener will be to put back into the ground at the end of each season and before the next season, whatever nutrients your plants subtracted from the soil. In this way you can eventually leave it even better than you found it. You also have a chance to learn the economics and time management of farming. I wish you good fortune in all these endeavors.

With good wishes for your success and happiness in this project.

Related posts:

1. Vegetables for Southern California
2. Raised Bed Planting
3. Companion Planting Has No Scientific Basis but Planting a Wide Range of Crops Works

Question from Trinidad:

Answer from Pat:
Terr-O-Vite is no longer available. It has not been made for at least fifteen years. I mentioned this product in my first book published twenty years ago. Ten years later when I revised my book a second time, Terr-O-Vite was no longer made. It was a good product, it made plants grow like mad, but it did cause run-off into the ground water. Now we know we shouldn’t use products that get into the groundwater. But years ago we weren’t as aware of that problem as we are now. These days we are much more aware of environmental hazards and how we should avoid them. Terr-O-Vite contained a penetrant and that’s one reason why it worked well because Western soils are dry and alkaline and often shed water, but that is also one reason why it went through the upper layers of soil quickly and contaminated the water in aquifers deep down in the earth.

But times have changed. Now as a liquid fertilizer I often recommend fish emulsion, which is organic and does not cause massive problems of run-off. This is another possibility for using on your brunfelsias (Brunfelsia ‘Royal Purple’.) As I have stated in all my books, one can stimulate heavy June bloom on brunfelsia ‘Royal Purple’ by fertilizing twice in winter, in December and again in January, by fertilizing with a nitrogen fertilizer mixed double strength. Used this way it will not burn roots, largely because nitrogen is not as active in cold temperatures. So fish emulsion is another possibility to use for this technique. Mix it double strength for feeding Brunfelsia ‘Royal Purple’ in winter as described in my book. Fish emulsion does not burn.

Related posts:

1. Terr-O-Vite vs Organic Fertilizers
2. Patio Plants For Partial Shade
3. How to Fertilize Organically

Question from Robin:

As it turns out I was in the UK working in my son and daughter in laws garden which had not been touched in years. As they had just moved in after it was remodeled I wanted to help them gut the garden so they could get an idea of how much space they had to work with. We were outside for about 7 hours. I came down with a horrible cough…and upon my return to Del Mar…had coughed my way to a pnuemothroax….

My question for you is, I was wondering if I would be able to get a copy of your lecture. I would like to give it to my Dr.’s at Scripps Clinic…They need some education…because they did not get it when I explained how I got the cough.  Thank you so much.

Answer from Pat:
Every hobby and profession comes with some hazards and wise precautions one can follow in order to protect oneself. This is especially true of gardening. However, working outdoors for seven hours in a garden, even a long-neglected garden and then subsequently coming down with a sore throat and later a collapsed lung might or might not have been caused by gardening. Your illness might have been caused by a bug you caught some other way. It might not come from a
> fungus. However I am happy to tell you a couple of precautionary tales I have been telling my classes which can help one to avoid some health hazards connected to gardening. Your question and my answer could help other gardeners so I am posting this correspondence on my website.http://patwelsh.com/wpmu/. (I am primarily an author of books on gardening, but I also keep up this blog and give many talks and slide shows on gardening during one month in spring and one month in
fall.)

Though I sometimes use notes I do not write out my lectures. Therefore, I am sorry I cannot send you a printed copy of the lecture heard by your friends. I can, however, answer your question. You can print out this answer to your question and give it to your doctors.

A rare gardening hazard but one of which gardeners should be aware is the intake of fungus from dry leaves or from compost into the lungs. The disease is called aspergilliosis. I hope you do not have it. If your doctors have never heard of aspergillosis I would refer them to an article in the Lancet medical journal written by a Dr. David Waghorn who treated a gardener at Wycombe Hospital in Buckinghamshire in May of last year. Unfortunately, in this case the patient died,but it is likely that his lungs were already unhealthy due to his having smoked and also to his previous work in a foundary. This is a rare disease but gardeners should know not to breath in dust from compost or from dead leaves and debris. Here is a link to more information:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2116523/Gardener-killed-by-fungus-in-his-compost.html There are many other links on the Internet that give the symptoms, dangers, and treatments of aspergillosis. Another disease that has been blamed on compost is legionnaires disease. Lung fibrosis is another mold-related disease affecting breathing. This one comes from spores that live on green rotting garbage or green rotting compost.

Aspergillosis doesn’t always come from compost. You can also get it from breathing in the warm dust from the back of a horse when curry combing a horse. I used to be a horsewoman and often groomed horses, but was careful not to breath in the dust. I often put a wet handkerchief over my nose when currying the back of my horse when his back was near head height. A friend of mine whom I used to ride with got aspergillosis from curry combing the back of her horse in winter when he had his thick winter coat and he had fungus on his dusty back under the saddle and her nose was too close to it as she cleaned him. Doubtless he had also been rolling in the pasture and that too got into his hair. Personally I believed in washing a horse off with the hose after riding and then you don’t have all that dust. The same applies to garden dust when raking up dead leaves. Just wet it down a bit so you don’t breath in all that dust.

A gardener whom I know got aspergillosis from compost and was treated for it and has survived. When she first took up gardening and began composting for the first time, she was so crazy about the smell of compost that she used to hold handfuls of freshly made compost close to her nose and breathe in the smell of it because it smelled so good to her. She just loved the earthy aroma of it. She told me she did this quite often and after a while she came down with a serious fungus disease of her lungs and it also affected the skin on her face, turning it red. My friend had to take a specific anti-fungal medicine for a long time to get rid of this lung disease and it was a serious disease. Even now it comes back occasionally when the weather is hot and moist and it affects her face when she gets hot working in the garden and it makes her face red. However, in her case it did not lead to a collapsed lung.

Because of this, I now warn the new gardeners, especially, in my classes not to put their noses close to compost and not to breath the fumes into their lungs. Don’t breath in the warm steam that emits from the top of a hot compost pile as you toss and turn it because this probably contains spores of fungus that can attach themselves to the inside of your lungs and grow there. On the other hand as a child I often spent time in a potting shed filled with the smell of compost and never got sick from it. So we have to have some balance and just use common sense.

The same thing goes for various garden dusts. One should not allow the dust from perlite, bone meal, blood meal, or granulated fertilizers to get into one’s lungs. This just means to use common sense in avoiding breathing in dust. On the other hand we do not need to become paranoid about it. I grew up on a farm. As a child I was always around farm animals and as a teen ager I was also around the dust made by straw, hay, chicken feed, animal bedding and manures. Photographs in an old album show me as a child close to a spreader liming a field and plenty of dust in the air and on my overalls. We often worked inside the barns and chicken houses and I’m sure I breathed in tons of bad things, but somehow I survived all this exposure to various agricultural dusts. Instead of making me sick, I got healthier which is the case for the majority of farm kids. Farm kids are known to have built in immunities to many diseases and they are not often subject to allergies having built up an immunity in childhood.

Another hazard to be wary of in a garden is getting a rose thorn in one’s hand. If one gets a rose thorn in one’s hand one should immediately go indoors, remove the thorn, clean the wound with alcohol or disinfectant, apply antibiotic ointment, and cover the wound with a bandaid. If you can’t get the thorn out soak it in hot water and apple cider vinegar to get it out. The same applies to bromeliads and also to thorns in sphagnum moss. These three garden thorns can carry a pathogen called Sporotrichosis or “rose gardener’s disease” a fungal infection that can afflict farmers and gardeners who have not taken care of a small hand wound. It can infect a wound, travel up the gardener’s arm, turn green, and even cause death if not treated with the correct antibiotics.

Related posts:

1. Aspergillosis or Fungus Diseases of the Lung Caused by Earth-born Pathogens in Soil and Compost
2. Spent Brewery Grains as Compost or Soil Amendment
3. Dealing with Clay Soil

Question from Ica:

Answer from Pat:
Spent brewery grains are an excellent additive to the compost pile, but they vary in characteristics. Some beer companies are learning to use them to make compost and other companies are also recycling them for use as mushroom compost. They can also be used to feed worm bins. Composted brewery grains are one of the ingredients in Milorganite and contribute a lot of its nitrogen.

Most spent brewery grains when used in the compost pile can be classed as a nitrogenous waste (a fast, hot, “green” ingredient, like grass clippings). Layer with some carbonaceous materials such as dry leaves to make a nitrogen-rich compost. Brewery grains can be especially beneficial if you have a bin composter since they are nitrogenous and are easy to compost but need tossing to maintain their warmth. You may have to add some wood shavings to keep the compost from getting too smelly. Brewery grains are likely to be very smelly already when you first pick them up, so get them as quickly as you can after use. Some grains also have allelopathic qualities, that is, like corn gluten meal, they can prevent seeds from germinating. Composting them may not kill this action. Thus I would use this compost in areas of the garden where you don’t intend to plant from seeds and where you would like to prevent weeds from growing. Before using this compost in the vegetable garden, try planting some radish seeds in a container of potting mix mixed with the compost to make sure the seeds germinate easily.

Spent brewery grains are not a good material for mulching due to the fact that they are too smelly and also attract animals. Spent brewery grains that are very soft, wet, and smelly can be dug directly into the soil, as you asked, since they are already well on their way to breaking down and will release nitrogen in the form of gas directly into the ground in a form that plant roots can absorb. On the other hand, spent brewery grains that have been allowed to dry out or cake and get hard should not be added directly to the garden soil. These would subtract nitrogen from the soil in order to rot. Also they will act more like carbonaceous waste in the compost pile. You will need to add water to them so they can puff up again and get going. (When brewery grains are hard and dry some gardeners even recommend layering them with grass clippings to add nitrogen to them, but this does sound odd since the grains themselves are classes as nitrogenous. Under normal circumstances the grains should provide the nitrogenous waste and what you would need to add, if anything, is carbonaceous waste.)

One easy way to compost these left over grains and increase the organic matter in your soil is simply to dig trenches, for example between the rows in your vegetable or cut-flower garden, pour the grain in there, cover it over with soil, and let the worms do the composting.

Related posts:

1. How to Create a Hot Compost Pile
2. New Gardener – Composting for Two
3. Horse Manure Compost

A: Cape honeysuckle (Tecoma capensis) is a vigorous plant whose common name derives from the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. These plants do not grow well in containers. They need full sun and good drainage and are very drought resistant once established but look better with occasional deep watering. The problem with growing a vigorous drought-resistant plant in a container is that the roots are so vigorous they tend to go round and round. You transplanted your one gallon size plant into a larger container but did you loosen the roots first? Also did you plant in potting soil? Garden soil is not appropriate for plants growing in containers. All plants growing in containers need good drainage. All need to be lightly fed while growing in a container. All plants growing in containers should be watered enough when watered so that water will flow out the bottom of the pot. Though it is a little difficult to judge from the facts you have given me, it sounds to me as if you are not watering enough. Also, be sure plant has full sun. Water thoroughly at least once a week so the water comes out the bottom of the pot and don’t let the roots stand in water. That will kill the plant.

Related posts:

1. Container-grown Cape Honeysuckle with Wet Feet
2. Is Cape Honeysuckle (Tecoma capensis) Toxic?
3. Potted Cape Honeysuckle Patio Tree

Question from Robin:

I spread granulated sulfur on the top of heavy clay soil. Hindsight shows me this is not optimum, and I would like your opinion on my options. I want to establish vegetables on the site. And I had wanted to do it ASAP.

The garden is 10 x 15 feet and I spread most of a 5 lb box of sulfur “lentils.”

The following is a list of options I have thought through. I would like your opinion and suggestions.

Scrape it off and start over. (e.g. Amend with gypsum and compost.) -Removal poses safety and disposal problems. I would need advice on the best way to go about this

Till it in

• I worry that this might throw sulfur out of the garden area, endangering the dogs. (I’ve never used a tiller) I burned my hand on the dust so I’m a bit nervous.
• It will burn any earthworms under there.
• It may burn the roots of garden plants

Till it in, cover with 6” Agromend, and plant my veggies.

• any chance I can get away with this? It will still probably kill earthworms, but would the plants survive?

Scrape it off, save it, till the soil and apply properly at appropriate depth. After tilling in the sulfur, cover with 6” agromend and plant veggies.

• I feel this would be the best way if I want to grow veggies this summer, but I wouldn’t know what to save it in. Again I would need some safety advice.

The most sensible and least desirable option that I have come up with:

• Till it in, leave it till fall or next year, then establish my garden.  I’m unemployed and this was my chance to make a break from the office retrace. I want to sell at farmer’s markets to get myself known, and eventually open a nursery. This is a long time dream. I don’t want to go back to an office.

Corollary question:

Green humb carries an adorable garden boot, but will I need industrial type chemical resistant boots if I walk in this stuff? I haven’t yet stepped into the garden.

Answer from Pat:
As explained below, I don’t advocate that gardeners use soil sulfur but despite that, a five-pound box of granulated sulfur spread over a space that is ten by fifteen feet in size and then dug into the ground is not going to do any huge amount of harm. The correct proportion of soil sulfur to garden soil (if one were to add it) is 5 pounds for 1,000 square feet twice a year. (This is supposed to bring down the base of calcium in the soil and raise magnesium.) It would do more harm to the environment for you to scrape it off and dump it. I doubt also that it is going to kill earthworms since you are digging it into soil that I presume you already know is alkaline. Add plenty of organic matter into the ground and as mulch on top and you’ll get any number of earthworms. Also, once you have combined the sulfur with the soil, the alkalinity in the soil will neutralize the acid in the sulfur. That is a backwards way of saying the whole point of adding soil sulfur is to create a less alkaline condition in the soil. Your best option since you’ve already spread the sulfur is to dig it into the top foot or more of the ground. It will gradually combine with the soil over the years as you dig and amend your garden soil with organic matter twice a year prior to seasonal planting spring and fall. You could, however, rake it up and dig it into the ground in another part of the garden where you are not planning to plant seeds, but I really don’t think this is necessary.

You mention that you don’t use a tiller but amending the soil includes first spreading on the amendments and then using a garden fork or a garden spade and turning the soil over to combine ingredients into it. One does not need a tiller to do this, one just needs a sharp spade or garden fork and strength like I once had and don’t have any longer. Or you need a willing workman to do the job for you. Either that or become a “No Dig” gardener, but in that case never use anything like soil sulfur that has to be combined with soil in order to work.

Companies make granulated sulfur because it is considered safer for the environment than liquid sulfur which is a by product of some industries. Soil sulfur is a mined product, a natural mined element that comes from the earth. Sulfur is acid, not alkaline, and sometimes farmers add it to soil to try to correct problems with alkalinity. Soil sulfur differs from dusting sulfur. Dusting sulfur is one of the most ancient garden products. It has been used by mankind for thousands of years for dusting onto plants to kill some insects and plant diseases, such as mildew and blight. (American Indians dusted sulfur onto plants long before the white man discovered the New World.) Soil sulfur is sold by some nurseries as an acidifier for alkaline soils.

Despite all this, I do not advocate the use of soil sulfur by the home gardener for the purpose of acidifying soil. Instead, I have always felt the best way to acidify garden soil when necessary is to work in acid organic soil amendments, such as wood shavings. The main reason that I don’t recommend the use of soil sulfur for soil acidification is not so much because it’s dangerous, but more because it doesn’t work. In order to have soil sulfur work one would have to work it into the soil so that it is evenly distributed and so each grain of sulfur actually contacts individual particles of alkaline soil and then it also takes time to work, so you would have to keep it up twice a year. For example, simply spreading sulfur on top of the ground around camellias and azaleas and hydrangeas and then watering it in, as some gardeners have done, won’t work because sulfur doesn’t water into the ground that way.

You should also be careful not to breath sulfur into your lungs and you should use protected clothing, including gloves, when handling it. Also, soil sulfur can sometimes inhibit seeds from sprouting rather like corn gluten meal does but this action won’t last forever. It’s temporary.

Please refer to the pages at the beginning of my book for ways to treat alkaline soil, such as clay and for ways in which you can improve clay soil and make it drain better. Yes, gypsum is a harmless and helpful addition if your clay soil is compacted due to its alkalinity. (Please refer to other discussions about gypsum on this site.) Also, there is no better way to make clay soil drain than mixing in a layer of well-composted organic matter and keeping it up throughout the years.

Related posts:

1. Soil And How To Fix It
2. Plant Zinnias Seeds
3. Growing Healthy Blackberries

Question from Judy:

Answer from Pat:
What your husband has built for you is basically a large, portable planting container, not a raised bed. If he had built a raised bed on the ground I would have told you to fill it with good quality amended garden soil and put wire on the bottom against gophers. Raised beds are the same as terraces and need to be filled with soil, not potting soil which is for containers. But this is not a raised bed, it is an enclosed container. All containers should be filled with good quality potting soil, not garden soil, since properly constituted potting soil is lighter in weight than soil and also provides appropriate drainage for use in containers. Garden soil, with mighty few exceptions, does not drain well in containers. (Some decomposed granite soils, such as those found in Claremont California, work well in containers but these soils are few and far between.)

It is possible for home gardeners to mix their own potting soils as you have suggested you might do, but I don’t recommend this practice. Also, you suggest including garden soil as one of the ingredients. I would strongly warn against this, since one of the advantages of growing plants in a container is that you avoid the possibility of pathogens and pests, such as nematodes, which might be found in garden soil. Also, garden soil can sift down and clog drainage holes. Additionally, it is heavy when wet. One of the advantages of using potting soil in containers is that it is lighter weight than garden soil.

Gardeners do love recipes and so I provide a good one for making homemade soilless potting soil on page 25 of in my month-by-month garden published this year. This recipe is based on a recipe originally devised by Cornell University, for making one’s own potting soil. I have made it myself on television years ago and things grew well in it, and you can do it to if you want to. But my own experience has shown me that even with a good recipe it’s a struggle for a home gardener to mix a good-quality homemade potting soil. Doing so creates a lot of dust which is not good for one’s lungs, and it’s actually cheaper in the long run to purchase a high-quality commercial bagged potting soil. It’s hard to make just the right amount needed and then you need to store the rest. Storage is a problem. Reliable companies that make potting soils subject their products to extensive tests before selling them to the public and you can purchase just what you need. Also, you can find potting soils that are especially designed for growing vegetables and say so on the package. If you cannot find one of these I suggest that you add a gallon or two of aged bagged chicken manure to the mix in the box.

Before filling your box with potting soil, be sure to cover each of the drainage holes with a large enough piece of broken crockery to permit water to drain out and the soil mix to be safely held back within the container. Even using potting soil in this container it’s going to be heavy when wet and due to its shape it will need several drainage holes distributed on the bottom. The advantage with potting soils is they drain well but also the shape and size of this container means it will dry out far quicker than in the ground. Be sure to water accordingly, perhaps even daily in warm weather. Be sure to add organic fertilizer recommended for vegetables according to package directions prior to planting. And each season before planting again, remove some of the top of the old mix and add some fresh potting soil on top.

I’m happy to know you like my site and thank you so much for saying so. I have a partner, Loren Nelson, who does all the web design and technical side. I answer all letters and provide all written content. The difference between my site and garden “forums” is that folks who write to me get prompt, practical, thoughtful, and reliable answers to their questions, that are often exhaustive and always based on the best scientific research and organic principles, plus good common sense. The only time there is a wait is when I’m on vacation.

Related posts:

1. Potting Soil or Potting Mix?
2. Moisture Control Miracle Grow Potting Soil is No Good
3. Categories Of Soil

Question from Robin:

Sharrie told me about a lecture you gave within the last several months about being careful not to inhale fungus in the garden.

As it turns out I was in the UK working in my son and daughter in laws garden which had not been touched in years. As they had just moved in after it was remodeled I wanted to help them gut the garden so they could get an idea of how much space they had to work with. We were outside for about 7 hours. I came down with a horrible cough…and upon my return to Del Mar…had coughed my way to a pnuemothroax….

My question for you is, I was wondering if I would be able to get a copy of your lecture. I would like to give it to my Dr.’s at Scripps Clinic…They need some education…because they did not get it when I explained how I got the cough..

Answer from Pat:
Every hobby and profession comes with some hazards and wise precautions one can follow in order to protect oneself. This is especially true of gardening. However, working outdoors for seven hours in a garden, even a long-neglected garden and then subsequently coming down with a sore throat and later a collapsed lung might or might not have been caused by gardening. Your illness might have been caused by a bug you caught some other way. It might not come from a fungus. However I am happy to tell you a couple of precautionary tales I have been telling my classes which can help one to avoid some health hazards connected to gardening. Your question and my answer could help other gardeners so I am posting this correspondence on my website.http://patwelsh.com/wpmu/. (I am primarily an author of books on gardening, but I also keep up this blog and give many talks and slide shows on gardening during one month in spring and one month in fall.)

Though I sometimes use notes I do not write out my lectures. Therefore, I am sorry I cannot send you a printed copy of the lecture heard by your friends. I can, however, answer your question. You can print out this answer to your question and give it to your doctors.

A rare gardening hazard but one of which gardeners should be aware is the intake of fungus from dry leaves or from compost into the lungs. The disease is called aspergilliosis. I hope you do not have it. If your doctors have never heard of aspergillosis I would refer them to an article in the Lancet medical journal written by a Dr. David Waghorn who treated a gardener at Wycombe Hospital in Buckinghamshire in May of last year. Unfortunately, in this case the patient died,but it is likely that his lungs were already unhealthy due to his having smoked and also to his previous work in a foundary. This is a rare disease but gardeners should know not to breath in dust from compost or from dead leaves and debris. Here is a link to more information:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2116523/Gardener-killed-by-fungus-in-his-compost.html There are many other links on the Internet that give the symptoms, dangers, and treatments of aspergillosis. Another disease that has been blamed on compost is legionnaires disease. Lung fibrosis is another mold-related disease affecting breathing. This one comes from spores that live on green rotting garbage or green rotting compost.

Aspergillosis doesn’t always come from compost. You can also get it from breathing in the warm dust from the back of a horse when curry combing a horse. I used to be a horsewoman and often groomed horses, but was careful not to breath in the dust. I often put a wet handkerchief over my nose when currying the back of my horse when his back was near head height. A friend of mine whom I used to ride with got aspergillosis from curry combing the back of her horse in winter when he had his thick winter coat and he had fungus on his dusty back under the saddle and her nose was too close to it as she cleaned him. Doubtless he had also been rolling in the pasture and that too got into his hair. Personally I believed in washing a horse off with the hose after riding and then you don’t have all that dust. The same applies to garden dust when raking up dead leaves. Just wet it down a bit so you don’t breath in all that dust.

A gardener whom I know got aspergillosis from compost and was treated for it and has survived. When she first took up gardening and began composting for the first time, she was so crazy about the smell of compost that she used to hold handfuls of freshly made compost close to her nose and breathe in the smell of it because it smelled so good to her. She just loved the earthy aroma of it. She told me she did this quite often and after a while she came down with a serious fungus disease of her lungs and it also affected the skin on her face, turning it red. My friend had to take a specific anti-fungal medicine for a long time to get rid of this lung disease and it was a serious disease. Even now it comes back occasionally when the weather is hot and moist and it affects her face when she gets hot working in the garden and it makes her face red. However, in her case it did not lead to a collapsed lung.

Because of this, I now warn the new gardeners, especially, in my classes not to put their noses close to compost and not to breath the fumes into their lungs. Don’t breath in the warm steam that emits from the top of a hot compost pile as you toss and turn it because this probably contains spores of fungus that can attach themselves to the inside of your lungs and grow there. On the other hand as a child I often spent time in a potting shed filled with the smell of compost and never got sick from it. So we have to have some balance and just use common sense.

The same thing goes for various garden dusts. One should not allow the dust from perlite, bone meal, blood meal, or granulated fertilizers to get into one’s lungs. This just means to use common sense in avoiding breathing in dust. On the other hand we do not need to become paranoid about it. I grew up on a farm. As a child I was always around farm animals and as a teen ager I was also around the dust made by straw, hay, chicken feed, animal bedding and manures. Photographs in an old album show me as a child close to a spreader liming a field and plenty of dust in the air and on my overalls. We often worked inside the barns and chicken houses and I’m sure I breathed in tons of bad things, but somehow I survived all this exposure to various agricultural dusts. Instead of making me sick, I got healthier which is the case for the majority of farm kids. Farm kids are known to have built in immunities to many diseases and they are not often subject to allergies having built up an immunity in childhood.

Another hazard to be wary of in a garden is getting a rose thorn in one’s hand. If one gets a rose thorn in one’s hand one should immediately go indoors, remove the thorn, clean the wound with alcohol or disinfectant, apply antibiotic ointment, and cover the wound with a bandaid. If you can’t get the thorn out soak it in hot water and apple cider vinegar to get it out. The same applies to bromeliads and also to thorns in sphagnum moss. These three garden thorns can carry a pathogen called Sporotrichosis or “rose gardener’s disease” a fungal infection that can afflict farmers and gardeners who have not taken care of a small hand wound. It can infect a wound, travel up the gardener’s arm, turn green, and even cause death if not treated with the correct antibiotics.

Related posts:

1. Aspergillosis or Fungus Diseases of the Lung Caused by Earth-born Pathogens in Soil and Compost
2. Spent Brewery Grains as Compost or Soil Amendment
3. Dealing with Clay Soil

Answer:
Humic acid is contained in the product “John and Bob’s Soil Optimizer” which is very effective but also expensive. A less expensive source of humic acid made from Leonardite is obtainable from Peaceful Valley Farm and Garden Supply. (Address and phone numbers are found on page 417 of my new book.) Peaceful Valley carries many other useful organic materials, some of which are recommended in my new book. I am hopeful that humic acid will be more widely distributed in future and that more organically-oriented nurseries will begin carrying it. If gardeners ask for it, nurseries will begin to supply it to them.

EnviroTree 5-3-3-2 + can be obtained from Sod Specialties and GrowYourLawn, 402/896-0184. It costs $39.99 for one gallon and $89.99 for two gallons but is highly effective.

Here is a web link: http://www.growyourlawn.com/Web_pages/Order%20Product.htm or contact the maker: Biotech Nutrients, 818 West Brooks Avenue, North Las Vegas, Nevada 89030. Or the Factory: Bio Tech Nutrients, 215 Industrial Park Road, Grace, Idaho 83241.

FOR A SOURCE NEAR YOU: Contact: Gary DeAmaral, Crop Booster Distributing, 450 Echo Valley Road, Prunedale, California 93907, 831-663-5640 – office.

Here is more information on EnviroTree: J&B distributors used to carry this product. (Sorry I have not yet found an address or phone for this purveyor, but I heard they may have dropped EnviroTree.) Mike Castro was the former owner of J&B, which is/was a local distributor.

Related posts:

1. Humic Acid
2. Shrimp Shell Meal
3. Asparagus

Question from Maureen:

Answer from Pat:
Humic acid seems to have a strong effect as a planting fluid. It affects the soil by unlocking nutrients already there but also it stimulates the production of roots, making plants have larger root systems with a greater proliferation of roots. It is most effective when used the way you did, prior to planting or while putting in transplants. If I were you I would apply it once again as a liquid two or three weeks after germination when plants are up and growing. I have never used it on carrots and am not quite sure what it would do to them.

You do not say what climate zone you live in or what variety of apple you have. It is possible that vagueries of the weather failed to provide the tree with the temperatures it needed in order to bloom.When apple trees that usually bloom fail to bloom or when trees that never bloom are suddenly seen to bloom it is usually a result of day and night temperatures being different from what the plant needs in order to bloom or from vagueries in the weather. For example if you have a low-chill variety, a sudden frost at the wrong time of year might kill buds instead of stimulating their growth. Or a variety that needs winter chill in order to bloom might not have had adequate chill in order to bloom. Very often when apple trees don’t bloom it’s a result of trying to grow a ‘Delicious’ apple in the wrong zone. These are still sold to the unwary and some gardeners who don’t know better sometimes buy mail-order trees that are all wrong for their climate.

The other possibility is that something else happened to damage the buds, such as a borer or other pest eating out the bud before they could open. These are other mechanical reasons, for example, flower buds might have been cut off by bad pruning. To give you an example with apple trees. Apple trees bloom on spur wood. If someone came along who was ignorant of this and cut off all the spurs in winter then you would get no bloom or so little that it would not be noticeable.

There is one final reason that is often the case when a fruit tree does not bloom and that is when the tree has been pruned so heavily or when the tree was given so much nitrogen fertilizer that all it wanted to do was to grow and it put on a whole lot of green growth at the expense of flowers. Be careful not to over-fertilize deciduous fruit trees by giving them too much nitrogen since they will sometimes grow much green growth and many leaves instead of flowering.

I have heard of trees failing to bloom when they were growing in heavy clay and rains rotted some roots. Root rot can cause a tree to drop off the flower buds.

There is not much you can do now to stimulate flowering since flower buds should have already been made but if you have a low-chill variety such as Anna it might bloom later on in the year. You could try soaking the ground under the tree with a solution of 0-10-10 but I doubt it would help.

Related posts:

1. Humic Acid
2. Apple Trees Not Flowering
3. Few Fruits On Fruit Trees