h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was just looking at your article and must agree on both points.

A popular charcoal sold in southern California I won't touch is mesquite charcoal, the manufacture of which is contributing to the decline of numbers of the desert Big Horn sheep, since the ewes depend on mesquite groves to provides shelter and fodder for lambing and the high protein, vitamin and moisture content of the mesquite beans to maintain milk flow.

I've had ghastly bad experiences of an imported and unsterilized Canadian peat with carries a water mold deadly to most exotic plants. Its a worse problem since the stuff is frequently used as a cheap filler for commercial potting soil and topper mixes. I'm frankly running scared on almost all commercial "organic" mixes at present.

Coconut fiber is drastically superior to peat as a potting soil mixer in any event.

I want to say thank you for the good wishes!

You are welcome. I hope the next lot of results are good. Hope they got the lot

Your post was very interesting, it is always useful to hear people's experiences. I didn't know about the mesquite charcoal. It is dreadful when human activity (especially for a leisure product) has such an impact on the environment and animals etc. It is never just the obvious animals that suffer either, but smaller animals, birds and insects too which no-one notices.

I hall keep note of your comments.



Websailor

Another good alternative to peat, something I discovered serendipitously.

One of my part time jobs is at a private camp ground and fair ground, which also hosts a firewood operation operated on a by-products basis by a tree pruning and cutting concern. One of their jobs required removal of landscaping palm trees, and though the stuff is useless for firewood, as saw dust or chipper-shredder mulch it makes an excellent moisture conserving soil amendment or potting soil mixer, decomposing into leaf mold in about the same time as an autumnal leaf fall.

I wonder if that will be a by-product of the palm oil plantations that are destroying the Orang Utan habitat in Indonesia and Borneo?

Websailor

Eventually, I suppose. Not all of those plantations are going to succeed. I'll admit I've always been rather sceptical about the impact this is going to have on small growers, land owners and investors besides the environment, remembering the human disasters that developed over pyrethrum in Rwanda and wild yam in Central America.

I'm sure they won't succeed, at least not for long. Removal of the forest removes the nutrients that make the soil viable, but they don't seem to think of that. Unfortunately if allowed to go back to its' natural state it would take years to regenerate the forest, if ever.

I wonder when humans wake up to the fact that meddling with the natural order of things usually ends in disaster?

Websailor

An opposite profound truth: Letting nature take its course is your single most sure fire prescription for disaster. Important to remember that unthinking humanity is a part of nature.