Ron & others

First, I assume Ron doesn't eat any 'organically' grown produce, as a lot
of that uses milorganite, or other brand names, of the sludge from sewage
plants, that has been treated and sold commercially as fertilizer.  That
stuff is widely used by organic gardeners in this area.  So if he has an
aversion to human manure, then perhaps he should eat only chemically
fertilized produce?

Second, the use of midden in the broadest sense as a fertilizer is well
known around the world.  It can of course include the very rich materials
from human waste pits and structures, but often it includes other
middenish soils.  The Egyptian have a name, something to the effect of
sebakim if I remember correctly, for this usage.  Sites are mined in China
for the richer organic soils to use as fertilizer; they are mined in the
Andes; I've seen it in this country as well. For example, the famers south
of St. Louis purchased the wet trash from the city of St. Louis in the
1880s through 1920s or so, so that if one goes thru their fields, there
is a wide scatter of coffee cup rims, saucers, small ceramic and metal
objects that inadvertently were included in such wet garbage.   Thus one
always has to be quite careful when you see a thin scatter of historic
materials in an agricultural setting to ascertain whether the  artifacts
derive from such practices.

dave browman







On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Ron May wrote:

> Heck, I always add horse poop to my vegetable garden. It adds nitrogen and
> compost, but I would never eat food poisoned by my family poop. But, Asian
> gardeners do not have this aversion and photographs of their produce show
> bountiful produce.
>
> Ron May
> Legacy 106, Inc.
>