Matt’s Adventures in Northwest Gardening

Here is a neat bit of American history most of us didn’t learn in 10th grade US History.

Back in the mid 19th Century, Europeans began to get all excited over what was literally Bat Sh*t. Apparently, they realized how potent this substance was for fertilizing crops. Immediately, the Big Players of the time went in search the valuable and rich deposits of this guano and attempted to acquire as many little islands full of this stuff as they could find. In strictly strategic terms, it would not be prudent to yield this resource (not to mention the land being acquired) to other nations of the world, when the USA itself could play in that same game!

So, in response to this came the Guano Island Act of 1856. The first bit of it says:

Whenever any citizen of the United States discovers a deposit of guano on any island, rock, or key, not within the lawful jurisdiction of any other government, and not occupied by the citizens of any other government, and takes peaceable possession thereof, and occupies the same, such island, rock, or key may, at the discretion of the President, be considered as appertaining to the United States.

In the end, we got something close to 100 islands all over the world, many of which we still claim today. It began, in reality, as the United States’ first dramatic motions toward non-continental American expansionism.

This is still an active law on the books, U.S. Code, Title 48, Chapter 8, Sections 1411–1419. So, If you were just moseying along in a boat somewhere in international free waters, and notice the there is a preponderance of bats, and a cave for them to poop in, do your civic duty and claim that sucker for Uncle Sam. K? Cool.

This site has a pretty decent run down on the basic history of this act and how it came about. I also posted here about Guano and its high nitrogen as a fertilizer. The only other thing I remember about Bat Guano was Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. Yep, high comedy that goes for the bat-toilet-humor crowd.

(for part I, click here; for part II, click here)

The last part of the NPK ratio is Potassium, logically represented on the periodic table by the letter k. Potassium is an alkali metal commonly found in Potash.

What is the purpose of Potassium in the soil? It helps build strengthen the plant structure and helps protect against disease. Here in the Northwest, we have a tremendous amount of Potassium naturally existing in the soil. To illustrate, think about the most common plants: strong and tall trees.

Potassium (in the form of Potash) is often applied to cereal crops - when you are paid proportionally for the mass of what you sell, you would want to grow a bulkier and heavier plant. But when we are dealing with growing vegetables, we want the plant to focus on producing fruit at the expense of the structure. We can make a tomato cage to support the plant in exchange for it producing more and better fruit

Fast Facts about Potassium:

-The letter K is from the Latin word kalium.
-It is the seventh most abundant element on Earth.
-Its atomic weight is: 39.0983
-It is atomic number 19

(for part I, click here)

The second of our elements in the NPK Ratio is Phosphorus. This is the glowing element that is represented by the letter P on the periodic table. It is an inorganic element commonly found concentrated in nature in the form of rock phosphate.

What is the purpose of Phosphorus in gardening? It helps promote vigorous and healthy root growth of the plant. It also helps on the cellular level, encouraging rapid growth, which is especially important when the plant is a seedling.

In the Northwest, a good deal of this natural phosphate has been leached out from the rain. As I noted before, we are looking for a 5-5-1 NPK ratio in our garden soil. We can reintroduce this back into our soil by using a natural fertilizer made of ground phosphate rock or through bone meal fertilizers.

Fast Facts about Phosphorus:

-The word Phosphorus is derived from Greek - phôs meaning “light”, and phoros meaning “bearer.”
-It is never found as a free element in nature.
-Its atomic weight is: 30.97376
-It is atomic number 15

Nitrogen, as I was taught in high school chemistry, is one of the easy elements to remember, as it is represented on the periodic table as the letter N.

As I previously posted, Nitrogen is one of the three basic nutrients in gardening, part of the NPK ratio (Nitrogen:Phosphorus:Potassium). When you buy a bag of fertilizer, with this ratio on the front of package, Nitrogen is always listed first - for instance this box of Bat Guano fertilizer has a ratio of 10-3-1, which means that it has a much higher proportion of Nitrogen than it does Phosphorus or Potassium.

Now that is all well and good, but what is the purpose of Nitrogen in the soil? Well, dear readers, Nitrogen promotes the growth of leaves and foliage as well as the fruit of the plant. The goal of growing a tomato plant from seed is to, in the end, have a large and healthy fruit.

Simplified a great deal, Nitrogen is introduced into the soil by the slow decomposition of organic materials. Think about the story of Thanksgiving, and how the Indians showed the Pilgrims how to use a dead fish to more effectively grow corn. Thus, we use fertilizers made from organic material, such as the above mentioned guano, other animal manure, as well as seed meals. Ideally, we will use something that will release add nitrogen slowly over the course of an entire growing season. In my case, I will probably use something like cottonseed meal, which will break down much slower than manure.

The combination of the plants use of Nitrogen mixed with the constant Northwest Rain, it is important to supplement this element back into the soil. The ratio that we are shooting for is 5-5-1.

Fast Facts about Nitrogen:
-It was discovered by a Scottish scientist named Daniel Rutherford back in 1772.
-Nitrogen makes up 78.1% of the Earth’s atmosphere.
-Its atomic weight is: 14.00674
-It is atomic number 7 (which is coincidentally a pretty cool name for a band).

Last Saturday, I purchased a soil testing kit for my garden and completed my very first trial. I plan on checking it at least once a month, to check the levels of the four most common variables we deal with when trying to get the best quality soil for growing vegetables. The first three are plant nutrients: Phosphorus, Potassium, and Nitrogen. The fourth test is the pH level (acidity) of the soil.

The results were:Nitrogen: Deficient
Phosphorus: Rich.
Potassium: Tons - like eating a banana
pH: 8 – Alkaline

Now, I was expecting the high Potassium and low Nitrogen. I anticipated Phosphorus level to be lower, but still, that one was a real wild card in my head.

The real shock was that the soil was still alkaline from the lime that I put in there last year. Since it rains so much here, our Northwest soil is usually very acidic. And since it was a pretty wet winter, I expected it, much like the nitrogen I added last year, would be depleted. I spose this is something in nature’s chemistry I don’t really understand. So I will have to track my results to see how and when the soils in my garden will change so much.

In the next few posts, I will go further into the basic soil nutrients and there balance, the so-called NPK ratio.