Delivered-To: lakinroe@silcom.com
From: "C R Vadala"
To: "Michaela farm" ,
Subject: soil book and corn question
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2000 19:14:00 -0400
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3110.1

Dearest AG friends, charles, wes, mike....:

Resurrection greetings for a marvelous spring and happy 1st of MAY!

I am in Mexico and entranced by the flowers and trees etc., and the BLACK soil. What an exciting place.

I have a question and then some info to give you on soil.

Do you know what the organic solution is to pests that eat corn roots?

I apologize for my lack of specifics, but i could not communicate in spanish. yet!  These are the details i know:
His valley soil is the blackest, and now the dryest, i have ever seen.  10 years ago it was under a lake (the dam broke).  He uses manure for fertilizer (horse/sheep/maybe goats - says 1 application lasts 5 years)

I asked if it was the corn borer and he said no - that the plague was eating the roots.  and that the use of the ddt produces many small roots instead of the few thick roots that corn usually has.  he said he only applies the chemical as needed where the plague shows up.

He is a mexican sustainable / sustanence farmer in a guanajuato valley - He told me he asks at conferences, but no one can give him a 'non-chemical (ddt) answer to his corn root problem.    I thought id tap into those who may know.

If you have any ideas i could pass on:   thanks for the brain trust.

regards and much love to all,
xoxoxox
carolyn v
---------------------------------
ALSO -  INFO about soil - fyi

<< Highly recommended!

Keith Addison wrote:

> FYI, Steve Solomon has just uploaded this great book to the Soil and
> Health Library. It's public domain, so you can download it.
>
> Krasil'nikov, N.A. "Soil Microorganisms and Higher Plants". Academy
> of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow 1958. Translated in Israel by Dr. Y.
> Halperin.
>
> This, the ultimate study of the microbial process in soil, is one of
> the most important books in the library. It has been little known
> since its publication. Rendering it into html took hundreds of
> tedious and rewarding hours. The book contains 100 photographic
> illustrations and heaps of tables, so downloading the chapters can be
> a bit time consuming. Here's my "take" on this book. In the Soviet
> Union of the 30s, 40s and 50s, industrial production was scanty. Had
> Soviet agronomic research focused on chemicals spread voluminously,
> the remedies could not have been implemented. So Krasil'nikov focused
> on the biological process, and he found ways to improve plant growth
> by crop rotation and the production of special composts and microbial
> ferments of the sort that could be produced by the farmer in an old
> barrel. All these solutions are based on a very high-level
> understanding of the microbial process in soil and the interactions
> between soil microbes with each other, of how crop species interact
> with each other via long-lasting soil residues (root exudates), and
> how plants and microbes interact with each other. Soil Microorganisms
> and Higher Plants is public domain material. Anyone wishing to
> publish the book in print on paper is invited to contact this
> library. They will receive all possible assistance. Apologies in
> advance for the many errors that must be in the html text.
>
> http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010112Krasil/010112krasil.toc.html
>
>