[Sca-cooks] planting fish

[Stefan li Rous]

Bear replied to me with:
 >>>
Using fish, seaweed, manure or other decaying organic matter as  
fertilizer
started sometime in the late Neolithic and is a common practice in many
agrarian societies.  The particular organic matter depends on what is  
most
available.  Even today, we use fertilizers based on fish, seaweed,  
manure
and peat.  The primary difference is we process the basic ingredients  
into
to forms that are easier to use and may produce greater benefit faster.
<<<

You mention that "even today we use fertilizers based on fish,  
seaweed...". Is this in the industrial countries like the U.S. or do  
you just mean in the third-world and developing countries? The reason  
I ask is that I've been reading "The Long Emergency - Surviving the  
Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century" by James Howard  
Kunstler. One of his points is that modern industrial farming is  
based some much on the use of petroleum, including the huge amount of  
fertilizers and insecticides used, that as the oil starts to run out,  
it will be very disruptive to agriculture in the U.S.

I started reading this book rather skeptically, but I'm getting more  
concerned the deeper I read.

 >>>
And just to assure you that fish fertilizer is not a legend, here is an
excerpt from a letter from one E.W. of Plymouth to a friend in London:

"We set the last spring some twenty acres of Indian corn, and sowed  
some six
acres of barley and peas, and according to the manner of the Indians, we
manured our ground with herrings or rather shads, which we have in great
abundance...".

"A Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceeding of the English
Plantation Settled at Plymouth", London, 1622.
<<<

Thank you! This is the kind of documentation I like to see. I have in  
fact started saving some of these comments for a p-fertilizer-msg  
file for those that might be interested in the future. I see marling  
mentioned in some books on medieval agriculture, but have never seen  
that talked about on any lists. Perhaps because most of the SCA are  
urban folk.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****