[Sca-cooks] planting fish

[Mark Hendershott]

At 10:16 PM 12/15/2005, Stefan wrote:
>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.

Organic gardeners use fishoil and seaweed based fertilizers.  Here in the 
Pacific Northwest I buy a brand called "Alaska Fish Fertilizer"  Smell bad 
and attract the cats something awful but seems to work.  It is weaker than 
chemical brews and requires a regular schedule of application for good results.

>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 ****
>
>
>_

Simon Sinneghe
Briaroak, Summits, An Tir