YOU certainly can tell if you or your neighbour spreads fertiliser on their lawn or plants from time to time.
The smell can be quite overpowering for a while, but it’s good stuff, and does wonders for your garden.
We probably should use it more regularly.
A recent report a few weeks a go in the weekend paper shed some more light on fertilisers that we may not know much about.
It seems that new technology, allowing the “number two’s” of more than one million Sydneysiders are to be transformed into fertiliser to help grow important crops in NSW, and have received a significant boost of money from the government.
In a recovery facility at Manly, the ability to create biodsolids will almost double.
According to the paper, when the plant is fully operational it will produce some 70 tonnes of fertiliser each day and trucked to distribution centres, where it will be on-sold to farmers.
Some 80% of this daily waste goes to farmers to enrich their soil and improve its water holding capacity.
I remember, many years ago in the late 1940’s being sent up the road by mum to purchase some fresh vegetables from a Chinese market garden.
I remember, quite clearly walking through the gate and into this large semi open shed, confronting three or four Chinese men with coolie hats and loose-fitting smock and pants.
Here they were squatting down on their haunches chatting away.
Looking out into the field, rows upon rows of vegetable plants, all different types growing in perfectly straight lines in beds of chocolate brown soil.
Now in those days we had the “dunny man” call each week to empty the pan and I don’t know what fertiliser was used in the market gardens by the Chinese, however I do know that the vegetables were the best-ever.
Interestingly, looking up Google to see what people had to say about all this, one can delve into every aspect of the subject, and I do mean every aspect.
Makes for some interesting reading if you’re not too timid about the subject.
Probably best to stick with the fertiliser we get from the shops though.
