Sun Dried Tomatoes

Have to many tomatoes? Don't know what to do with them? In my opinion, you never can have too many home grown tomatoes. I dry my excess tomatoes in the late summer sun and store them in plastic containers for use during the winter months. Here's how to do it. Purchase some 1 X 4 lumber and a role of 3 foot wide plastic window screen. Fashion two identical trays (size is optional) that will be stacked one over the other. I staple the window screen to the 1 X 4s. The lower tray will hold the tomatoes and the screen overlying the top tray will keep the fly's off the tomatoes while they are drying. I place my sun drying trays on saw-horses over a cemented area in the back yard that gets particularly hot during the day. Select large ripe tomatoes and slice them in half. Cross hatch them with a sharp knife so that they will flatten out. Salt and pepper generously and transfer the tomato halves to the drying screen. If the weather is hot they will take only 4 to 5 days to dry. They will last forever and there is a zillion ways to use them in the food you cook. Look for sun dried tomatoes the next time you go shopping. You will be amazed at the prices they charge for something you can make so easily at home.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Chemical Based Fertilizers.

Although the day may come when we run out of natural gas, the primary ingredient of ammonia based chemical fertilizers, it will remain abundant and relatively cheap for the foreseeable future; thus, chemical based fertilizers are, and will continue to be, a relatively inexpensive way for the gardeners to fertilize their plants for many years to come. The primary ingredients of chemical based fertilizers (nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium) also are produced in a form that is readily available to the plant and thus provide a quick fix for a gardener, or farmer, whose plants are suffering from a deficiency of one of the three major plant nutrients. Note, however, that chemical fertilizers do nothing to replace the deficiencies of trace elements which may hamper plant growth because the vast majority of these chemical compounds are devoid of these important nutritional factors. Like it or not, however, large agricultural operations which produce crops like corn and wheat, are now, and will continue to be, dependent on the mass production of chemical fertilizers for the foreseeable future because there simply is not enough environmentally safe organic fertilizer to meet their needs. Home gardeners, on the other hand, are not laboring under constraints of size and can easily produce enough cheap and safe organic fertilizer for their own gardens by following the relatively simple organic gardening techniques championed below. (This is an excerpt from a book I am writing on organic gardening) The disadvantages of chemical based fertilizers. Most chemical based fertilizers are produced either by the Haber- Bosch process, which combines natural gas and atmospheric nitrogen to form ammonium, or the Odda process which combines phosphate rock with nitric acid to produce a mixture of phosphoric acid and calcium nitrate. Controlled-release chemical fertilizers are most often produced from urea and formaldehyde- yuk! There are several significant disadvantages to the production and use of these potentially toxic products. With respect to the production of energy, in 2004, 317 billion cubic feet of natural gas was consumed in the industrial production of ammonia for the fertilizer industry. To put this in perspective, about 25.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is consumed in the United States each year for other purposes. However, as suggested above, it is not the depletion of our natural gas resources that is the primary disadvantage to the use of chemical based fertilizers; rather, it is the damage to the environment (primarily the soil and atmosphere) that speaks in deafening tones to the disadvantages of using these toxic products to fertilize the plants we grow and eat. Water pollution is inevitable in large agriculture operations when nutrients, especially nitrates, are washed into the watercourses. High intake of nitrates from contaminated ground water has been linked to thyroid cancer, skin rashes, hair loss, birth defects and the blue baby syndrome, a potentially fatal blood disorder in infants. Indications of nitrate poisoning in animals include discoloration of the mucous membranes, a sluggish staggering gate, labored breathing, rapid heart rate followed by collapse, coma and, in severe cases, death. Excess nitrates in the waters of our lakes and streams induce the growth of algae. When the algae die the microorganisms that consume them strip oxygen from the water causing the death of invertebrates, fish and shellfish. Anyone who has observed a stagnate pond has experienced this process first hand. For sure, it is not a pretty sight! Contamination from impurities is an inevitable result of the fertilization of plants with chemical based fertilizers. The type and concentration of these impurities, which may include fluorides, cadmium and uranium, will vary depending on the material used to manufacture the fertilizer, but you can rest assured that the inorganic fertilizer you purchase at your local nursery is never completely free of potentially toxic impurities that will end up in the food you eat, if you use these chemicals to fertilize your vegetable garden. By the way, the abomination called hydroponics is the ultimate chemical garden because plants are grown exclusively in a nutrient bath composed of man-made chemicals. Another significant disadvantage of chemical based fertilizers, of special concern to climate change enthusiasts, results from the fact that nitrogen based fertilizers are converted by soil bacteria to nitrous oxide the green house gas responsible for acid rain. Some environmentalists also believe that nitrous oxide is a significant contributor to global warming. Finally, and possibly most importantly, the prolonged application of chemical based fertilizers to the soil invariably results in a condition called fertilizer dependency. This is so, because the continuous application of fertilizers derived from chemicals eventually kills the organisms responsible for the soil ecosystems that produce natural organic fertilizers, like earthworm castings, to the soil. I will have a great deal more to say about this important subject below; however, for now, realize that the dearth of beneficial microorganisms and larger invertebrates in the soil renders the cultivation of plants totally dependent on the continuous use of the toxic chemical based fertilizers that caused the demise of the fragile soil ecosystem in the first place. If you have any questions Email them to me at docmerrill@aol.com.