SPRING SNOW: A POOR MAN'S FERTILIZER
Written by: Brian Neudorff
From yesterday's post from Bob Metcalfe "Is Winter Over With" someone left this comment: "I heard that springtime snow is good for farmer's fields, as the meltwater holds more nutrients than it would if it fell as rain. Is that true?"
I love these types of questions cause in a lot of ways this can impact all of us. Growing up in the Midwest a lot of the weather segments especially in the morning and midday contained agricultural weather news and forecasts.
I did some research, called our News 8 at Sunrise Garden expert Nellie Gardner and did a google search and a snow during spring does provide nutrients that help the plants and soil.
Obviously snow helps to provide water and moisture to the soil but it also contains nitrogen, and a spring snow typically will fall after the soil has thawed out allowing for more of those nutrients and moisture to be absorbed by the soil.
I also learned that snow today contains a lot more nitrogen than it used to thanks to industrialization or simply put by our emissions from factories and vehicles. - (I know all of you are dying to insert a climate change comment here) The rest of the nitrogen comes from lightning fixing atmospheric nitrogen, which makes up roughly 70-78% percent of air.
This nitrogen enriched snow is especially important in our own gardens where use of fertilizer may have stripped our soils of nitrogen. This is also why many gardeners recommend piling more snow around trees, in garden beds and under overlays that may not get as much snow or rain during the season.
No doubt there are more properties in the air from man today, compared to centuries ago. I guess the question is, is it significant enough to spiral the earth into a super heated ball of self destruction. Doubt it.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of studies that suggest global warming could actually benefit us, as it would open up enormous areas of the earth to food production - such as Canada and Russia, for example. Besides, whose to say that the temperature we had prior to global warming was the ideal or correct one? Afterall, the only reason humanity has advanced and civilized to such great lengths is because of this short and fleeting interglacial period that we are lucky enough to live in. With the warmer temps globally, we can grow enormous amounts of food that wasn't possible a long time ago.
But enjoy it while it lasts, because did you know that this current state of Earth isn't the norm? Earth is a big snowball the vast majority of the time, with only very brief interglacial periods. These are cycles that go in fairly precice incriments. We're at the very tail end of the normal length of an interglacial period before the normal and cyclical shift to an ice age. In fact, we're already seeing the beginning signs of the eventual shift: Weakening magnetic field, changing solar activity, and the ground being set for a geomagnetic reversal. Might not happen in our immediate lifetime, but some experts believe that it's very imminent, and when the shift happens, it will be abrupt and dramatic. Remember the documents of the wooly mammouths found literally frozen in place with food in their mouth? Geomagnetic reversal into an immediate ice age, my friend.
I don't have too much to add to Brian's and the previous poster's statments, but I will say that there is evidence that temperatures warm and cool PRIOR to the fluctuations in CO2. Not the other way around. So basically the whole cause and effect thing as preached by the global warming crowd is backwards. Mr. Gore "conveniently" failed to show that in his fancy little graphs in his movie. He was probably too busy going up and down on his little hydraulic lift for dramatic effect.
ReplyDeleteHere is a great article about the predictable and cyclical nature of ice ages / interglacial periods. Notice that we're on the down swing of the cycle and about to head toward an ice age.
ReplyDeleteHow we can know what we know about the cyclical nature of the earth's climate over thousands of years, and yet maintain that this time around it's all due to man, is beyond me...
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
So how is next week looking for us?..Anything of interest?
ReplyDeletenope snow no good man. Listen,there is a reason why modern fertilizers contain potassium.It protects plans from cold weather.Snow is a no no for the use of fertilizer.Just use water.
ReplyDelete