Fertilization
DaveKarn@aol.com (Tue, 12 Apr 2005 08:39:49 PDT)

All ~

With all this discussion of fertilizing the Dutch bulb fields, I've seen no
mention of climate.

The climate is cool year round and downright cold in Winter (Hans Brinker, et
al!) and often quite wet and greatly affected by storms off the North Sea.
Spring-flowering bulbs grow well in cool, wet climates that do dry out some in
the summer. I can yet vividly recall my last trip to Holland when going
around to the various growers to look at their fields. I was wearing virtually
every stitch of clothing I had packed in a vain attempt to ward off the
bone-chilling cold that was being driven through the layers and into the 'ol bod by
winds so strong they were blowing the rain and sleet horizontally across the
landscape! If it hadn't been for the steaming mugs of coffee and energy-restoring
goodies in the warm kitchens of the growers, I really think that I would have
stopped functioning somewhere in the middle of one of those fields until
thawing out on one of the rare, warm Spring days . . .

Too, the soil in the North polders is pure sand with the addition of some
humus in the form of old manure and the covering straw of Winter. Any nutrients
applied to the soil (in whatever form) are soon leached by the rains. And, it
should be pointed out, that any organic fertilizer applied to the soil can
only be absorbed by the plant in inorganic form. That is not to say a healthy
soil, filled with an abundance of humus and associated organisms, is not
something to be striven for; it is. Many experiments have been done with soils of
this nature and, of course, have found that plants are far more robust and
growing without many of the common ailments they seem to have in less healthy
soil.

Best,
Dave Karnstedt
Cascade Daffodils
P. O. Box 237
Silverton, OR 97381-0237
email: davekarn@AOL.com