Using Scale in the Garden

[Bantou]

That just means their tartans are set at a “kilt”. Sorry, I know is horrible but it’s the best I could come up with 

[JHCC]

Only when pleated to the sett.

[ThomasPowers]

We're going to Sett the Badgers on you!

[JHCC]

I used to have a badger-skin sporran, but Lisa made me get rid of it. To be fair, it did look like rather like the chestburster scene from "Alien", if rather hairier and somewhat lower down.

[Scott NC]

  I'd like to see a photo of that just to satisfy my curiosity...  

[JHCC]

I don’t think I have one; that was a good long time ago. Sorry.

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

From scale in the garden to crop circles to kilts this is definitely getting to be very interesting. 

 Curious what would be a good use for scale other than putting it In the garden? If you hauled a five gallon bucket full of it down to the scrap yard would they buy it? Or maybe use it to fill in pot holes in the yard that the dog dug up? What do y’all do with your scale? 

[JHCC]

Mine just gets swept up when I sweep the floor. I’ve heard tell of people saving it to use as ore in a bloomery furnace. 

[Scott NC]

  No need to be sorry.  I guess I left out the  ly face.

[Daswulf]

Scale and clinker get scooped up and laid on pathways or driveways and such. Funny how the grass has no problem growing fully in those spots.  

I don't think it could hurt to be honest.

[Scott NC]

  I was joking about the photo.... There is no better soil amendment than home made compost.  I never had enough clinker or scale to to fool around with or I probably would have tried it.  Just piles of cutting torch slag and grinding dust.  Or does that qualify?  Never tried it...  

[JHCC]

Although one should absolutely not put clinker in any garden that will be used to grow vegetables, because of the risk of heavy metal contamination.

[Frosty]

Scale and cutting torch slag shouldn't be a problem in the garden. Floor sweepings would depend on what else was on the floor though. 

Slag in the compost should be fine provided you aren't forging high alloys.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Scott NC]

  Thank heavens I didn't experiment around with it.  A lot of people ate our tomatos when we were active in the local farmers market.  It was quite a big growing area, even so.  I used to worry about spraying an organic fungicide, insects don't tolerate it well.  

[Daswulf]

I was mainly referring to forge scale in the garden as to go for it. I only mentioned clinker on pathways as it does act as traction.  I'm thinking heavy metals would be picked up by plants that do that sort of thing. Maybe root vegetables? Typically plants pick up what they need or can use. Aside from herbicide used areas. I wouldnt want those chemicals around my food plants.

[JHCC]

Heavy metals generally accumulate in roots, stems, fruits, and leaves in that order, although some species may vary.  

Sometimes the soil beside roadways can be contaminated with lead left over from before the switch to unleaded gas. Definitely not a good place to grow carrots. 

[Scott NC]

  Everybody should be blessed with a large garden.  I wonder how low the standards for bologna production have gone.  It does taste good fried though.  I think hogs eat soybean meal.  I bet theres no heavey metals in there...

[Daswulf]

John, besides any of that, roadways often get chemical pesticide sprays or are just plain dusted with debris like tire dust, brake dust, other filth from cars and many other pollutants dropped on or around them. More on them but still possibly In them. 

Almost All wild edible videos I watch warn not to forage from roadsides. I truely think it is more the risk of the dusting of filth and the possibility of herbicides but may be part of in ground contaminants. Just like I'd prefer fish from a cleaner stream than the river.., animals and fish deffinately pick up the chemicals they are surrounded in.

[ThomasPowers]

Note that coal is full of nasty stuff besides sulfur: mercury, radionuclides, heavy metals.  Do not put fly ash, cinders or clinkers in food gardens!   Scale is safe though I prefer to use it as ore. 

[SLAG]

Mr. T.P.,

Scale makes great material to cover and  melt ice,  too.

SLAG.

[Ted Ewert]

On 6/28/2021 at 12:09 PM, JHCC said:

Linda has responded; I'll compile her comments here, as we had a bit of back-and-forth Q&A.

I read a variety of literature by people telling of their experiences. Callahan was one of those people. I don't need 17 peer reviewed articles to give something a try and see if it works. I read his book, among many others, while I was experimenting with induction. I did this because "science" is very limited in their scope of the natural world. It's partly due to the "17 peer reviewed studies" mentality.

For example, I read quite a few books on magnetism, by experts in the field, but not one of them could give me an answer to the most fundamental question: What exactly is a magnetic field? They know it's a force, and how it behaves, but not what it is. Same thing with gravity.

That indicates to me that their concept of matter is flawed somewhere along the way.

Don't get me wrong, science is great at most things. However, if it doesn't fit into their common orthodoxy they tend to ignore or belittle it. To me that is very unscientific. 

[JHCC]

The problem is that if someone wants to make a scientifically testable claim, then they have to follow scientific rules, and that means repeatable experiments that accurately test the effects of specific causes and eliminate the effects of other causes that might give confusing or false results. The whole point of peer review is not to determine whether or not a claim conforms to scientific orthodoxy, but to see whether or not experiments have been conducted properly and whether or not the results can be repeated by other independent researchers. I'm not saying that science is free from politics and personalities, but the whole point of peer review and scientific orthodoxy is that any claim that goes against a received understanding MUST meet a very high standard in order to be accepted as true, especially since the received understanding itself has already met such a high standard in order to become the received understanding. Scientific orthodoxy is challenged all the time, and the degree to which it has evolved and adapted in the face of new evidence is a pretty strong demonstration of how open-minded the scientific community actually is -- so long as those making extraordinary claims can back it up with genuine experimentation.

A big part of this process is determining specifically what question you're asking and how you go about finding the answer. There's a big difference between asking "What exactly is a magnetic field?" and asking "Does paramagnetic soil have an effect on the growth of plants?" The first is a question for a physicist; the second, for a horticulturist, especially one with experience in soil science. It's an entirely legitimate question (especially considering that nutrient uptake in plants is significantly affected by what happens at an atomic level with cationic exchange), but even if the answer appears to be Yes, one must further ask whether that effect is caused by paramagnetism itself, by whatever it is that caused the soil to become paramagnetic, or by something that commonly happens together with paramagnetism but is otherwise unrelated to it. All of these practical questions are things that can be observed and measured, by testing the paramagnetism of the soil itself, by monitoring moisture and nutrient levels, by analyzing the mineral content of the soil, by comparing the total mass of plants grown in paramagnetic soils with that of plants grown in non-paramagnetic soils, and so on.

One also has to be very careful about determining how one judges something to "work" or not. For example, a lot of people recommend using newspaper or corrugated cardboard as a mulch in vegetable gardens and cite the larger number of earthworms visible when such "sheet mulch" is lifted as evidence that this method "works". However, actual analysis of the effects of such mulch shows that it inhibits the movement of moisture and air into the soil, so the earthworms come up to the surface to keep from suffocating. Thus, the larger number of visible earthworms is actually evidence of sheet mulch's negative consequences.

As for the question of "What exactly is a magnetic field?", I'll leave that one to Richard Feynman:

 

[Frosty]

Doesn't the author of the article regarding paramagnetiism and plant growth say in the first couple paragraphs of the article that the established scientific method should be ignored for a sort of "holistic" approach? He faults specifically breaking things down into their component parts to describe how they work and what they are. However as Dr. Feynman says in this video, the deeper you look the more things there are to ask about. 

Richard Feynman is my favorite physicist in large part because he was so intentionally out of the box. A LOT of his contemporaries didn't like him in the extreme largely because he didn't follow common method too often for their comfort. In his opinion the main goal of peer review was to do it's best to disprove new ideas. But honestly. 

You aren't wrong John on any level, not really but there are a couple very human traps folks can fall for. Especially if they believe peer review is to prove and approve. The biggest trap is, "Confirmation Bias." It's too easy to only see what proves your opinion. 

Thanks for that video John, I think I'll listen to some more of his lectures.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[ThomasPowers]

Anyone who played the bongos during the Trinity test can't be too far out there!  His autobiographies are pretty good too.

[JHCC]

I know he played the bongos a lot on his down time during the Manhattan Project, but I don’t think he played them during the Trinity test itself.