RE: smelly soil substrates

[Neil Schneider <PacNeil at worldnet_att.net>]

Steve <spushak at CCGATE_HAC.COM> wrote:

<Moral: use your nose when getting soil. Avoid a sour smelling soil. It 
<     already has high H2S content and that's definitely going to
inhibit 
<     the growth of your aquatic plants.
<     
<     A strong smell could also be ammonia and this is not really a
problem 
<     (although any soil with enough manure to smell of ammonia is
probably 
<     too rich to be used without mixing with sand, gravel or
vermiculite)
<     The ammonia smell is easy to learn; it's the smell of manure or
just 
<     take a whiff from the ammonia cleaner bottle.

Although I agree with most of what Steve said, one small observation. In
a 
"hot" mulch pile the odor of ammonia will always be present, from my
experience.
This doesn't always indicate a high level of manure. In my experience,
aerobic
bacteria, present in the mulch, produce large amounts of ammonia. When
aerobic
"digestion" is complete the ammonia production drops off. Maybe my only 
disagreement is in what I think of as manure. Maybe the ammonia is just
bacterial
"manure". :-)

-- 
PacNeil at worldnet_att.net *   Life is what happens to you 
Neil Schneider		 *   while you're busy making other plans
Poway, CA USA		 *  The Feynman problem solving Algorithm
        		 *	1) Write down the problem
        		 *	2) Think real hard
        		 *	3) Write down the answer
                	 *		Murray Gel-mann in the NY Times

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