Natives mined salt from salt deposits just as people all over the rest of the world. It was a commodity item readily traded as well.
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So stock up on Pickling Salt?
Ok i had to nerd out and read the difference between Pickling Salt and Kosher salt… they are the same except the kosher salt crystals are larger.
Both are just NaCl.
Table salt has additives…the above two do not.
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Precisely…it’s not “pure salt” if it has additives.
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Right. Shouldn’t use table salt for canning, could cause clouding in the finished product.
We actually did some canning recently, made 10 pints of salsa, and 7 quarts of diced tomatoes. Hoping for a productive canning season this year, our stock has dwindled a bit the last few years.
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Our leader said this today-
“With regard to food shortage…it’s gonna be real.”
I’ll just leave it at that…
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Some people nowadays might not realize it, but pure table salt clumps together when it’s humid, so it won’t pour out of the salt shaker.
Morton was the first to make use of an anti caking agent which kept the salt from clumping. They coined the well known phrase, “When it rains, it pours”. Meaning their salt wouldn’t cake even if it was humid enough to be raining outside.
People changed the meaning of that phrase over time to mean when bad things happen, a lot of bad things happen.
A worthless piece of trivia for ya.
Btw, another worthless piece of trivia about salt, some people may not know is that salted butter won’t go rancid on the counter nearly as fast as unsalted butter.
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Diamond Crystal Kosher doesn’t have additives, but Morton Kosher has an anti-caking agent. It’s hard to find Diamond Crystal around here, and then usually only in a bigger box than I’d like for the kitchen.
We use solar salt for our water softener brine tank. In a pinch, I’d be willing to use that for food.
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Interestingly, large consumption of salt is associated with decreased mortality (12 grams of salt, 5 grams of sodium). See the presentation below and papers referenced therein. This tallies with large consumption countries having longer life expectancy (Japan). It tallies also with the fact that there were so many salt wars. It is and was an important resource. I think salt is particularly protective for carb eaters (with shortages, we will all become carb eaters).
For me, currently still eating low carb and sometimes no carb, while I can, I measure a daily intake of 7.5 grams (it takes me 100 days to finish a 750 grams pack).
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Depending on where you live, you might want to have iodized salt on hand I think or some type of suplements. Apparently with the popularity of sea salt, etc. iodine deficiency is starting to crop up for some folks and if access to sea food and other sources of iodine drops, it could be a problem. Some areas will give you enough iodine from crops due to uptake from the soil, but other areas with low iodine in the soil will give you almost nothing.
Of course nobody wants to develop a goiter, but more importantly iodine is essential for neural development and cognitive function.
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one of the boxes of salt I bought at the grocery yesterday was iodized sea salt. First time I’d ever bought anything other than Morton’s - or a facsimile thereof.
Checked the barn this morning - I’ve got 2 50# bags of white salt, leftover from before we sold the cows. Don’t think I’ll buy more right now.
But… I probably do need to lay in a few bags of fertilizer… if I don’t need 'em for a garden, I can always feed nut trees.
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Can you capture them with a rope noose trap, then humanely harvest them with gas(CO2), lethal injection (KCl) or gently steer the neck to a deer-guilotine?
i put a little rice in all of mine because i keep the shakers on the back of the stove.
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I went to school in Syracuse. It is definitely the city that Salt built. That and sodium carbonate. The Solvay process was a pretty big deal at the time.
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I have 2 bags of 13-13-13 sitting in the carport in containers waiting to be used. They were purchased last year on speculation the price would jump. Guess what? The price jumped. Two bags is enough to get me through a year with an acre of garden plus fertilizing about 50 seedling pecan trees. I may get one more bag just to be on the safe side. Regardless of fertilizer price, I have chickens and will shovel out the building to use on trees and some in the garden.
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On the Fertilizer topic-
I have been following a fellow blackberry enthusiast for awhile. He doesnt fertilize at all only uses leaves. He stopped posting on FB because everyone wanted to use ‘real fertilizer’… but i tried his method and so far i like it. On top of the nutrients i am getting leaf mould (mold)…
Here is a statement on tree leaves-
Autumn tree leaves are one of the most efficient organic fertilizers, as they contain virtually every nutritional element your plants need.
Tree leaves are the end source of all of the elements a tree’s roots draw from the ground. Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Potassium, Calcium, Magnesium, Sulfur, Copper, Zinc, Manganese, Copper, Boron and more are found abundantly in leaves
This experiment may fail… but its free and i have plenty of leaves. I have piles of leaves, i have a leaf shredder, and my local city has a free leaf compost pile. I got 10 tons dumped last fall.
I also have access to free chicken and horse manure…which aids in breaking down the carbon.
Yes its more work…but i need the extra exercise and i like the idea of doing it natures way.
Final thought- his reasoning is that blackberries thrive on the edge of woods and forest… the only fertilizer they get is fallen leaves. and that the modern cultivars are just children of the wild ones.
This year i plan on ‘fertilizing’ everything with my leaves. May be a failure…may not.
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What your saying is consistent with my beliefs. We discussed this concept extensively here Tap roots why they are important and why they are missing . There is no question at all oak trees are loaded with calcium so if your tomatoes get blossom end rot which is caused by a lack of calcium the leaves would correct that. All that said trees are all different in nutrient content because of the type of tree they are. Every weed pulls different nutrients to the surface.
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I save all of my eggshells… and put them in a small compost bed that i have…the worms eat all of them or they disappear during fall/ winter… i then top dress my tomatoes with that mix. I screwed up with my tomatoes last year by adding grass clippings. Some of my plants were over 10 feet tall. Too much N i guess.
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You made me go there with weeds but I been avoiding it Reading your trees , bushes, weeds to determine soil needs and type
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If you have any doubt about how the weeds etc are working to ‘fix’ the soil try using a scuffle hoe. I bought one recently and i love it. However i do feel bad about using it. It shaves the weed root layer off like a surgeon… but in that root layer the worms are using the weeds/grasses root system to build soil. I take the shaved weeds/root sytem and put it in a wheelbarrow and haul it to my worm bin… where they finish off the organic matter.
I wanted to do no-till on a row that i am going to grow black rasps…but i do know its full of rocks… so i had to get those out with shovels and mattocks and sledge hammers before i gave the black rasps a forever home.
Since i destroyed the weeds roots and the work they were doing i will add leaves and wood mulch and compost… i cant do the job that the weeds were doing but i am going to do my best.
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A long time ago we used to get leaves hauled in by the truckloads to our peach orchard, from a lawn service company in the city. Plants and trees loved them. Lots of good healthy biolife in their compost. I never burned anything by putting leaves around it.
I quit getting the leaves from the lawn service because there was too much trash in the leaves (cups, plastic, you name it). It was too much of a hassle to pick up all the trash. There was a lot of trash.
I still get leaves at the house from a neighbor who vacuums their one acre yard and dumps them around the fruit trees in my back yard. The only problem I’ve had is that once the neighbor piled finely shredded leaves about 2’ high on a youngish peach tree, and that rotted the trunk and killed it. That’ was because the shredded leaves packed down really dense and rotted the trunk.
When I just had my backyard orchard, and I had to go to the city, I would stop on my way back, in neighborhoods who had finely manicured lawns, and load up their leaves or grass clippings they had set at the curb. I’d completely fill up my pickup. Trees and bushes thrived using that stuff.
Once, a long time ago, I kept putting loads of fresh grass clippings and leaves on some first season peach trees. They grew so much that summer, that the trunks were about 3" in diameter by the end of the season (no exaggeration). The next season (second year) I got something like 75 peaches off those trees. The trees were in freshly built mounds, so the dirt was loose. I’m sure that helped. I’ve never been able to duplicate those results. Fresh grass clippings can burn the trunk of a tree, so one has to be careful of that.
Even with about 700 trees now, when I drive out to the orchard, I still stop in the neighborhood along the way, and pick up bags of leaves and grass that people set at the curb. It’s sort of ridiculous for me to do so and a waste of time, since it really doesn’t make a drop in the bucket for 700 trees, blackberries, tomatoes, etc, but I so much like the effect they have on the soil and plants, that I can’t help myself. If I’m honest, I’m doing it because it makes me feel good.
We do still get loads of wood chips from tree services at the orchard. It’s actually enough material to make a difference.
I buy large round bales to mulch tomatoes. It’s expensive, but I like the water conserving effect it has on the tomato plants (since we don’t irrigate). It also substantially cuts down on the weed pressure around the tomato plants. Lastly it’s also healthy for the soil, adding tilth, carbon, and healthy biolife to the soil. It also prevents erosion, compared to bare soil, and keeps soil from splashing on the tomato plants. Good stuff.
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