The link worked, and so did Google Translate! It amazes me how good that has gotten over time. I found the little translate thingy in the upper right hand corner, and with one click the entire thing was in good English. Very interesting, and very sad & scary.

The "loss of stables", and chemical fertilizers being used instead of manure being called out as a major cause was striking. Gave me a kick to continue putting a layer of home made compost all over all of the beds. I think gardeners here were trying to add back organic matter back into the soil in the past decades, but the advice to dig it in deeply, and keep tilling & turning over the soil turned out to be wrong, as it destroys the soil organisms. Turns out from what I have read that just putting compost or manure or other organic stuff on the top of the soil is what works - I am always amazed at how fast it disappears, not from running off with rain, but from becoming a part of the soil. Also it is so much easier!

Jackie

Jackie, glad it worked for you. DD employed an automatic translation service the other day to translate a German document that she needed to understand when putting in an application to a company, and the results looked reasonable. I've been adding organic matter since I began gardening here two decades ago: the soil is still terrible, but less terrible than before, and now things are growing in it. One grain of sand of the beach of the world.

Thanks, Melissa!