Green Harmony Living

Hi Roswitha

Thanks for your fertilizer question. Your question and my answer follow.

Question: Would you consider selling Market America’s Lawn Power or Plant Power products on your Green Harmony Living’s website?

Answer: I looked at the Lawn Power product. I think its premise is sound: adding enzymes, nitrogen, and minerals to plants and the soil are good. However, what I don’t like is that the ingredients list is vague; it doesn’t state exactly what the ingredients are; which enzymes, what form of nitrogen, and what form of minerals. There are natural forms and synthetic forms of each. I prefer to use only natural, organic, and animal free forms. I did read that this product uses urea nitrogen which is a red flag for me since I am morally and health consciously opposed to using slaughterhouse products. Urea is made from the urine from slaughtered cows and buying it supports the slaughter industry.

I prefer to use natural forms of nitrogen from plants such as cottonseed meal, and will occasionally, if for a special reason, use non slaughterhouse, composted animal manure from wild animals, such as bat or bird guano, since then my plants and in turn I am consuming what is naturally found in the environment. Using only plant forms is called veganic, as in veganic fertilizer. Veganic is important to me since I think that if you apply animal fertilizers to plants, the plants take up many of the toxins, which are higher in animals than in plants, so that when you eat that plant, you are getting more toxins into your body. In fact, there is a line of science called phytoremediation that uses plants to take toxins out of the soil for safer cleanup and disposal, so this phenomenon is well documented. I want to live as toxin free as possible and I think that what fertilizer I put on my vegetable garden is important to my health, so I choose only plant derived fertilizers which I think are safe and effective.

To go a step further, in most instances for a vegetable garden, one doesn’t need fertilizers if you are able to put in a little extra effort. Good, homemade compost is the best nutrient source and all your plants need. For lawns or ornamental plant beds, some organic, plant fertilizers may be needed to establish a new planting, but once the plants are established after a few years, and you employ nutrient recycling where you leave the lawn and plants trimmings on the lawn and beds, then fertilizers aren’t really needed. Using fertilizers, especially slaughterhouse and factory farm derived ones, causes more global warming since it generally takes much energy to produce the fertilizer, transport it, and then once applied, the plants need more water to deal with the higher nutrient load, especially during the summer when plants can burn or die out from too much fertilizer. The only fertilizers found in nature are naturally occurring animal excrement, nutrient recycling from leaves and other decaying plant (mostly) and animal (some) materials, and nitrogen from the air (which is why plants get a boost after a rain),


In my green point of view, following nature's way is the soundest way to go since in nature we see regeneration and longterm sustainability at work as opposed to humans’ unsustainable, rape the earth mantra which will only bring about the planet’s demise.

In summary, the lawn power sounds fine in premise, but I don’t agree with the use of urea nitrogen and cannot comment on the other ingredients since it doesn’t state what they are. For me as a consumer or when deciding what products to carry on our webstore, I do not buy from companies who are vague or do not list exactly what the ingredients are since it appears that the company is trying to hide the truth and are, in many cases, using cheaper ingredients, i.e. slaughterhouse and factory made, and then cover this fact up with glossy marketing and then sell it to unknowledgeable consumers. That is, in a nutshell, how most products are made and sold by large companies, especially in the USA. That is why we started our company Green Harmony Living, to offer to the public really healthy, really green, really truthful, really effective products that are hard to find anywhere else these days! I apologize if I gave you more information than you wanted to know. I believe in being honest with people since I believe this helps people more in the long term.

To our green and healthy world!

Roland Oehme

Thank You and Make Today a Wonderful Day!
Roland’s Websites:
Green Harmony Living - Planet friendly website
Green Harmony Living Store - Raw, Vegan, & Organic Foods & Products
Green Harmony Design - Beautiful, Edible, & Sustainable Gardens
Green Harmony Tours - Sustainable Ecotours to Germany

A friend of mine sent me an email with an attached publication written by some group extolling the importance of humans getting enough Omega 3s in our diet. I have read about the importance of Omega 3s since I used to eat hemp seeds and it is advertised as being a rich source of these healthy fats. Which reminds me, it is time to order some more hempseed!!! I love the taste of hempseed and it is easy to use in many foods.

I don;t believe one needs to eat fish in order to get Omega 3s, as repeatedly written in the article, after all the fish is getting the Omega 3s not from itself but from plants, ie from algae and other water growing plants!!! I just love how these typical medical or organization publications write these supposedly helpful information writings and write that a person has to eat animal products to be healthy. Well what about all of the vegan animals out there that are doing just fine, in fact, thriving on their purely plant diets??? I believe humans are also designed to thrive on a purely or mostly vegan diet.

I know Purslane, in fact it grows as a so called weed here, or as I like to say a "wild plant". Purslane is healthy and rich in Omega 3s too. However, it does have the same oxalic acid that is found in Spinach I believe and as such is not recommended to be eaten too often since this acid can deplete minerals from the body or such. Purslane seems to grow the best in compacted soils in seemingly the least favorable conditions. So, it is a good idea to leave areas in the vegetable garden that is untilled, unmaintained, where nutritious wild plants, such as Purslane, Lambsquarters, Nettle, Malva (see photo above), etc., may grow, and provide you with super foods that will do wonders for your body.

I think our modern lifestyles today have taken us away from our gardens and from the wilderness where we would have historically gotten our nutrients, from the wild foods, unwashed and unprocessed. Look at all of the animals out there doing just fine eating what they find in the wild, including vegan animals.

So, that's why I think it is very valuable, even essential for every person to grow their own food and to not wash their food unless they have to. Our overly clean society washes much of the nutrients off of the food. Yes if we just grazed in our vegetable gardens on all of the planted and wild greens there we would get a more complete diet. To me this seems to be the easiest and closest way for us humans to replicate the wild, healthy diet our bodies were designed to consume. That's what my dad taught me and that's why you see me grazing in the vegetable garden or anywhere else I see a healthy dandelion growing!

I do eat purslane, when I am lucky enough to find it growing wild in our garden. It is great in a salad since it is fresh tasting (slightly acidic) and crunchy. Now where do I order my hempseeds??... Oh, that's right...at www.GreenHarmonyLiving.com.

Thank You and Make Today a Wonderful Day!
Roland’s Websites:
Green Harmony Living - Planet friendly website
Green Harmony Living Store - Raw, Vegan, & Organic Foods & Products
Green Harmony Design - Beautiful, Edible, & Sustainable Gardens
Green Harmony Tours - Sustainable Ecotours to Germany