Unless you are in a really high water table area, your garden is extremely close to a waterway, or for some reason planting in an extremely sandy soil area where you also have a lot of moisture...then most home gardeners are having an extremely small (to none) impact on their local water tables. We gotta remember there's 2 main worlds in the outdoor food production game...those managing a few sq foot to a couple acres...and those managing 100s-1000s+ of acres. While some information you get may be technically true for everyone, it may not be an issue depending on the actual variables and the scale of the operation it's being applied to. There's no shortcut around managing nutrient runoff on 1000+ acres even in the most hospitable areas. The home gardener gets a whole lot more leeway.

Anything colder than zone 7 is pushing her limits. She grows in my zone 6 garden but not well enough to keep. If you look through the posts it's almost perfectly aligned that all zone 7's and up love her and zone 6's and down not so much. I do have one tucked against a house (house blocks the winter winds) and it does wonderfully.....heat from the house combined with the blocking of winds probably gives it a zone 7 micro climate.

One of my "brown" sources is hardwood planer shavings. I have a contractor friend who, when he planes JUST hardwood (i.e. not coniferous woods - poplar, although relatively soft is technically a hardwood), saves me his planer shavings. I also can't use hardwoods such as Walnut. If you get some coniferous shavings, that's not the end of the world... they just take longer to rot, especially the cedars and hemlocks. I just add a thin layer of these. You need to trust the provider to not have contaminated the shavings with any sawdust from manufactured products such as particle board or OSB... too many glues. Obviously the provider will have to be using a dust collection system to collect what you need. My blog is not directly related to this topic, but you may find it interesting anyway. Here is a link that might be useful: Lively Dirt - the Garden Blog

I brought this thread up to thank Jim for posting an excellent article on the danger of high phosphorus: "Phosphorus carries a chemical charge that competes with other micronutrients for plant uptake. Excess amounts result in leaf chlorosis because iron, manganese, and zinc are not available to the plant. Leaf tissue turns yellow while veins stay green." http://www.rose.org/phosphorus-fallacies-too-much-of-a-good-thing/ From StrawChicago: Agree with the above, except for the quote "Commercial growers of roses for cut-flower production typically use fertilizers with a 3-1-2 NPK ratio." That applies to pots or sandy soil, but NOT for alkaline clay. Alkaline clay has more beneficial bacteria to fix nitrogen from air. I used that ratio 3-1-2 before and got a 5 feet tall own-root Scepter'd Isle, plus a giant Charles Darwin (own-root). I gave both away since they got too big & less blooms. From Wikipedia: "By volume, dry air contains 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen." Agree 100% with the quote "Phosphorus fixates, or becomes immobile, in the soil quickly after application. This fixation is minimized at a pH level of 6.0-7.0. So all the extra phosphorus in fertilizer will become unavailable at pH levels above or below that range." With my foolish experiments of bone meal (top-dress or in the hole) ... I notice that high phosphorus induce foliage diseases, due to the suppression of zinc, a very strong anti-fungal agent. Bone meal has 24% calcium and 11% phosphorus, that's NOT as bad as higher % of phosphorus in MG-Soluble. I tested MG-Soluble before: more blooms, but more fungal diseases, plus more pests. High phosphorus induce foliage problems in my Thai basil. That hole was previously occupied by Sharifa Asma, it's right under a rain-spout, so nitrogen get leached out (10 mobility), potassium also leached out (3 mobility), but phosphorus stay put (1 mobility). I put too much Encap cow manure (high phosphorus) in that hole. Sharifa was blooming great ...6 blooms for a tiny plant (6 inch x 6 inch). But after blooming, it broke down in black spots. So I moved Sharifa out, and put a Thai Basil. Here's how Thai basil looks like, tons of blooms, but very thin foliage, with black spots, plus potassium deficiency in lower leaves. The leaves are much paler, smaller, and thinner due to zinc and iron less available.