More on the gardening stuff: I mentioned how similar it is to training. This is kinda funny. But everyone here knows the best speed/power/vert training info comes from the Russian coaches like Verkhoshansky from back in the 60's. If you really wanna learn that's what you gotta read, and it basically makes the last 50 years research in the U.S. amount to nothing. Problem is, a lot of people, a lot of professionals in the field, still don't know that and are never exposed to the information. A purist would argue most of our athletes in the U.S. are training in a fashion that is less than optimal because there aren't enough U.S. coaches who understand how to implement optimal training as outlined by Verkho. And I wouldn't really argue against that point.
Well it's the same way in soil science/agronomy. The best information comes from the 40's and 50's. There was a guy named William Albrecht who was basically like the soil science version of Verkho. He was all about the mineral chemistry in the soil, particularly calcium. I'm not sure exactly what happened but at some point the U.S. fertilizer companies basically took over all the research so Albrecht, his methods, and his followers, kinda got cast aside. All the research began to focus on what the fertilizer companies had to sell, NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium), and minerals were neglected. Due to that most of the last 50 years research amounts to crap, or at least isn't nearly on par with the experiments Albrecht and his team did back in the 40's and 50's. However there are still a handful of self educated agronomists that have expanded on the Albrecht method, set up sites to download his papers, published books etc. and there info is considered by far the most cutting edge methods, just like some people do with the Russian training.
I just kinda gotta laugh out of how similar the 2 fields are in that regard.
