Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>]

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On 1/18/2004 at 9:05 PM list@bio-organics.com <list@bio-organics.com wrote:


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ADDING SOME SOUL TO SOIL
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Most of our newsletters deal with biological elements in soil, especially
mycorrhizal fungi and the symbiotic partnerships that exist between
plants,
fungi, and bacteria.  We also make disparaging comments about the
misguided
(in our opinion) emphasis on soil chemistry.

However, to clarify, our real concern with chemistry is mostly about the
excessive use of macronutrients- NPK fertilizers that contain only a few
major elements.  The application of these incomplete "plant foods" year
after
year to croplands and gardens can cause harmful salt buildups and
depletion
of important minor and trace elements.

Deep soils rich in mineral elements do have a substantial "forgiveness
factor".  Such soils can tolerate decades of poor fertilizing practices
before showing obvious signs of distress and experiencing yield failures.
The
inevitable can be delayed by plowing deeper, which is now being done in
some
areas of the U.S.

Soils that lack good reserves of glacial or volcanic-origin elements can
be
burned out fairly quickly by repeated applications of high-analysis
fertilizers.  These depleted soils are then typically abandoned.  This is
a
common practice for developing-country growers who must coax crops from
thin
infertile soils.

Damaged lifeless soils can be very difficult to fix.  It would be better
and
easier to keep productive soils healthy.  We think that periodically
applying
minerals containing a broad spectrum of elements should be a routine part
of
maintaining croplands or gardens.

This is where soil chemistry makes real sense - working to provide a full
range of macro, minor, and trace elements for soil organisms to digest
into
forms plants can use, rather than simply applying the major elements.

True, it is much easier to measure the presence or absence of the "big"
elements in soil, but tiny amounts of many other elements may be what
plants
need for full health and disease resistance.  Unless those "little"
elements
also get replenished somehow, problems lie ahead.

Ideally, each and every mineral element from Aluminum to Zinc would be
maintained in ideal proportions to each other, but this is impossible.
Luckily, growers can employ mycorrhizal fungi to regulate a plant's uptake
of
elements. These fungi respond to plant needs. They will hunt for scarce
elements, screen out excesses of other elements, and deliver a perfectly
balanced diet to their host plants. Endomycorrhizal fungi exchange
nutrients
inside a plant's roots, while Ectomycorrhizal fungi perform the exchange
in a
sheath coating outside the roots.

The common advice to apply rock dusts to soil is good, except that
widely-available granite rock dusts have a relatively low range of
elements.
Green sand and Azomite-type minerals are much better, and the best I've
found
is mined from a large deposit of hydrothermally-changed dacite rock (a
crumbly clay volcanically steamed for a few million years) near Crater
Lake,
Oregon. This light gray material contains nearly every known element,
including gold and silver!  We have observed wonderful plant responses to
it,
especially in combination with biological inoculants. (This material is
not
being packaged yet, but I'm hopeful it will be in the future.)

The key point to keep in mind is that a grower's goal is to make sure that
the broadest possible array of elements are available to the soil
organisms
for processing. It is less important to have exact amounts of each element
-
that's chemical thinking. The smart little soil critters will sort through
the materials and pick out what they (and their host plants) need. Simple,
eh?

Finally, on a personal note, thanks to all of you who said they hoped I
wasn't getting ready to retire after I mentioned that possibility in my
last
newsletter. However, I am indeed beginning to think about the subject and
plan to start the process of finding the right buyer for BioOrganics, Inc.

I'd invite individuals or corporations who might be interested in owning a
bio-product business with a good customer base and substantial growth
potential to contact me. This simple manufacturing and marketing operation
could easily be relocated anywhere in the country and I would provide
advisory help as needed.

This could take a while, so don't look for the newsletters to stop anytime
soon!

Cheers, my friends,

Don Chapman
President
BioOrganics, Inc.
______________________
BioOrganics Inc. News
1/18/04
______________________

Past BioOrganics newsletters are available by clicking on the link
"Newsletters Archive" at:

http://www.bio-organics.com
______________________

Please direct comments or questions to:  don@bio-organics.com
Replies to this newsletter go to our listserver and will not be seen.
______________________

BioOrganics, Inc. Endomycorrhizal Inoculant (BEI) is listed by the Organic
Materials Review Institute (OMRI) for use in production of organic food
and
fiber.
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