Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Which is why most soil tests are sadly inadequate. That kind of test can't
tell you whether you'll spend too much time or water irrigating, or whether
your soil will support the healthiest, most productive growth. It tells you
the basic elements that it can detect, but it can't tell you whether you
have a level of certain microbe populations present that may be needed to
feed the plant OTHER substances it needs to thrive.  It's a crap shoot, and
an expensive one at that. 

Ever tasted hydroponic tomatoes? Think they're getting what tomatoes need
for healthy growth?  Know how much chemicals they get soaked with to make
up for the lack of protection from healthy soil?

paul, tradingpost@riseup.net
---------------

The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not
television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. Only
those who know the most about it can appreciate how little we know about
it. 
   - Aldo Leopold in  Round River, 1933
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 6/22/2006 at 1:36 PM Greg Bell wrote:

>> All I see is no attention whatever to the microbe levels in the soil,
>as if
>> it didn't exist or didn't matter. And no concern for levels of organic
>> matter. With all those numbers it could be bare dirt.
>
>well, that's because:
>
>   1) the things included are the basics that plants require.  organic
>      matter and microbes are not required.  witness the poor soil used
>      successfully (not sustainably) in industrial agriculture and the
>complete
>      absence of soil in hydroponics.
>
>   2) the test was already $90 - tests for microbe counts and organic
>      matter were extra.
>
>~gb
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