Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Ryan Albinger" <ryalbinger@earthlink.net>]

Perhaps Steve Diver can comment on the grower using diluted seawater in
growing hydroponic tomatoes with very good results.  (Seawater being the
only input IIRC)

Soil Tests are just that, a snapshot.  They give us some more clues than we
see, but not the whole picture.  We need to look at the plants, the soil,
and weather to add to that soil test to determine how to proceed.  It boils
down to management.  In honesty, we will not know how to grow the
healthiest, most productive growth until we do it, and even then, it will
wonder if we can't do better.  We can only manage to the best we know how
with all the tools availed to us and proceed from there.

> [Original Message]
> From: TradingPostPaul <tradingpost@riseup.net>
> To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Date: 6/21/2006 11:17:18 PM
> Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Soil test results
>
>
> 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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