Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

I think this is excellent, because everything in the soil is connected and
nothing takes place in isolation. Understanding how these seemingly
separate processes work together is important. It's soil ecology.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. 
--Henry David Thoreau 
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 8/1/2006 at 9:36 AM Steve Diver wrote:

>Allow me to add another perspective and expand the
>way this discussion views cover crops and rock minerals.  
>
>The process of raising cover crops mobilizes nutrients
>from the soil, so they make insoluble nutrients more
>bioavailable. 
>
>These insoluble nutrients exist in the soil in the
>form of fixed elements and associated with parent
>rock material. 
>
>Living roots exude organic acids and provide habitat for
>soil microorganisms.  Microorganisms produce organic
>acids and enzyme.  These exudates and microbial metabolites,
>as well as living fungi and bacteria, interact with the
>soil parent material and solubilize, mineralize, and 
>mobilize nutrients into bioavailable forms.   
>
>Likewise, when cover crops are incorporated into the 
>soil as green manures, a sequence of microbial decomposition
>produces organic acids, enzymes, glues, and slimes that
>interact with insoluble nutrients in the soil, thus making
>them more bioavailable. 
>
>So cover crops can enhance the availability of existing
>minerals in soils as a natural process. 
>
>Of course, adding rock minerals (limestone, gypsum,
>rock phosphate, sul-po-mag) to soils is *also* very 
>important.  It is a fundamental practice of organic
>farming and eco-farming. 
>
>A sub category of rock minerals include rock dusts.
>Rock dusts and sea-based amendments provide a 
>broad spectrum of secondary, trace, and rare earth
>elements in low concentration.   
>
>The relatively inert minerals in these parent rock
>materials are likewise made more bioavailable through
>the action of living roots and microbes in association
>with cover cropping and green manuring, and one of
>the most spectacular interactions occurs when these
>rock minerals and rock dusts are amended to compost
>piles. 
>
>Every organic farming system worth its salt pays attention
>to the integration of rock minerals and humus farming 
>to feed the soil and encourage biological activity which
>ultimately regulates the physical, chemical, and biological
>components of soil and crop health.
>
>Steve Diver
>
>
>
>
>
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