Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Carrie Shepard <carrieshepard@yahoo.com>]

Yesterday morning, a number of my neighbors and I attended a class about re-mineralizing the soil and how minerals in the soils result in minerals in the foods and minerals in us resulting in health.

 

The speaker gave a soil test example from a local 75 acre property where the poor guy's soil is so dead that it was going to cost $30,000 to get the healthy nutrients back into his soil.  An OSU soil test had just recommended yet more NPK, while an www.aglabs.com test had shown the soil had almost no humus.   He showed slides of areas where the soil is just dead from conventional high chemical fertilizer usage.    He and another man were comparing their own garden soils behavior during last year's drought.  One couldn't figure out how come he was having to water so much during the drought while the other guy only watered once a week.  The answer was that the soil test showed very little humus in his soil, while the one with a LOT of humus didn't have to water so much.    He said that when the soil has enough humus it wicks up underground water as well as retaining rain or irrigation water, but if you've got no humus, the irrigation or rain water just runs down or off and isn't held in the soil for the plants usage.

 

They were advocating soft rock phosphate and low magnesium limestone to get the soils going in the right direction for quality hay.

 

May all our lands be productive,

Carrie

 

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