Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

What I've read backs you up on this, Dan. True, you don't want to compare
apples and oranges (pun intended). And beyond comparing your own plants or
fruit, you can compare the brix of your own produce to the supermarket
junk. That's where the real fun starts. The differences are staggering. 

Then you think about depleted soil, mined by decades of NPK farming.
Mineral losses are documented. And we're just beginning to appreciate the
complexities of soil biology and its role in nutrition. Sick soil, sick
animals, sick people. 

When we think about cutting our food budget, or how much trouble it is to
grow our own, let's think about what we're already paying for "health
care". 

In that context, brix is more than just sugar or dissolved solids. 

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 4/6/2007 at 8:19 AM Dan Conine wrote:

>The 'Brix' is really the refraction index of the liquid (how it bends
>light). It isn't necessarily measuring one ingredient or another.
>(that's the problem with Wikipedia: you have to be smarter than the
>people making the entries sometimes).
>
>In general, the more dissolved solids are in the sap or liquid, the more
>nutrients are in it. The most common dissolved solid is sugar, and Brix
>was developed to measure sugar content of grape juice because it told
>how much alcohol would be produced in the wine.
>
>The amount of sugar USUALLY correlates to the amount of other solids,
>but doesn't necessarily, since some plants (apples, for instance)
>produce mostly sugar water, while others may produce less sugar but have
>higher amounts of minerals in their sap. Brix is best used for locally
>quantified comparisons to tell how much improvement you have made from
>year to year or plant to plant. It isn't going to be something that
>tells you if your sweet corn is more nutritious than your tomatoes.
>
>Just an opinion. I'm not an expert. (an 'ex' is a has-been and a 'spert'
>is a drip under pressure)
>
>Dan
>
>
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