Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Sorry, not to my knowledge. Unless you have a small fortune to shell out for 
special testing for particular chemicals. And literally nobody can afford to 
test for hundreds of potential contaminants. And generally organic standards 
don't require soil testing OR produce testing. Surprise!

We live in a chemical soup; that's our so called civilization. People think 
if a chemical is being sold it must be approved as safe by the government. 
Forget it. Some thousands iof chemicals were grandfathered in years ago, 
untested, when EPA took effect as GRAS - "generally regarded as safe". For 
food chemicals start with 
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/228741/Generally-Recognized-As-Safe 
. Thousands of others never tested are approved for industrial, agricultural 
and household uses.

At least where we live, there's never been any industry and to our knowledge 
this spot was never farmed in modern times if ever due to historical climate.

In the end, we can get to a point of obsessing over contamination and go far 
past a point of diminishing returns, to a point where most of our toxins come 
not from our food but from the water we drink and air we breathe in a 
pristine wilderness. Let's think about that.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

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

On 3/22/2010 at 8:44 PM Tommy Tolson wrote:

>Doesn't a soil test indicate if your soil has toxic chemicals in it, so
>it won't pass organic standards for several years, at least?  By now,
>most soil in the US has been polluted, hasn't it?
>
>Smiles.
>Tommy
>
>On 3/22/10 7:46 PM, Ken Hargesheimer wrote:
>> Grow it: green manure/cover crops.  Ken H
>>
>> --- On *Mon, 3/22/10, Andeanfx /<andeanfx@midrivers.com>/* wrote:
>>
>>
>>     From: Andeanfx <andeanfx@midrivers.com>
>>     Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] soil testing
>>     To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing"
>>     <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
>>     Date: Monday, March 22, 2010, 1:05 PM
>>
>>     Well, I'm not sure which of the three suggestions to work with.
>>     Probably
>>     add organic matter.  :-)
>>
>>     We do not have our own compost and are renting with the hope of
>>     moving so
>>     setting up here is not really an option.  Last year we put some
>>     aged horse
>>     manure on it and there seemed to be no gain.  I am wondering if we
>>     were not
>>     a victim of the weed free hay.
>>
>>     I am a bit gun shy so it seems at this point the best options are
>>     to try to
>>     find some 'useable compost or aged manure or leave it as is and
>>     take what we
>>     get from it??????  Dean
>>