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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Seeking "Sunshine Replenishes Soil"

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Emery Mitchamore <emitch@att.net>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Seeking "Sunshine Replenishes Soil"
  • Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2010 14:21:41 -0500

I'm interested in plants mining minerals. Even in 6" soil over 500' of
limestone? Lost cause?

Sent from my iPhone
Mitch
www.hillcountrynatives.net

On Aug 21, 2010, at 7:28 AM, Harvey Ussery <harvey@themodernhomestead.us>
wrote:

> On 08/20/2010 11:22 AM, mdnagel@verizon.net wrote:
>> Energy != minerals. Energy can affect minerals, mineral "production"
>> (breakdown), but these are two different things.
>>
>> When things leave the farm you lose both minerals and energy. The energy
>> is readily replenished via the sun. Minerals, well... they come from
>> existing "stock," or, as most often the case, are imported from outside
>> the farm: you can assist the breakdown of minerals, but there's a point at
>> which one can over-mine the soil.
>>
>>
>> -Mark
>
> That's a good point, Mark--minerals are in fact removed from the soil and
> exported off the farm when food crops are sold. Their replenishment can
> come from a couple of sources: Deeply rooted cover crops can bring them up
> from the deep subsoil (I read somebody's estimate that there is enough
> mineral fertility at that level for 100 thousand years of farming) and
> making them available to more shallow-rooted crops.
>
> And there are ways we could return unused minerals to the soil--recycle
> humanure. Unfortunately, we simply mix our own doo-doo (good) with the
> doo-doo from our industrial production system (with its load of heavy
> metals and other toxics). Using the resulting witch's brew and calling it
> "fertilizer" is possible only in a context where the vast majority of
> citizens are asleep at the wheel.
>
> ~Harvey
>
> --
> Harvey in northern Va
> www.themodernhomestead.us
>
> The industrial mind is a mind without compunction; it simply accepts that
> people, ultimately, will be treated as things and that things, ultimately,
> will be treated as garbage. ~Wendell Berry
>
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