Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Emery Mitchamore <emitch@att.net>]

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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