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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Rock Dust

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  • From: "Linda" <linda_shewan@yahoo.com.au>
  • To: "'permaculture'" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Rock Dust
  • Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:30:06 +1100

My indirect experience tells me you need to use rock dust for a few years
before you get clear results.

I will cautiously endorse a product called Rok Solid from New Zealand.

My father is a small scale beef farmer. He was a standard superphosphate
farmer, but pretty easy on the land - individual thistles hand herbicided
but the rest of the land left to grow all manner of weeds along with the
usual rye and clover...

6 years ago he started using Rok Solid instead as an experiment - he nearly
gave up after a couple of years as he felt the growth was poor and he
worried he was destroying his farm, but he persevered since he is really
retired and only has a small acreage now. After about 4 years he became
satisfied that it really was working and is now, at 6 years, very happy with
the results. The agent selling it has told him that the experience of others
is showing that year 7 is the big one, where there is a huge increase in
productivity. We shall see. But regardless of that it is performing very
well and he thinks better than the super - in that his land (peat on clay -
wildly varying depth of peat 0 - 20 feet at least) is producing well and
staying greener longer without rain.

It wasn't clear to me from the website what the product actually was but
they emailed me today saying "The product is actually rockdust - ground
basalt rock which has over 63 minerals and into that we have a 5% blend of
our fish and kelp which is teeming with microbial life. Together you have
full spectrum mineralised Rok Solid with biology that ensures the plant
availability of the minerals." My father also mentioned he read an article
that stated they only use basalt with the correct magnetic quality.

So people considering rock dust may need to give the soil some time to
really come into production after application. I'm sure the addition of fish
and kelp is an enormous aid as well. They have a number of other products
incl for horticulture etc but I haven't looked into them so can't comment.

Cheers, Linda






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