Subject: [permaculture] Guild assembly and dynamic accumulators
Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2007 21:09:32 -0700
I had a friend that told me that that snappy fruit flavor that is hard
to find in homegrown apples is a mix of magnesium (requiring good cation
balance), and sulfur (which is caught up more in soil poor
water-biologic cycling. Robert Kourik's book (Designing and maintaining
you edible landscape naturally, 1986) has a list of dynamic accumulators
for sulfur (plants that accumulate sulfur in their tissue far in excess
of their metabolic demand): Calamus, Caragreen, Coltsfoot, Eyebright,
Fennel, Garlic, Meadowsweet, Mullien, Mustards, Nettle, Plantain, Rest
harrow, Watercress, waywort.
The Fennel , mullien and many mustards have nice taproots.
Nettle, Meadowsweet, coltsfoot, plantain are all good on moist sites.
Sufur is often lost in humid climates with anion leaching... do dynamic
acculumulators harvest dissolved nutrients and increase the organic
sulfer pool, or would then compete with the tree for sulfur?! Does the
dynamic accumulator approach require some kind of tranformer to bring
the sulfer back into circulation to benefit the tree crop, like grazing
or mowing... This would be an interesting series of studies for any
budding scientists if you care to 'test and prove' permaculture. You'd
need a good nutrient analysis lab to look at how different guilds modify
nutrient pooling as compared to more simplified systems.