<snip>
The most important mineral nutrient being lost in the waste stream these<snip>
days is phosphate, but some good progress is being made on systems to
recover it in an almost pure form from sewage systems. As for moving the
minerals around from one place on Earth to another, I don't think Mother
Nature will mind too much if our goal is to make this a more beautiful
garden.
I've come across enough bits of information about phosphate to leave me
thinking the following may be correct, but not
enough information to really convince me. Below is something I want to
believe. Can anyone confirm or deny it?
Soil phosphate (what is measured in a soil test and what is available to
plants--hopefully the two are the same) does
not represent all the phosphorus in the soil and other forms of phosphorus
can be converted to the bioavailable form
through microbial action in a healthy soil. If this is the case, and if the
soil contains plenty of the non-bioavailable
form(s), phosphate might not have to be added if the right conditions are
provided for the microbes to do their work and
if the grower is patient.
This idea brings back vague memories of lab experience from 30 or 40 years
ago. At the time, part of my job was to do
quality control analyses on pyrophosphate plating baths. I measured the
phosphate in part of a sample by a common wet
chemical test. I hydrolized an identical sample by boiling it with acid for a
few hours then measured the phosphate by
the same wet chemical test. The difference in the two readings represented
pyrophosphate. Someone else decided whether
the bath was good or not based on my measurements. My point is that there are
relatively inert forms of phosphate that
were changed when boiled in acid. If I could convert them to the more
reactive form of phosphate (PO4) in a few hours
using heat and acid, I can believe microbes might be able to do it in a few
months or a few years. Does anyone out there
know if this happens?
Edna
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