Re: Low Tech Soil Health Methodologies for Farmers

From: Steve Diver (steved@NCATARK.UARK.EDU)
Date: Mon Aug 19 2002 - 19:03:23 EDT


Greetings Menne -

I once came across a quote from an ecologist who stated that cation
exchange capacity is one of the most important natural features on
earth, or some such lofty statement. Of course, CEC is commonly
reported soil test reports.

Yet, I don't know any way farmers can assess CEC themselves,
at least not very simply or in the field. It is a lab test, determined by
elemental analysis and secondly from calculations based on assumptions.

By the way, that page you compiled -- 1.1.6 A discussion of plant
nutrition -- provides a helpful summary and juxtaposition of Steiner,
Albrecht, Reams, Callahan, and Yamashita, as well as notes on
mineral elements.

Now, what is a skerrick. It sounds like a peck of seafood.

Steve Diver


David Menne wrote:

> I have traversed all these glowingly testimonialed materials - yet find not
> a skerrick of mention of what must surely be one of the very basic
> foundations of soil health : Cation Exchange Capacities; nor in fact of a
> number of the other guidelines I have collected on
> http://www.plantsfood.com/plantnutrition.htm [see also the note on zymogenic
> activity in soil - needs a bit better than purely CO2-producing soil
> activity to ass. Personally, I find a simple organoleptic test with an
> instrument(*) we just about all carry around in good order rather good].
>
> In any event - my experience is, that if you have a healthy earthworm
> population [soooo easy to assess - even quantitatively/scientifically - see
> http://www.statlab.iastate.edu/survey/SQI/Attach/chpt10.pdf from the Soil
> Quality Test Kit from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources
> Conservation Service Soil Quality Institute URL referenced by ric Hurley];
> everything else is probably [very very probably] in order.
>
> (*)Crack open the moist soil. Place nostrils near surface. Inhale softly. If
> it smells like a forest floor, you're OK.
>
> David Menne : http://www.plantsfood.com
>
> "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we
> created them" - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
>

.



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