Re: [compost_tea] soil chemistry facts
Teaching the Soil Biollgy and Soil Chemistry course with Dr. Lancaster here
at Southern Cross University, and we are showing some very interesting
relationships between soil chem and soil biol.
Did you know that NO AGRICULTURAL SOIL lacks the NUTRIENTS needed to grow
plants?
Maybe one or two rare exceptions to that rule when we get into non-ag soils,
but any soil used for agriculture does not lack the nutrients needed for plant
growth.
So, why do we add fertilizers?
Because the AVAILABLE nutrients may be limited.
In the ag world, we do things to make the nutrients in a soil NOT-AVAILABLE
to the plants. How stupid is this?
Why would we behave this way? Either no one understands what is really going
on in soil, or we are being lead astray by people who want to sell you things
that you don't really need.
How do you move nutrients from the not-available pool to the available pool
in soil?
The answer - SOIL BIOLOGY
Soil organisms, in the right places, active at the right time. All that is
needed is to learn how to make sure the organisms are there and active.
Simple, inexpensive, and everyone can learn how to do this, at very little cost.
Soil biology - in your compost, compost tea, and easily monitored in a
qualitative fashion by anyone with a decent small microscope. Need quantitative
numbers? The lab can help you with that.
But no one needs to add inorganic fertilizer to their soil, unless they lack
the biology that should be there. When you look at total nutrients present in
any soil, there's more than adequate levels in any ag soil.
We calculated how many years' worth of phosphate was actually present in
wheat filed soil in Australian, soils where growers have been told they needed to
add thousands of dollars of PO4 because there was no phophate present. There
was 15,000 years worth of phosphate present in that soil (something like
$48,000 worth of "fertilizer"), if that phosphate could be made available to the
plants.
Makes you wonder about the soil chemists telling you that there's "no
phosphate" present.
Well, ok, no AVAILABLE phosphate. But that's really a WORLD different from
no phosphate at all, don't you agree? It is a lack of MICROORGANISMS to
solubilize that phosphate that is the problem, not a lack of phosphate.
When do we get off the toxic chemical bandwagon?
And back on the bandwagon that supports life?
Elaine Ingham
soilfoodweb_at_aol.com
Soil Foodweb Institute, Lismore, Australia
Graduate Research, Southern Cross University
Soil Foodweb Inc., Corvallis, OR, USA
and other places.......
Received on Sat Aug 28 2004 - 01:16:41 EDT
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