Re: [compost_tea] soil chemistry facts

From: David Anderson <squtch_at_gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 4 Sep 2004 19:21:35 -0700
Hi Elaine,

While I believe that most soils contain all the necessary nutrients
for plant growth, and I also believe that soil biology, along with
certain mechanical and chemical reactions are what makes those
nutirents availabe to the plants, I am not convinced that the
combination is guaranteed to provide all the nutrition that *any*
plant needs in *any* situation. (and I am not sure if you were saying
that, but it certainly *could* be read that way)

There are lots of limiting factors that do exist that will affect the
rate the microorganisms can convert the non-available nutrients to
available nutrients. Just off the top of my head I can come up with:

- physical barriers (nutrients inside grains of sand)
- population limiting nutrient for microorganism. (iron limiting
phytoplankton growth in southern oceans)
- minerals not in a proper balance to allow the most efficient conversion.
- different levels of non-availability.

So that even if the nutrients are there, and the biology is there,
doesn't automatically mean that they cam make the nutrients available
at the optimal rate for plant growth.

At some point, in some situations, giving the microcritters a little
boost of minerals that are a little "easier to chew" seems to make
sense to me. Get the critters doing their job to the best of their
ability, then if something extra is needed, you only need to add small
doses to reach your goal.

Of course, you didn't claim that there was never any need to add
additional nutrients, but that is an implication that could be drawn
from it.

It is certainly interesting data, and it will be even more interesting
to see how well the biology can do at releasing much of the locked up
nutrition in the so called poor soils. I guess that would be the next
step.

Dave

Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
ADVERTISEMENT
click here


Yahoo! Groups Links

Received on Sat Sep 04 2004 - 23:21:03 EDT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Tue Feb 07 2012 - 14:15:28 EST