From Garuda@xtra.co.nz Tue Jul 18 23:28:15 2000 Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 14:13:14 +1200 From: Peter Bacchus Reply-To: bdnow@envirolink.org To: peter cotterill , bdnow@envirolink.org Subject: Re: phosphorus deficiency & the manure problem [ Part 1, Text/PLAIN (charset: ISO-8859-1 "Latin 1") 84 lines. ] [ Unable to print this part. ] [ The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] Peter Bacchus wrote: Hi Peter and all, Steiner made it quite clear in his course of lectures at Koberwitz that phosphorus wasn't going to drop out of the sky so something would need to be done about it. The first thing I would suggest is to get a broad spectrum soil test done, and expertly read, preferably by someone who has no phosphorus to sell. >From what you write it sounds as though you may already believe you are in a serious deficit situation. If this is the case relatively urgent action may need to be taken. My suggestion is to get composted or to compost rock phosphate. The sources need to be approved under your license so contact your inspector. In fowl / bird manure the phosphorus would come from the grain or the fish in the case of sea birds. One of the accumulator plants that I'm aware of is pampas grass. It is possibly part of the reason for it being a weed in N.Z. native bush / scrub. I'm sure there are others. A patch of pampas grass that has grown to a least six feet tall can make a good storm shelter for stock. In my observation it is very important that the mineral household of a soil is balanced within itself and balanced within the soils capacity. As a soil is developed organically and the cat ion exchange capacity increases it is sometimes necessary to re balance the soil minerals. When the basics are in place then the Bio-dynamic preparations can work miracles. The crown jewel of these is the quartz preparation 501 best wishes, Peter Bacchus. peter cotterill wrote: Can the list help the BD farmer solve the phosphorus deficiency problem? As a general rule soils of New Zealand are lacking phosphorus and lime and in Taranaki the classical BD diary Farmers seem to hit a 7-year barrier were production plummets.Phosphorus is lost through the farm gate in meat and milk production and through leaching from the high annual rainfall.Application of BD preps creates the right environment for the elements to be replaced but this doesn^Òt seem to be enough to counteract the loss caused by a high production.The conventional farmers solution to this problem is to put thousands of tons of fertilizers on and how can we compete with this?Throwing money at this problem like the conventional farmer is not the real answer.With years of BD farming the lockup mineral phosphate eventually gets used up from the depths of the soil.Fermented fish carcass and seaweed are use but this is not enough to maintain production in the end.From were to next do we drag the phosphate in? Possible sources. 1.Use large amounts of reactive phosphate rock (RPR) or basalt rock or such like approved fertilizer. 2.BD practices could attract finely divided phosphate from the atmosphere and cosmos.But I think this would hardly enough phosphate to replace the loss through the farm gate.If potentized preps were used what strength would be used? Would the potentized energy patents drag enough phosphate in?Would cosmic pipes do the job and where would the phosphate come from?From neighboring farms that use artificial fertilizers maybe. 3.Perhaps birds and animal could be attracted to bring the phosphate in from surrounding area.Perhaps we could attract the seagulls on to the farm to leave their phosphorus dropping behind. 4.Use bone meal fertilizers. 5.Grow weed accumulators like lots of dandelions, yarrow and made compost from them. 6.Transmutation. I read that Sulfur and phosphorus can change into one another especially during the early stage of growth.How can we make transmutation work in the soil or plants or animals? Ideally a BD farm should have an individuality of its own being self-sufficient.Basically I am asking how can a farm still achieve this on a material level required today.Phosphate from the farm eventually ends up in the sea.The ultimate solution would be to complete the phosphate cycle from sea back to land.Is there a way where nature can do this and how can we assist? peter