Not to keep entering this soil fray, but hauling around ground rocks seems like a waste of time, money, and fuel. We all have ground rocks in our soils; it makes up about 50% of the soil volume. If some micronutrients are lacking, the easiest way to add them is via compost made from a variety of feedstuffs or with kelp. My not-very-scientific use of kelp rests on the assumption that since we all came from the sea, the sea has all the minerals that we need. Anyway, kelp is a lot lighter to haul and contains a wider spectrum of readily available minerals that do ground rocks.
Lee Reich, PhD
Come visit my farmden at http://www.leereich.com/blog <http://www.leereich.com/blog>
http://leereich.com/ <http://leereich.com/>
Books by Lee Reich:
A Northeast Gardener's Year
The Pruning Book
Weedless Gardening
Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden
Landscaping with Fruit
Grow Fruit Naturally
> On May 19, 2015, at 12:13 PM, Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, May 15, 2015 at 1:13 PM, Jay Cutts <orders@cuttsreviews.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm not quite sure how fertilizing works. I have a suspicion and wonder if
>> anyone can confirm or contribute. We're in a location with very poor soil,
>> in fact mostly sand with few nutrients. It's been common for some to
>> plants to put on less than an inch of growth during a season. Last spring I
>> added both manure and organic corn gluten fertilizer to trees, scratching
>> the fertilizer into the top of the soil. By the end of the season, most of
>> the trees had still put on very little growth, maybe 1-3". Frustrated, I
>> upped the fertilization this spring by putting cottonseed meal fertilizer
>> into holes punched in the ground to get more to the tree roots.
>
>
> Remineralize your garden and orchard soils. In addition to amendments
> available from Fertrell such as greensand, rock and colloidal phosphate,
> azomite, high calcium lime, aragonite and others, rock dust from local
> quarries is cheap and very effective. The technical term for quarry rock
> dust is siltation pond fines and grit varies from 200 mesh to
> fine powder in an aggregate that partially dissolves in water (why do the
> Hunzas live so long, minerals from rock powders in the mountain streams
> they drink from). Quarries usually give this away and truckers
> (single/tandem/tri axle dump trucks) can be hired to haul this material to
> your property. Import a hundred tons of this miraculous amendment,
> spread it with a tractor or loader and till or cultivate into the top soil
> layers. If you have grasses and clovers nearby or downhill you will see
> impressive growth in them. There are many types of rock quarried for
> sonstruction use and most can be used agriculturally. Some of them are
> granite, others pyrophyllite, others volcanic tuff or basalt. Often they
> will have useful levels of potash. It can be used with compost to make a
> great seed starting mix. If you have problem clay or sand this directly
> addresses permeability, water retention,
> tilth and fertility issues you may have. Remineralize the Earth!
>
> Here is a great website to browse on this subject among many other
> excellent ones. I have a collection of discussion threads on this subject
> in URL's I can provide.
> Gardening for Maximum Nutrition
> *http://tinyurl.com/MaxNutritionGarden*
> <http://tinyurl.com/MaxNutritionGarden>
> http://www.mercyviewmeadow.org/Garden/GardeningforMaximumNutrition.htm
>
>
> --
> Lawrence F. London
> lfljvenaura@gmail.com
> Ello: @ecoponderosa <https://ello.co/ecoponderosa>
> https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared/
> https://sites.google.com/site/venaurafarm/
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