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Healthy soil is the hidden ingredient

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Re: Healthy soil is the hidden ingredient

#111

Post by hinkley »

hammock wrote: post #90
hinkley wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ve gone through rounds of working out if the leafy vegetables absorb the heavy metals or if it’s mostly in the dust and last I read we’re back to the latter. White vinegar is better at cleaning vegetables than so called vegetable soaps, and more importantly the acid dissolves soot and heavy metals. Gallon bottles of white vinegar are cheap. It’s also good for laundry especially if you have hard water, or a humid c…

> We’ve gone through rounds of working out if the leafy vegetables absorb the heavy metals or if it’s mostly in the dust and last I read we’re back to the latter. It depends. For leafy vegetables it makes sense that dust > soil. However we find more lead and antimony in corn grown in proximity to highways.. this is clearly from road runoff taken up by the plant through the soil . We also find arsenic in brown rice an…

Also read you can remove around 60% of the arsenic in rice by washing it before cooking, which you’re supposed to do anyway. (But I no longer save the water for things like putting into the compost pile).

Re: Healthy soil is the hidden ingredient

#112

Post by conductr »

bgnn wrote: post #28

I started my gardening adventure with vegetables in pots. It was perfect, plants gave amazing yield, but required too detailed care and attention every day (or sometimes 2-3 times a day in a hot dry summer day). When I have moved to planting in soil I was shocked how worse the plants are doing. Same tomatoes giving 10-15 kg per plant yield in pots were under 3kg in soil. They got more disease issues, more pests (slug…

What you explain sounds similar to just having a high clay content. Water doesn’t soak in well. Not all earth is good soil to begin with is the lesson, you need to know what your starting with and amend. Unless you’re using potting mix in a pot, this is usually engineered to be excellent by professionals and explains the success

Re: Healthy soil is the hidden ingredient

#113

Post by goeiedaggoeie »

lm28469 wrote: post #108
geetee wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could be true, but maybe OP's goal isn't making a positive impact on the global scale.

Just throw your scrapes and buy compost then, it'll be cheaper and easier. The city already transforms bio waste in gas and compost anyways, and much more efficiently than what you can do at home given the scale. This is another "I'm doing my part" gimmick that solves literally nothing when you look under the hood

our city has no bio waste. we make all our own dried fruit, eat mostly fresh from market (so little to no plastic for our veggies), but an immense amount of organic waste.

Re: Healthy soil is the hidden ingredient

#114

Post by luqtas »

culi wrote: post #105
luqtas wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can also say the Saharan desert played a major role on turning what Amazon is... now, wow, calling it a grassland before humans 10,000 years ago is to smoke too much pot before reading/making papers. 5,000,000 AD then yes, maybe... /s but Terra Preta and other indigenous interferences is not even 10% of Amazon territory. various other animals are responsible for spreading diversity be it by shitting seed or just…

This is common knowledge. Even the Wikipedia page states: > There is evidence that there have been significant changes in the Amazon rainforest vegetation over the last 21,000 years through the last glacial maximum (LGM) and subsequent deglaciation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rainforest Also, there's this: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/10-800-years-a...

the Wiki citation doesn't even have a source, nor is calling that indigenous people made it

your last link is about Llanos de Moxos, which isn't in Amazon. you don't seen to understand even basic geography... even if Llanos was 100% man-made (and isn't) and it was part of the Amazon (and not a region that borders it) it would be the equivalent of 2.6% of the whole Amazon area. concluding such a thing because 3% of an area that benefited (soil quality wise) from billions of years of geologic events and was partly modified by humans is ignorant but again, Llanos isn't even Amazon

it was common knowledge among middle age that Earth was flat. doesn't seem an argument to me

Re: Healthy soil is the hidden ingredient

#115

Post by Jensson »

luqtas wrote: post #114
culi wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is common knowledge. Even the Wikipedia page states: > There is evidence that there have been significant changes in the Amazon rainforest vegetation over the last 21,000 years through the last glacial maximum (LGM) and subsequent deglaciation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rainforest Also, there's this: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/10-800-years-a...

the Wiki citation doesn't even have a source, nor is calling that indigenous people made it your last link is about Llanos de Moxos, which isn't in Amazon. you don't seen to understand even basic geography... even if Llanos was 100% man-made (and isn't) and it was part of the Amazon (and not a region that borders it) it would be the equivalent of 2.6% of the whole Amazon area. concluding such a thing because 3% of an…

There were elephants there that humans hunted to extinction, elephants typically keep forests down and create grasslands. So it seems likely it happened, and that humans was the cause (by killing the elephants).

Edit: So it is likely that the change happened and had nothing to do with the soil change.

Re: Healthy soil is the hidden ingredient

#116

Post by bgnn »

rwyinuse wrote: post #110
bgnn wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes sense as pots require very high precision of soil composition and water management. You need good drainage but a water reservoir under the pots with some kind of wick to keep it watering from the bottom. Also the size of the pot you need is huge compared to your intuition. A single tomato plant requires more than 100L of soil, 30% of which should be perlite, you need some pebbles for better drainage mixed…

I've had tomatoes grown successfully, with decent yield in pots that take maybe 30L of soil, and without any perlite. It isn't that hard if we're talking about hobbyist stuff, where results don't have to be ideal but just "good enough". Picking a variety that is hardy and forgiving, and a place with enough warmth and sunlight (at least in the North) is the most important part.

True. What I went for was extremely good yield, like 10-15kg per plant. That requires a lot of foilsge growth early on and proper pruning + a lot of water later on. Just good enough isn't that hard, though still the depth of yhe pot should be enough for root development.

Re: Healthy soil is the hidden ingredient

#117

Post by AngryData »

Kbelicius wrote: post #40
CrazyStat wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of plants do not absorb nitrogen from the air. Legumes are the well-known exception.

It isn't legumes that absorb nitrogen from air. It is bacteria that lives on their roots.

That is true but legumes actively foster those bacteria on their roots and without the legumes most of that bacteria dies. Its a symbiotic relationship.

Re: Healthy soil is the hidden ingredient

#118

Post by segmondy »

econ wrote: post #74

Humans can figure out a lot given enough time. While all the hype for us is finance, management, machines, electronics and software etc it is not unthinkable a previous civilization went all in on soil. Terra Preta seems to be quite sophisticated. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta

Have we not gone all in on soil? Your CPU and GPU comes from the soil. The electrical batteries powering all your electronic device comes from the soil. Take a hard look around you, almost everything "artificial" you can see and touch came from the ground.

Re: Healthy soil is the hidden ingredient

#120

Post by westurner »

throeijfjfj wrote: post #38
westurner wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plants absorb nitrogen and CO2 from the air and store it in their roots; plants fertilize soil. If you only grow plants with externally-sourced nutrients, that is neither sustainable nor permaculture. Though it may be more efficient to grow without soil; soil depletion isn't prevented by production processes that do not generate topsoil. JADAM is a system developed by a chemicals engineer given what is observed to wo…

Most plants do not absorb atmospheric nitrogen, but need external nitride fertilizer to grow! That causes serious ground water polution! > The new biofuel subsidies require no-till farming practices This actually depletes soil of nitrogen!

Why do you believe that no-till farming practices deplete soil of nitrogen more than tilling?

A plausible hypothesis: tilling destroys the bacteria that get nitrogen to plant roots.

Isn't runoff erision the primary preventable source of nitrogen depletion?

FWIU residue mulch initially absorbs atmospheric nitrogen instead of the soil absorbing it, but that residue and its additional nitrogen eventually decays into the soil.

I have heard that it takes something like five years to successfully completely transform acreage with no-till; and then it's relatively soft and easily plantable and not impacted, so it absorbs and holds water.

No-till farmers are not lacking soil samples.

What would be a good test of total change in soil nitrogen content (and runoff) given no-till and legacy farming practices?

With pressure-injection seeders and laser weeders, how many fewer chemicals are necessary for pro farming?

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