GREEN THUMB
gardening
Re-Mineralization
The Missing Link in Organic Growing
By August Dunning
Fertilizers alone are not the key to nutrition. We eat plants to
get the vitamins and minerals locked in the phytochemicals
where nature puts them. It should be no surprise that it’s the soil
in which plants grow that provides these minerals. Plants can
only use mineral ions, individual atoms, but after time all that is
left are minerals too large in particle size to be absorbed by roots.
Centuries of farming – each year removing more and more of
these micro sized minerals and trace elements, and decades of
commercial factory farming with petrochemicals that kill the
soil microorganisms, have left many of our fields stripped of the
very micro-minerals that are necessary to enable plants to provide
nutrition in our foods. Without minerals food may grow to look
normal and attractive with fertilizers alone, but is empty of what
nourishes us - and why pretty fruit in the store lacks taste.
Organic farming is an obvious step in the right direction
to reverse this trend. I would add that the missing link in
organically produced food is re-mineralizing soil to activate the
production of nutrient content in food.
By providing macronutrient and micronutrient minerals
that regulate all the functions of plant biology, food becomes
infused with nutrients. The foundation of this process is the
microorganisms in properly prepared organic soil. These
organisms are releasers of naturally occurring nitrogen,
but more importantly the producers of fulvates; electrolyte
molecules that move minerals in soil to the roots and are critical
for both plant and animal life. Without fulvates, minerals are
not absorbed as readily and easily by roots. Without minerals
and fulvates, roots cannot grow to their potential mass to gather
more minerals and fertilizer.
So minerals are specifically for microorganisms and root
development and vitality. The down-stream effects of remineralizing, are: nutrients for microorganisms; microorganisms
provide nutrients for the plant; plants create nutrients in the
food to ultimately provide nutrient rich foods for animal and
human healthy. In many ways, re-mineralization of soil is the
foundation of nutrition in food.
But it’s also the cure for many problems, because there is
a societal cascade effect by eating food with no nutrition.
Eating food that is devoid of nutrients requires that you take
supplemental vitamins and minerals. This lack of nutrition in
food creates an unnecessary industry - chemical vitamin and
mineral supplements, which creates a need for petrochemical
producers, requiring federal agencies to regulate them – also
unnecessary.
Without vitamins in food, and if you cannot afford
supplements, then health fails and the medical industry
is provided work and federal agencies for oversight - also
unnecessary. In short, forgetting to feed the microorganisms the
minerals they need at the first steps of organic growing creates
the very problems in society we complain about. An ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure!
MY
About the author:
August Dunning is the head Research Director at
www.asaporganics.com. Visit www.articlegarden.com for
additional tips on organic gardening.
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MAXIMUM YIELD USA - March 2009