Most agricultural soils have been depleated of the minerals that we need in our foods. If the mineral is not in the soil it cannot be in the vegetables grown in that soil. The minerals in the soil come from centuries of weathering of the base material (typically rock) of the soil. So the build up is much slower than the minerals used by crops and typically removed from the soil.
So what's a farmer to do...
Well most of them do nothing. Modern soil science doesn't recognize that humans need 85 minerals for health. They focus on 5-6 minerals such as N, P, K, Ca, & S. They don't bother to measure the rest or even think about putting back the ones we mine out of the soil.
So here is what we do.
We put calcium into the soil first and the deficiencies promptly went away after we limed the farm.
We rebuilt the biology of the soil, to supercharge the soil weathering process.
We added vegetable compost. The main substrait of this compost is leaves. Leaves have a high concentration of minerals because the trees cycle minerals from deep in the soil. Then when the leaves fall to the ground and are broken down the minerals are back on the surface.
On a more proactive note we also use kelp meal in the soil. The kelp has many minerals from the sea, that may not be found any where else. Some are in trace amounts but they are there.
We also add a small amount of sea salt. Redmond sea salt is a mined salt from ancient sea bed with 82 minerals. Thus minimizing contaminants such as mercury.
This combination of minerals makes our vegetables taste really amazing and are responsible for some truly nutrient dense foods.
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