Soil 306: Aged

Soil, like a fine wine, should improve with age. Conventional agricultural soils are aged beyond their years due to our poor farming practices. Our soils are aging, when they should be "youthing", to borrow a term from the health and wellness industry.

Did you know that the North African crest of the Sahara desert was the once the bread basket of the Greek and Roma Empires. What happened to reduce these once fertile soils to one of the largest deserts on the planet.

Soil 302: Exhausted

Conventional agricultural soils are exhausted because we don't replace both macro and micro minerals removed by heavy cropping.

Settlers on the prairie would homestead for 7-10 years, exhaust the soil and move on. We avoid the moving on scenario by applying macro minerals N-P-K-Ca. With this regimen the plants look good but the human body and critters we grow for food need  92 minerals.

So what about the other 88 minerals.

Soil 300: Burned Out

When I was in high school when someone was called a burn out it typically involved illegal drugs that are now being promoted for medicinal purposes. When I was in college being burned out was the fatigue after finals when you hadn't slept much for a week. When I was 30 years old being burned out typically meant you were over doing work, church or farming, because you were a workahololic.  When I was 35 burned out could be applied to burning down the rainforest and the depleted soils that resulted 3 to 4 years later. When I was 40 burned out might be applied to a person who maxed out their credit. Do you see a trend here. None of these connotations is positive.

 I submit there is another definition of burned out today that makes sense in agriculture.

Why Are Minerals Important

There are two major catagories of minerals your body needs they are macrominerals and micro minerals.

Macrominerals are sodium, cloride, calcium, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium and sulfer.

Microminerals are needed in smaller amounts iron, zinc, iodine, selenium, copper, magnesium, chromium, molybdenum, nickel, silicon, vanadium and cobalt.

I won't go into all the ways the body uses these minerals but one key use is...

Ashes to Ashes

The phrase "Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust" is often used in funerals but doesn't appear in the Bible. It comes from the funeral service in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. It is based on Genesis 3:19, Genesis 18:27, Job 30:19 and Ecclesiastes 3:20. Those reference all say we are made from and return to dust. The Bible uses the word dust for the elements of the earth.

When a body decays what is left is compost and minerals. Not trying to be morbid here, those are just the facts.

How do these minerals and other nutrients get into our bodies in the first place. I'll bet you are way ahead of me here. They come from the foods we eat.

Did you know when the cell utilizes nutrients there is an ash formed from the metabolism of the nutrient. Nutritionists talk about some food being alkaline and others being acidic. It is this ash that they are talking about. So when they say limes are alkaline even tho they taste very tart and acidic, it is the ash that is alkaline. I'm getting off track a little here as I wanted to talk about soil.

Soils are formed from the weathered minerals, pyrogenic minerals, and organic matter. Let's dig a little deeper...

Thomas Alva Edison

"He led no armies into battle, he conquered no countries, and enslaved no peoples...Nonetheless, he exerted a degree of power the magnitude of which no warrior ever dreamed." A quote from the Edison.com website.

Edison was a prolific inventor and businessman. His inventions included the phonograph, motion picture camera, the light bulb and perhaps the invention that did more to shape modern society than even the light bulb was electric power generation and distribution.

We know from history that on Monday, September 4, 1882 at 3 pm on Pearl Street in Manhattan, NY. That Edison's first power generation network was engaged. This and subsequent improvements were a breakthrough development in what was to become the industrialized world.

But there was another unintended consequence of this breakthrough that was to affect the health of the American family for generations to come.

The DNA Soil Connection

DNA is some pretty amazing stuff. It was only recently that the human genome (DNA) was mapped using super computers here in town at the Mayo Clinic. I know the guy that lead that team of scientists.

It is very important that our DNA replicate faithfully if we are not going to have genetic issues and health issues in general.

Many of our cells replicate frequently. Our eyes, for example replace all the cells on the surface of the eyes every three days. The villi in the intestine are replaced every 5 days. All the cells are new every two years.

So it is very important that the DNA has the right raw materials to reproduce itself faithfully.

So where do vegetables come into the pictures...

How to Grow Nutrient Dense Foods

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...

Chemical Agriculture 106 - Minerals and Micro Nutrients

Chemical agriculture focuses on N, P & K to the exclusion of all others. As a result, we are mining our soils of essential minerals and micro-nutrients. We pretty much ignore these small but essential nutrients. If we had hundreds or even thousands of years the weathering of the soil would eventually restore these elements, but the removal rate is many times faster than natural processes can restore them.

The Petersen's have addressed this need by adding minerals to our soils. We started by adding 600 lbs per acre of lime (calcium carbonate) to the whole farm for the first several years. I knew that we needed calcium because of the weeds we were seeing (ones that grew well in a calcium deficient environment and because of some of the calcium deficient diseases, like blossom end rot in the tomatoes and peppers.)

In addition we added kelp a broad spectrum of minerals from the sea and we used fish emulsion which is also a broad mineral supplement.

The 3.5 million pounds of compost also has significant minerals. Why would that be?

Heavenly Tasting Greens

It is show time in the garden for those heavenly tasting greens. Lettuce, spinach, kale, mizuna, tatsoi, cress and arugula are our favorite greens. They are especially flavorful compared to store purchased greens. We have been told this by our customers many many times and they often ask why this is. Some customers have even gone so far as to do a taste test.

There are several reasons for this amazing flavor.

First we work very hard at remineralizing our soils. We add kelp meal, low magnesium lime, and highly mineralized salts. These minerals replace those removed from the soils over the years of farming activity.

Second we use several inches of compost in each bed. The substrate for this compost is vegetable matter such as leaves and alfalfa hay that brings up minerals from deep in the soil. These minerals are maintained by the compost. Compost is not a fertilizer perse, but it does contain a nice amount of slow release nitrogen that is just right for light feeding greens. It is more of a soil amendment that feeds the microorganisms in the coil. A primary purpose for the compost is to provide a weed free shield for the greens to get ahead of any weeds that may be present. This makes for a low maintenance growing site.

Third we harvest the greens Friday night right before market. They are extremely fresh for the market and that gives them incredible shelf life. We have had many customers tell us that they have been able to enjoy their salads for two weeks after purchase.

The best way to get the maximum shelf life is to wash the greens you purchase and then spin or pat the greens free of moisture. Then put them in a zip lock bag with a paper towel to collect any residual moisture. It is the anaerobic conditions where drops of moisture collect that cause spoilage.