I like your thinking here Wayne. I too grow some fantastic looking produce - in containers, in a very small space with only weekly additions of amendments. I do start out with a healthy soil mixture. I suspect that many do not want to spend the money or go to the trouble of starting with good soil.
Compost, seaweed tea, bat guano, fish emulsion .... there are so many ways to add natural sources of nutrients. And well you gotta do a little reading, and weeding. Containers minimize the amount of soil, cut down on the weeds and allow me to keep my plants away from the deer without building an 8 ft fence, they won't come that close to the house because of the dogs. Garnet On Wed, 2004-02-11 at 21:36, Wayne Fugitt wrote: > Evening Garnet, > > >Exactly my point. You can not confirm the data so you really have no > >information at all. It is not inconceivable that there is a hidden > >agenda. > > I tend to agree with you. If it was as bad as everyone says, we would > all be dead by now. > > I have lots of evidence to indicate my produce may in fact still have > some valuable minerals contained therein. > > Typically, taste, texture, appearance and vigor of a plant tells you > it is healthy. > > When an 80 year old farmer, who has grown tomatoes for 50 + years, > tell me "these are the best tomatoes I have eaten in my lifetime", I have > to pay attention. > > He also said that about my watermelon and my corn this past year. My > soil is not the worst, plus I am using a scientific blend or "man chelated" > nutrients. The only mineral that cannot be chelated easily is boron. > > I have grown sweet corn ten feet tall. Normally this variety gets > only 5, 6 or maybe 7 feet tall. > > Cherry tomatoes have clusters that fork 5 times with near 50 tomatoes > on a single cluster. > http://www.fugitt.com/chertom.htm If you look close, you can see the forks > in the clusters. > > Full size tomatoes set the fruit clusters very close together, 3 to > 4 inches, with 8 to 11 tomatoes per cluster. I had one situation with > full sized clusters less than one inch apart. As the cluster reached > maturity, you could not get the finger between these clusters. > > I grow cantaloupes so sweet and full of flavor, they actually pump > white sugar out around the stems. > > The okra is so good I eat it raw. Squash has better flavor than any > you find. > > Of course feeding liquid nutrients each hour makes soil obsolete. > > This is all with "man chelated" nutrients. > > My goal one day is to grow a tall tomato plant. Some have produced > 37 feet of main stem in one years growth. Not many people know a tomato > plant will live for several years. I am sure I can hit 60 to 70 feet if > that is my goal. > > A small plot of corn http://www.fugitt.com/corn_2.htm > > This is a home built measuring > device. http://www.fugitt.com/tipspon1.htm Made from a plastic spoon and > 1 optical sensor, I was able to get 1/6th ounce resolution. An event > counter kept track of the tips per time. I wrote the software to run this > system. It does full data logging of all events and data. > > I was also logging EC of the leachate over 24 hours. You could see the > EC change when temperatures were highest and sunlight the brightest. This > is when the plants remove the most nutrients from the liquid nutrient > solution. > > I grow plants in soil, pine bark, mixed media, and hay bales. I have > not tried growing them in AIR yet, but that is possible also. > > Sorry I got off subject, not all this is about "soil minerals". > > Some of the older log files exist here.... > http://www.fugitt.com/wfipnow.htm Also some moon light data logging I got > during an eclipse. This complete web page is the output of a program I > wrote that embedded the data from my system into the web page and > automatically sent it to my web site. > > Tons of fun, to say the least. > > Wayne > > > > > > > > -- > The silver-list is a moderated forum for discussion of colloidal silver. > > Instructions for unsubscribing may be found at: http://silverlist.org > > To post, address your message to: [email protected] > > Silver-list archive: http://escribe.com/health/thesilverlist/index.html > > List maintainer: Mike Devour <[email protected]> > > s
