Rock dusts near Everett WA?

Does anyone know of a place where I can purchase glacial rock dust or Azomite near Everett or The Seattle area? I'm having trouble sourcing this In my area online.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Rock dust is difficult to find any more because of the patriot act. I have however (if you have time) pounded the snockers out of perlite. As for the Azomite, this is simply micro nutrients. A cup of rabbit poo and 5 tablespoons in 5 gallons of water to make a batch of compost tea does the trick for the micro nutrients Hope that helps. Locally we have a product called Dynomite, which is reported to be the same as Azomite. The downside is that it runs $50 for a one pound tub of it.

Sorry if this sounds ignorant but what does the patriot act have to do with glacial rock dust? I'm not making that connection.

Azomite is volcanic rock dust, and hence full of just about every mineral the earth contains.
Not easy to find in western WA where it is needed.

(I'm also curious about the patriot act's effect on availability.)

I wonder if rock dusts in and around quarries would qualify? When traveling east on 18, I pass one just outside of Auburn, and have often contemplated trying to figure out how to get to it and scoop up some stuff.

Rock dust to millions of people is a simple aid in building up great soil. But, just like traveling on an airline with a full bottle of shampoo is now a no-no, evidently someone in the offices above us felt that rock dust could be used to make dangerous things that would harm the "people" or maybe co boom....so it has been regulated and controlled to the point that it is really hard to find any more. All it is really is dust from mining, why on earth this seemingly simple little item should be controlled I will never know. Oh and I forgot when I put the post up top, its 1 cup of rabbit poo, 5 tablespoons of molasses and 5 gallons of water.

As for other stupid laws. It is illegal to plant a simple petunia plant in my city......go figure.

There have been many talks in here about improving soil that has been depleted in order to grow healthier crops from that soil. There is a website that teaches you all about the various types of rock dust as well as a video on youtube.

http://remineralize.org/ (the website teaching about rock dust and its value) Click the tab on upper right to find sources to your area.

I am sure most of you guys know this gentleman, Don is a great source when going to organics. Great little "introduction" into the values of rock dust and regenerating our soils. If you live in my area, you will have to go on a road trip in order to purchase it. Again, still don't know why, but here in our area, you can not purchase it for the greater good of "social safety"---lmao.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za8chf4nkC4

What is your area, Deborah?

I have found one place in Seattle that stocks glacial rock dust. I am not familiar with the business, but he seems to have a lot of organic products.

http://www.waltsorganic.com/index.html

Okay had to go to the city to pay the utility bills today, got a copy of this years "illegal plants" Which Castor bean (ricin could be manufactured from it) plant and scarlet runner (kids could feed to parents to poison them and or neighbors pets) plant and shockingly Coleus (evidently high school kids eat the leaves for a 3 second high) plant made the no no list. Petunas made the list because "if planted prolifically enough, it can smell like an illegal plant" (she wouldn't tell me which one) And while there I asked them why the decision to make rock dust illegal here and was given the following information.

"Different regions and quarries produce rock dust, some of this dust contains high phosphorous levels, rather than testing and regulating every single company and manufacturer, who may at will; change without given notice their supplier for individual products, we opted to simply ban all phosphorous rock as well as rock dusts to avoid a change in suppliers by any previously approved company/and or product to avoid going against the DEA and phosphorous rock being a controlled substance. "

When I gave her my totally confused look, she leaned over the counter and whispered, "phosphorous rock is used by druggies to produce ill legal drugs"...still confused I replied, "but phosphorous rock and rock dust is not the same". She said "you are right, but some rock dust contains high levels of phosphorous and we decided not to take the risk."

As to where I am, I am located in the great old State of Utah, in a town having a mess of a time trying to keep things safe so (as it appears to me) our elected officials in our town seem to be running around like chickens with their heads cut off. The guy who was caught with enough Ricin in Las Vegas lived a few houses from me (they shut down our whole neighborhood for days because there was enough found in his home to kill the population of Salt Lake City. Evidently I have not been a good citizen and have not been watching the news enough or I would have known that two drug cartel houses were located and shut down within my city limits in the past three months.....and evidently this means we can not control ourselves and must be controlled by our government for our own safety.

Edited to add: I mean come on folks. If we banned or made illegal every single product out there that may or could be used in a "non designed" way, or that "may or may not be dangerous"....there would be little left that was legal......I am not a native of this state and sometimes I think too many people here live far too sheltered lives. I often tell my husband that if you wanted to start a panic, all you would have to do is come out with some silly conspiracy, let the teens in on the story and watch the chickens run around some more.....lmao.

Sounds like a couple of paranoid officials are making their own rules to "protect" you.

Do not tell them that the sun causes skin cancer, or else they will enforce a dawn to dusk curfew!

I too have had trouble locating products for gardens and making your own brew. But, there is a place in Portland, Or that can't be beat for pricing and many products.

http://www.concentratesnw.com/index.html

http://www.concentratesnw.com/products/Retail%20Master.pdf

Even with the drive down there, we saved money in gas, ferry fees and taxes. Of course we purchased a large amount. The pricing for the product where I live was way more than what I bought at Concentrates thus the savings. Most of the product I needed was not available here or Seattle area.
Good luck.

Ken

There may be some confusion with white phosphorus, which is used in bombs and munitions. The sort of phosphorus rock dust used as a fertilizer is not useful for any of this in its raw form. Pelitized commercial fertilizers are far more likely to be used for some dastardly purpose.

I've searched out quite a bit of info on rock dust and all of the legal stuff was related to leachate, air pollution and other very real environmental concers. I couldn't find anything that linked rock dust to homeland security, terrorism or explosives.

There are four types of phosphorus.

If left exposed to the air, it catches fire on its own. It also glows in the dark. Today, its most important use is in the manufacture of phosphoric acid (H 3 PO 4 ). Phosphoric acid, in turn, is used to manufacture fertilizers and a number of other less important products.

White: Which is very volatile, easily forms a gas is most commonly used in fertilizer applications. And has increased dramatically in price when China (2008) attached a 135% import/export tax upon it. Until this "tax" the United States produced roughly 84% of the world market of phosphorus rock.

Red: Which is most commonly used in things such as fireworks and munitions

Yellow and Black. Black is formed by refining white at high temps. Yellow is really just a "dirty" version of white. It appears yellow because there are trace amounts of Red phosphorus in the White Phosphorus.

Gleened from the USGS website:

Legislation and Government Programs
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) proposed
classifying red phosphorus, yellow phosphorus, and
hypophosphorous acid as controlled substances or List I
chemicals because they have been identified as being important
chemicals for the illicit manufacturing of methamphetamine.
Handlers of List I chemicals are subject to the Controlled
Substances Act regulatory controls including registration,
recordkeeping, reporting, and import/export requirements. The
DEA determined that these controls are necessary to prevent the
diversion of these chemicals to drug laboratories. The agency
did not propose a threshold limit for reporting because there are
few legitimate uses for the compounds, and only small
quantities of the substances are required to manufacture
methamphetamine. Industrial uses of red phosphorus include
pyrotechnics, matches, incendiary shells, tracer bullets, and
other phosphorus compounds. Red phosphorus and hypophosphorous acid are derivatives of P4 and the DEA
estimates that only 2% of the P4 produced domestically is
converted into a form that will be subject to the regulation (U.S.
Department of Justice, 2000).

Because of this under the patriot act, municipalities, if they are acting in the "better good of public safety" can place limitations and in the case of my over zealous city, they did just that. And we aren't the only city. I wished someone with a chemistry degree could get through their thick skulls that phosphorus and dust are not the same.

There are millions of types of cancer, our medical world and pharmaceutical worlds understand you cant call all cancer under one term of "cancer" it simply doesn't fit. But it seems when the DEA gets involved, if cancer were a drug, there would be no various types or "grades" of cancer, there would just simply be "cancer". Sadly, just like the story of chicken little with the "sky falling", people start running around and are so "sky is falling" that they can not stop being frantic, slow down and educate themselves.....they are too busy trying to avoid the perception of "OMG, DRUGS BEING MADE" that they simply don't hear anything but the D word.

Deborah Harr wrote: Until this "tax" the United States produced roughly 84% of the world market of phosphorus rock.

The U.S. consumes about 85% of domestic production. The remaining 15% is exported.

The U.S produces somewhere around 20% of world production. China produces 2.5 times as much and Morocco and the U.S. produce an almost identical amount. The Chineese have had the wisdom to reserve most further production for domestic usage which has allowed the US to claim a larger chunk of the export market.

The big winner in this is Morocco. Since they need very little of this product for domestic usage they have been able to seize a huge chunk of the world market.

The U.S. is expected to have a deficit of rock phosphate within 15 years if current mining and comsumption levels are maintained. The wise thing to do would be to follow China's lead and ban further export. I doubt that this will happen.

Update --- It turns out I was looking at dated information from the late 90s. The U.S. no longer produces for the export market and some is now imported. Morocco is now the only major exporter with most other production worldwide being used domestically by the producers. In 2010 Morocco supplied about 10% of the U.S. market.

Peak phosphorus may have already been reached and shortages of it are likely to occur before other major fertilizers are depleted substantially.Estimates vary, but aparently the world has enough to last 200 years but the easiest to get at reserves will be largely depleted in 20 years. So the price will go up.

Gleaned this from wikipedia ---" Morocco possesses 75 percent of the world's phosphate reserves. It is the world's first exporter (28% of the global market) and third producer (20% of global production). In 2005, Morocco produced 27.254 million tons of phosphates and 5.895 million tons of phosphate derivatives." (I assume they mean currently economically viable reserves with that 75% figure. There are maps showing low grade reserves all over the globe.The 28% portion of the export market was before the top two competitors dropped out of exporting, so that figure will grow substantialy) I could see a cartel situation developing. Morrocco's position would be stronger than that of Saudi Arabia's position within OPEC.

Other producers are ramping up production following Chineese and American withdrawl from export markets. Jordan saw an 88% increase in profits from export in 2011 and a new mine and port are due to open soon. Countries lacking in environmental controls and those with cheap labour are the most likely to tap new supplies.

This is from Yale 360 report --- Even more critically in the longer term, the U.S. Geological Survey says that of the 65 billion tons of the world’s known phosphate rock reserves — and the estimated 16 billion tons that might be economic to mine — almost 80 percent is in Western Sahara and Morocco. Add in China’s reserves, and the figure rises to almost 90 percent. The U.S., with 1.4 billion tons, is close to running out. You can see why agronomists are starting to get worried.

The world is not about to run out of phosphate. But demand is rising, most of the best reserves are gone, and those that remain are in just a handful of countries. Dana Cordell of Linkoping University in Sweden, who runs an academic group called the Global Phosphorus Research Initiative, says we could hit “peak phosphorus” production by around 2030.

As domestic production wanes, the U.S. is starting to join those countries — most of the world, in fact — that import phosphate from Morocco and the Western Sahara. American imports cross the Atlantic courtesy of Potash Corp, the Canada-based fertilizer company whose hostile takeover bid by the Australian mining giant BHP Billiton was blocked by the Canadian government last year. And phosphate mining in Florida, which is home to the world’s largest phosphate mine, is being challenged by environmentalists concerned about its impact on waterways and drinking water supplies.

Me again --- So far as I know, The back haul arrangement that Potash Corp has with American buyers of Moroccan Phospherous is the largest fertilizer back haul deal in the world. With about 60% of known reserves of potash, Canada sends out many ships that leave heavy and return empty, so as American imports From Morocco increase, it only makes sense to use these otherwise empty bulk haulers to supply the American market.

All of this just because I saw a number that I knew was way, way off. The trick with this stuff is to always search out world reserves or world production. Numbers from any given producer will often cite figures based on 100% of that country's production. The smaller the player, the less that information means on a global level.---- Coastal British Columbia contains at least 95% of Canada's palm trees but we are a very small producer of palm trees with only a few thousand specimens, so the figure is meaningless.

John Polk wrote:I have found one place in Seattle that stocks glacial rock dust. I am not familiar with the business, but he seems to have a lot of organic products.

http://www.waltsorganic.com/index.html

Thanks John! I'm going to check it out tomorrow it looks like they have a bunch of things on my list!

According to Google maps, he is in Ballard...a couple blocks away from Maritime Pacific Brewing, and their tap room (Jolly Roger).
I'll have to swing in myself and check them out! It would be nice to find a 1-stop shop locally.
In this area, I'd guess he probably has a lot of grow lights and other 'indoor projects' supplies as well. lol

Hi Everyone,

I bought a 20 kg bag of Azomite from the Issaquah Grange for something like 25 dollars. I also got a 50 pound bag of greensand too. De Youngs garden supply in Woodinville has 50 pound bags of kelp meal for $67.

Online, Planet Natural has many organic items but the shipping is prohibitive.

Hello


5 years ago you could get glacier silt from the white river, we used it on our roe crops with great results. It was cleaned out of the city of Tacoma's water diversion imbetween Buckley and Enumclaw Washington As i remember it was free but you had to load it.