minerals for better garden performance

After reading Lynn's High Performance Gardening, I'm thinking I really need to focus more on minerals because, as I learned, compost alone isn't going to provide all of them. Now I'm wondering about the best way to supplement my garden soil. Is there a specific balance of minerals I should be aiming for? Do I need to get a bunch of individual minerals, or is there a balanced mineral product I can add as needed?

Maybe do do a soil test first, if you haven’t, to see what your current mineral content is.  Also observe your plants to see if it looks like that are missing any particular mineral— e.g blossom-end rot for lack of available calcium.

Add sea salts for perfect trace mineral balance..

https://www.echocommunity.org/en/resources/133e42f8-230a-4f2f-93f0-d86a602956e2

As for the rest, compost and add anything and everything organic, and let the soil life and plants sort it out. This may upset the scientists, but I will put my faith in nature’s infinite wisdom, and humbly accept all results.

Your two easiest, least expensive mineral sources are....

Azomite to mix in with dry fertilizer.

https://azomite.com


It's a clay from a former seabed in Utah and has almost every mineral known to man.

I use it in the Complete Organic Fertilizer mix Steve solomon came up with.
here's that:

- COF or Complete Organic Fertilizer  -

- enough to cover 100 sq. ft. -
- mix by pouring from one 5 gallon bucket to another -


3 quarts of cottonseed meal
- can order it from feed store by 50# bag, any seed meal will work -

1 quart bone meal
- can also use colloidal rock phosphate - feed store may be able to get bone meal, lowes or home depot probably have the rock phosphate fertilizer, maybe even the bone meal

1 pint Azomite
- probably easiest to get this from amazon - can substitute kelp but kelp is incredibly expensive now.

1 pint dolomitic (part lime, part magnesium)  limestone plus...
1 pint agricultural gypsum

- can get both of these at lowes or home depot -
- If using to fertilize acid loving plants like blueberry and potato make a     special mix   with no lime

1/3 cup potassium sulfate

- Lowes or Home Depot may have this, if not, get it online -

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One more thing about Azomite. The native folks would travel hundreds of miles way back when to get this stuff to use on skin problems. Smearing a mud of this and some water on almost any skin problems does amazing things.

there's a  lot of info out there on clay therapy and drawing clay if you want to take a deeper dive on this.

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For liquid and dry fertilizer Sea 90 will do it big time.

It's sea salt.

Details here:

https://www.sea-90.com


Yeah, I know, "Salt on my plants? No way!"

That was my initial reaction too, until our very own Mr. Redhawk here (soil scientist) convinced me to try it.

Spectacular, highly visible results is all I can say.

This probably outranks Azomite for me because it can be used as dry, liquid, or foliar feed and seems to get quicker, more dramatic results.

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I use them in tandem in case for some reason I can't get to the foliar feeding every couple weeks, the Azomite has it covered.

Hi Leigh,
I agree with you that minerals are very important. While I have heard very respected people telling me that almost all soil has everything the plant needs, it is just not available... I still tend to add some. I tend towards adding lots stuff and letting the plants grab what they need. For instance, I often add seaweed that I gathered from the beach, to my compost. I buy in chicken feed, and put the manure/bedding onto the compost pile. These are going to raise the mineral content of my compost, which then gets spread on the garden.

If vegetables are high in some minerals would chop and drop provide those same minerals from the plant to the soil?

Stacie said, "Peanuts are good sources of copper, magnesium, phosphorous, potassium, zinc, and several of the B complex.

https://permies.com/t/154188/Planning-garden-nutrients