Solomon's remineralization worksheets - now automated free downloads!

Any other folks out there interested in soil remineralization?

If you've ever read The Intelligent Gardener, you'll be familiar with its importance... and also with the difficulty of completing the worksheets involved. Since I test and balance my minerals every year, I got real tired of wrestling with all the calculations by hand. I transferred the formulas from Solomon's worksheets into Excel format and presto! - doing the calculations now takes minutes instead of days!

I put these excel sheets up on my Google Drive as free shareable, downloadable forms in the hope that they can save others some time too. Go help yourself, and maybe drop me a comment to say hi while you're there.

First worksheet, Interpreting the soil lab results:
http://twocatpots.com/?p=3838

Second worksheet, Making the results into a shopping list from real ingredients:
http://twocatpots.com/?p=3851

Please lemme know if you have any comments or suggestions and if the sheets work for you. Happy remineralizing!

Excellent post Diana. Thank you for putting this information up for everyone.

Thank you! First post here. I'm pretty excited to share.

Great post.

One comment: The simplest explanation of why modern fruit and vegetables contain less minerals and vitamins is that they contain more water than they used to.

This also explains why irrigation is such a big issue and why so much fruit and vegetables get damaged in transit (the red delicious or "composting apple" is a case in point). I'm not saying this is the only reason, but it's probably a very significant one. Fruit and vegetables have been selected primarily for yield, the 1960s saw a lot of nonsense about "giant vegetables to feed the world" (which the Findhorn foundation happily played into) and the result was big mushy fruit and vegetables (not necessarily higher yielding per acre), capable of growing well in soil which was either low in trace elements, or soil in which the nutrients were locked away in microbial biomass as a result of fertiliser use.

I once found feral apples growing beside old railway lines. They looked like golden delicious, and IMO probably grew from the cores of this variety, but they were firmer textured and the size of golf balls. They were good dried and made into cider.I'm pretty sure that each one contained the same amount of dry matter, sugar and minerals as a golden delicious, they just didn't have so much water.

I read Steve Solomon's book and mineralized my soil. It made a huge difference. Fruit trees that didn't flower or fruit have fruited since. I also get more fruit and it lasts longer. The calculations are a bit much, but worth it. Thank you for making the path easier.
John S
PDX OR

That is awesome! Thanks so much!

Peter Ingot wrote:Great post.

One comment: The simplest explanation of why modern fruit and vegetables contain less minerals and vitamins is that they contain more water than they used to.

This also explains why irrigation is such a big issue and why so much fruit and vegetables get damaged in transit (the red delicious or "composting apple" is a case in point). I'm not saying this is the only reason, but it's probably a very significant one. Fruit and vegetables have been selected primarily for yield, the 1960s saw a lot of nonsense about "giant vegetables to feed the world" (which the Findhorn foundation happily played into) and the result was big mushy fruit and vegetables (not necessarily higher yielding per acre), capable of growing well in soil which was either low in trace elements, or soil in which the nutrients were locked away in microbial biomass as a result of fertiliser use.

I once found feral apples growing beside old railway lines. They looked like golden delicious, and IMO probably grew from the cores of this variety, but they were firmer textured and the size of golf balls. They were good dried and made into cider.I'm pretty sure that each one contained the same amount of dry matter, sugar and minerals as a golden delicious, they just didn't have so much water.

You're right. I had the occasion years ago to talk to a famous strawberry breeder who said that the large strawberries just have a simple mutation that allows cell walls to expand to accommodate more water.

He didn't think they tasted very good, but large size was what the growers thought their buyers wanted. Since he collected wild strawberries from all over, he had plenty of good-tasting berries for himself!

I got so frustrated trying to find a good trace mineral mix to add to my soil, I did the research and came up with a formula I make up myself. The base is organic coral mineral (Eco-Pure), which is kind of pricey, but you don't have to put much on your plants. My friends started buying it from me and it is nothing short of incredible. It has about 7 or 8 components and has all the bases covered as far as any known trace and major mineral on the planet. A pinch mixed into water and watered into soil around plants makes them vibrant and healthy and on rooted figs, they would set fruit immediately even though they were too young, less than a year old. It does have kelp and azomite too, and the coral mineral is bio available without waiting on microbes to break it down, which might explain the quick results. Minerals are everything and I firmly believe that if we get the minerals we need, we will have superb, robust health and long, healthy lives because our bodies simply do not break down as quickly. Perhaps it protects the telomeres on the DNA strands. Perhaps it also does this for the plants, in another way.

We have taken to using Sea-90 for mineral additions to our soil. This contains 90+ minerals and takes as little as a half cup per orchard tree.
We mix 2 TBS to 1 gallon of water for vegetables. It's amazing how much better the plants and trees grow and the improvement in taste is phenomenal as well.