Let's talk about soil minerals

https://permies.com/wiki/77424/List-Bryant-RedHawk-Epic-Soil#637639

Many times I get asked (here and other places) about adding minerals to our soil for gardening.
Minerals are a fairly hot topic in my world of soil microbiology and many believe that all the minerals needed are abundant in all soils.
Recent studies shows that while this is mostly true, there are a few minerals that can only be found in the oceans.
These minerals are not found in our soil base, anywhere, this might not be such a horrible thing except for the needs of the human body, which require these minerals from plants so the body can make use of them.
These minerals have been recently discovered to be necessary for vital body functions, and the lack of them is looking to be one of the reasons for many health issues we are seeing today.

I would take the time to write all this new information here but another has already done a very good job of it so I give you the article written by Charles Walters.
I broke his paragraphs down so the ideas and information would perhaps be easier to keep track of as you read.

Soil minerals not only can help your plants, but they can help your health too.
Readouts from high-priced instruments tell us that ocean water contains 92 elements — give or take a few, depending on location near ocean vents and extraction methods — which appear as the first 92 entries of Mendeleyev’s periodic table.
We rely on paleontologists and archeologists to tell us what happened with the North American continent.
One single event suggests recall before we move forward to place ocean minerals under the microscopic eye.
About 55 million years ago an asteroid crashed into the shallow sea near what is now the Yucatan Peninsula.
It had been traveling at perhaps 85,000 miles per hour, give or take, and lost its way for reasons only speculation can supply.
The crash terminated the age of dinosaurs, literally leveled most of the continent, extinguished species, annihilated woodlands, and prepared the way for mountains to rise, savannahs to form, and, not least, for mineral dusts to be distributed worldwide.
One mineral that asks for our attention is beryllium.
It can’t be found on land except at depths that invite paleontologists and their digging tools.
Scientists date their finds by the beryllium layer, which was uniformly distributed when the asteroid struck.
Yet beryllium shows up in a readout of ocean water.
Does it have a role in enzyme formation?
If Dr. Maynard Murray is correct, all the elements have a role, all of them governed by the law of homeostasis, even if in concentration they are quite toxic.
The asteroid that struck also shaped our future, as in science fiction.
Picture the scene, if you will: A star appears in the heavens. It will not graze, but will punch a hole into the planet as deep as Everest is high.
Some of the fragments of exploded rock return to the heavens and a new orbit.
Before the ocean can cool the wound, dust bellows skyward to circle the globe.
The asteroid itself was perhaps three times the size of Australia’s Ayres Rock, the largest monolith on the planet.
The rock that struck with the explosive force of 100 million megatons of high explosives brought the Mesozoic Age to a close.

On November 19, 1998, the journal Nature published Professor Frank Kilt’s definitive proof.
He had found a piece of the asteroid ore taken from the ocean floor.
The sample still contained the chemical traces of a carbonaceous chondrite. These chemicals are so rare they rate attention as the most miniscule of traces in ocean water.
The point here is that everything on Earth finds its way into the nutritional center of gravity, the ocean.

The connection between enzymes and specific minerals has been made in only a few cases. The full inventory of knowledge awaits discovery.
For now it is enough to supply a few notes simply to make the point that a shortage or marked imbalance of trace nutrients means malnutrition, bacterial, fungal and viral attack, debilitation and the onset of degenerative metabolic diseases.
It is a shortage that best defines our situation.
Elsewhere I have discussed the inability of hybrids to pick up trace nutrients even if they are present in the soil.
This problem is exacerbated by the fact that too often the traces simply are not there.
Soil scientists can test in vain for cobalt, a trace nutrient generally farmed out and totally missing in almost all American soils.
Yet cobalt is essential if brucellosis in cattle and undulant fever in human beings is to be prevented.

At numbers 23 and 24 of the periodic table, you’ll see vanadium and chromium.
These are the keys to enzymes that determine glucose tolerance.
A deficiency of chromium has been implicated in low blood sugar, hyperglycemia and finally diabetes. There may be more to the story.
Since about the end of World War II, many municipalities have added sodium fluoride in one form or another to the drinking water, this on the theory that it strengthens the apatite in teeth.
Fluoride is one of four halogens: fluorine, chlorine, bromine and iodine. Fluorine trumps iodine, for which reason iodine often does not make it to the thyroid, and thyroxin is not produced.
Without thyroxin, sugar metabolism becomes a non-event.
This deficit in being able to handle sugar is exacerbated by a sugar overbalance in the diet, which has increased from about five pounds per capita in the 1930s to 135 pounds per capita at the present time.

The chromium molecule is required to burn fat, and chromium is simply missing from the soil and food supplements due to unavailability.
The chromium molecule is also a demanded element in muscle construction.
Both chromium and vanadium function badly as synthetics. They function best when delivered by plant life, especially by grass.

Sulfur is a nemesis of cancer.
Sharks concentrate ocean sulfur in their bodies, which is why some entrepreneurs offer shark cartilage to consumers.
There are problems with all the recognized major nutrients and their tendency to achieve excess status with relevant cures that are worse than the cause.
Just the same, it should be pointed out that sulfur protects the myelin sheath over nerve endings.
It is thus an insurance policy against multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and even Lou Gherig’s disease.
Synthetic sulfur may be toxic, but as it appears in ocean water, it has no side effects and no taste.
Sulfur supplements are compounds, always inorganic compounds. The side effects can be devastating.
Sulfur as it arrives in grass is organic, totally digestible. Sulfur compounds put on restaurant salads and in wine often cause allergic reactions, as evidenced by ringing, perspiration around the collar and on the forehead, even breathing difficulty.
The sulfur served up by grass grown on a diet of ocean solids scavenges free radicals, blunts food allergies, assists the liver in producing bile, adjusts pH, and assists in the production of insulin, sugar metabolism.

There seems to be a pecking order to mineral utilization, one so complex science can only hint at nature’s complexity.
For instance, that sulfur mentioned earlier requires vitamin C for absorption.
In turn, vitamin C demands copper, and copper asks for zinc.
Much as elements work together in ocean water, they support each other in the warm-blooded body.

Se, Mendeleyev number 34, is selenium.
That short measure of selenium delivered by ocean-grown grass may be the lifetime protection against cancer.
It’s an antioxidant. It traps unstable molecules and prevents damage. It helps confer immunity to viruses when ingested in nature’s prescribed amount.
There is research that suggests protection from neurotoxins.
The mechanism has been identified.
Selenium is used by the body to construct an enzyme that detoxifies staphs and builds immunity.
Unfortunately, selenium is generally missing in row crop soils except in some Western regions, where it appears in toxic overloads.
Selenium is implicated in muscular dystrophy, myalgia, cystic fibrosis, irregular heartbeat, Lou Gherig’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Sudden Death Syndrome and many other abnormalities, sickle cell anemia and cancer included.
There’s more, namely, the nature of fat metabolism.
The food industry no longer likes butter.
It wants shelf life and therefore uses synthetic fats that do not melt at body temperature.
This single fact also defines such compounds as rancid fats filled to the brim with free radicals.
Selenium is best able to deal with the rancid fats that have come to infect — yes, infect — our diet and its overload of free radicals.

We can digress to identify role and function, just the same.
Suffice it to say that viruses often inhabit the human system, sheltered from the immune system, often staying on for an opportunity to perform mischief years later.
Various viruses and bacteria bow only to minerals that deal with the problem.
These minerals have to be organic in the strict meaning of the term.
They have to have a carbon passenger, ergo water soluble and of a size that permits transport not only into plants, but into the hiding places perceived to be unreachable by medicines.
That trace of silver in ocean water interdicts the activity of a virus that weakens a cell and turns it anaerobic.
The cancer cell, for example, is not aerobic and oxygen consuming — it has turned itself anaerobic and finally goes into wild proliferation.
The virus isn’t alone in effecting cancer mischief.

Parasites figure, as do toxins and pH levels at variance with human requirements.
That is why ocean silver and zinc are so effective in preserving health.
The law of homeostasis has decreed that these minerals are to be excreted if not required.

Move down the periodic table a bit and you’ll encounter copper, number 29. This mineral annihilates all parasites and intestinal worms.
Entire texts have been written about parasites, some of them essential, most of them not.
According to Hulda Clark, fully 97 or 98 percent of the American people are loaded with immune system-debasing parasites that take for themselves nutrition basically needed for health.
This nutrient is either deficient or missing in the boxed foods sold across grocery store counters.
The texts tells us that a copper shortage is often implicated in weight gain, cancer, a raft of allergies, high blood pressure and, yes, weight loss.
These little copper-stealing creatures sail in the river of food and defy detection because of their size and metabolic duplicity.
The placental barrier saves infants from many distress factors, but it can be breached by an overload of farm chemicals, mercury, atomic fallout and even malnutrition.
Research is always indicated, but the promoters of ocean-grown wheat or rye grass are probably well within their mark when they point to copper and the array of minerals in ocean water and ocean-grown grass.
Zinc’s association with copper is too well known to permit delay in presenting these few notes.
Water, of course, is H2O — hydrogen and oxygen.
The mere mention of oxygen suggests ozone and serves up the medical definition that ozone is a poisonous gas with no known medical use.
A distinction has to be made: Nature’s ozone, like nature’s oxygen, is pure as the driven snow and both safe and efficacious.
Ozone produced by high-voltage machinery is a nitric oxide acid gas.
Most commercial machines produce a harmful gas.
Ocean water does not create nitrous oxide. This is merely an aside and a warning to those who seek shortcuts via machines, when the real shortcut is daily use of wheat or ryegrass juice, especially juice from plants grown with ocean water.
Oxygen is absolutely necessary for digestion.

Silver is a trace mineral that rarely finds a plant list, simply because it isn’t there, at least not in soils.
Its role in stomping out infections has been recognized by food supplement suppliers and now enjoys a brisk trickle.
Organic silver requires a carbon component not generally available in inorganic supplements.
Mere mention of one nutrient does not extinguish the requirement for another.
The efficacy of silver in combating Candida albicans does not rule out the even better efficiency of raw garlic for the same purpose.

All so-called major and minor nutrient elements are microflora in which efficiency is energetically coupled.
Don’t let the word frighten you.
It simply means that overdosing with one growth factor will change the entire spectrum.
An excess of nitrogen will cause potassium deficiency.
In fact, every excess disturbs the microflora’s activity, chiefly through nitrification and fixation.
Interrelations work their way all through the life chain.

The complexity of nature’s arrangement seems awesome, a regular nightmare for the human being attempting to match wits, calibrate, and supply minerals one at a time.
Here is where the ocean and its plenty come to the rescue.
You will note that fluoride is missing from Mendeleyev’s table.
Actually, there is no such thing as fluoride.
There is a gas called fluorine.
Combined with iron, it becomes stanis fluoride, a compound; combined with sodium, it becomes sodium fluoride.
Both are said to assist the apatite crystals in teeth to harden.
The idea is bogus and merely a device for unloading a waste product from the aluminum and phosphate industries into the water supply.
The ocean does not construct these compounds, and fluoride is not taken up by wheatgrass grown in ocean water.
The fluoride touted by dentists is a compound that turns stomach acids into fluoric acid.
This particular acid is available in many grocery stores to take out rust stains in clothing.
Sodium fluoride cancels out over 100 enzyme functions.
The late John Yiamouyiannis attributed up to 50,000 deaths per annum by cancer to this contaminant.

The single factor that separates the useful from the useless is carbon.
Carbon makes a mineral organic. The inorganic iron in processed foods is not easily assimilated.
The worst-case scenario is hemochromostasis, a fatal disease, or iron supplement disease.
Much the same is true when inorganic copper gets into the bloodstream, where it causes Wilson’s disease, schizophrenia, the Jekyll-Hyde syndrome, enzyme shutdown and digestive failure.
Copper and iron are not copper and iron if they are not organic.
People often suffer aneurisms even though tests show they are full of inorganic copper, this because of a copper shortage.
Even lead and mercury have their organic forms and arrive as harmless ingredients in plants.
As heavy metals, they are among the most ubiquitous nonradioactive contaminants on planet Earth.
Mercury in Portland cement and plastics is a hazard.
That fog on the car window on a hot day is created by mercury vapor escaping the plastic.
It visits degenerative conditions too numerous to mention on mankind, yet mercury and lead are listed as organic elements in the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics.
They are found naturally in plants and animals and ocean water, even though we are loathe to list them.

Confusion reigns supreme when human beings doctor themselves with compounds that pretend to supply missing nutrients.
Calcium carbonate is a good horrible example.
Calcium carbonate is simply one calcium, one carbon, three oxygens — better known as a blackboard chalk.
It takes super-big activity to rescue this metabolic contaminant before the system can use the calcium.
Usually it doesn’t happen, and the chalk goes down the tube without any beneficial results.
Muscle and leg cramps are a consequence of calcium depletion.
Using blackboard chalk for a calcium source delivers osteoporosis.
Simply stated, calcium carbonate is inorganic and not water soluble.
Suffice it to say that most processed foods such as orange juice, cereals, etc., are loaded with this form of calcium.
Ocean calcium is of a different stripe.
It is perfect for plant assimilation, a crown jewel in the pantheon of essentials in the soil, the plant and the human being.

The business of counting elements — chromium picolanate, for instance — means making a complex molecular compound.
This is the modus operandi for creating many health food supplements and all new drugs.
The suggestion that the product is delivering an element leaves unstated the fact that side effects and reverse effect are always a legacy and frequently a debilitating consequence.
If this connection calls into question copper glutamate, zinc, pecolanate, vanadium picolanate and other complex molecular products, so be it.
Blood vessels clogged by calcium are legion, as are triple and quadruple bypass surgeries because of blackboard chalk in the food supply and the absence of organic calcium in food crops.
Mere mention of these facts calls into question the recommended daily allowance (RDA).
We ask and leave unanswered the question whether tests establishing RDA were accomplished with calcium carbonate or organic calcium!
The first element listed in our elemental inventory is H, hydrogen. Ascorbic acid equals hydrogen in a useable form.
Too little hydrogen equals scurvy.
Hydrogen is antagonistic to oxygen and leaves the latter element developing a shortfall of cellular oxygen.

A short digression may be in order.
Grind grain, make it into bread, and you invite acidity.
Let the grain sprout, then make bread, and the result is more alkalinity, a higher pH.
Cooking food tends to lower pH because it destroys enzymes.
As pH declines, the ability of the body to absorb nutrients is diminished, leading to deficiency and disease.
The pandemic of obesity, now an inescapable fact of American life, is a consequence of low pH in the food supply, among other factors.
Viral diseases, cancer parasites, all gain permission for mischief from low-pH acidosis.

Cell division and blood clotting depend on minerals.
They keep DNA and RNA activity at the cellular and subcellular level.
They make vitamins possible.
It is axiomatic that scientists can make vitamins, but they can’t make minerals any more than they can make ocean water.
A full complement of soil minerals makes it possible for the body to self-regulate and self-repair its way out of most afflictions.

Linus Pauling, the only person so far to win two unshared Nobel prizes, once pointed out that you can trace every illness, every disease and every infection to some mineral deficiency.
Any mineral deficiency always means there are even more mineral deficiencies waiting in the wings.
It is equally true that most of the major degenerative diseases have been developed in test animals by withholding or manipulating critical trace minerals.
These soil minerals have been scoured from agricultural sites over the last two centuries just as surely as if they had been vacuumed out of a family room carpet.
The shocking absence of cobalt and chromium from New Jersey soils was recorded early last century by George H. Earp-Thomas.
The issue of missing trace minerals and their role in plant and animal health consumed the working lifetime of William A. Albrecht at the University of Missouri.
It also enriched the archives of Friends of the Land at Louis Bromfield’s Malabar Farm in Ohio.
Many of the great professors of the 1930s and 1940s amassed agronomic knowledge right up to 1949, when toxic rescue chemistry became established orthodoxy and agriculture was sent reeling into an uncertain world.

There is a mineral called molybdenum.
Its function is to expunge waste from the body.
Unfortunately, it is generally missing — as though it went down under with beryllium when the asteroid collided with Earth.
Briefly, the anatomy of disease control and reversal of degenerative metabolic diseases is seated in the organic mineral diet and the vitamins controlled and dispensed by nutrients.
Thus, magnesium walks hand-in-hand with calcium. They go together like ham and eggs.
The lack of one diminishes the role of the other.
None of these problems are easily solved with a handful of pills, but all bow to all the minerals in the right form.
Magnesium cancels out migraine headaches.
This is merely an aside, a hint at the complexity of nature’s demands and a recipe for meeting these demands.
The pharmacy pretends to have drugs for asthma, anorexia, neuromuscular problems, depression, tremors, vertigo, organ calcification, etc., all when magnesium is the shortage.
There is no need for calcium blockers or the alchemy of synthetic medication.
The point here is that there is an absolute shortage of minerals in the food supply.
The wheatgrass juice that Ann Wigmore developed seems to be a final benediction and absolution for the transgressors of civilization.

There are mysteries in the ocean we hardly dare mention.
Consider that 20 percent of the Earth’s surface contains gold, organic gold.
There isn’t enough of it to justify setting up an extracting operation, but ocean water has enough of a trace to make a few suggestions.
The literature suggests gold’s offering in battling alcohol addiction, natural problems, circulatory problems — indeed a raft of anomalies that could fill this page.
Its presence in ocean water is not a curse, rather a gift no less treasured than was that gold delivered by the magi.
Gold’s assent in achieving deep sleep is a staple in folk medicine, albeit one ratified by research and modern experience.

Platinum also appears on Mendeleyev’s table, at number 78.
If anything, the presence of platinum in ocean water is even more fortuitous than its gold content.
It figures in dealing with PMS, circulation and cancer.
It enhances the ability to sleep and sparks daytime energy.
Here again, ocean particle sizes contribute to efficiency as well as balance.

These few notes merely hint at the vast complexity contained in energy from the ocean.
It has been reported that silver annihilates no less than 650 viruses.
It does this because of the valence charge that surrounds resistant molecules when silver is present and able to assert itself.
Even though silver kills viruses and anaerobic bacteria, it never harms the friendly fellows, the aerobic bacteria.
It will be noted that the most effective burn ointments are silver-based.

Many elements have rated mention in this article.
Others bask in silence. We do not know all the answers, or even the questions: Henry Schroeder, in writing The Trace Elements and Man, suggested another 400 years would be required to discern the role of each mineral if the present rate of discovery is maintained.
Maynard Murray and Edward Howell calculated equal time for enzymes, knowledge of which is enlarged every day.
While we wait, the ocean abides, and ocean-grown grass waits in the wings for those with the wit to use it.

As you can determine from this article, there are minerals that are missing from our soil that are vital for our health.
There are a few products out there that we can use to add these missing minerals to our soil so we can have our plants pick them up, the mention of ocean grown grass is made because it is the easiest way to get these minerals into our bodies in usable forms.
Currently there are companies selling sea minerals, in the form of sea salt, which we can make use of with out a fear of creating a salty soil since it would take a very large quantity of these products to create such a problem.
Another good way to get these minerals into our bodies is to use these sea salt products on our soil where we grow our foods, if we have the microorganisms already there to process these minerals, we will produce foods as good as that sea water grown wheat grass.

I know this has been a long read but I feel it is important for this information to be more public and read by people who are in the process of trying to produce the highest nutrition in their foods already.
Knowledge is power after all.

Redhawk

Bravo. Just last week I started thinking about the hunt for the "fountain of youth". My conclusion was: wherever it was, whatever it was, some of what it is would be in the ocean. The ocean has everything.

Im fortunate that i end up oceanside once a month. I bring back 10 gallons every trip to dehydrate into salt and dilute into my soil.  Then i had an epiphany,  dehydrate it "there", so the liquid doesnt have to be shared between salt and soil ammending. So i set up a solar dehydrator there for just a few bucks. I still bring back water, but the salt is made there.

https://permies.com/t/85170/wild-harvesting/Waynes-solar-salt-factory

To add to that, i now bring back fish carcesses to sit in a tub for 3 months. A thread here indicated all the bones will dissolve,  leaving an immulsion.

https://permies.com/t/89639/composting/Unlimited-amount-fish-scraps

Dr. Redhawk, Excellent read.  I remember you discussing your use of SEA-90 and baking soda with drinking water. I think it was 2 grams of each in one liter of water.  I still have 5 bags of SEA-90 for my yard (and now me).  I just bought a scale that can measure in 0.1 gram increments so this is my next health goal.

Brilliant as usual.   A little overwhelming for my untrained mind but you've managed to condense an encyclopedia of information in one article - just enough to pique everyone's interest :)    I hope this is all included in the book you're writing.....   Thank you Sir

My land was all sea a lot of millions of years ago (Cretaceous).  Do I still need to bring in sea minerals or are the sea minerals already there in the rock?

There's been a fair bit of research concerning seaweed (algae) and fish derivatives on plants, most commercial ones - usually liquid concentrates, are widely available and used by gardeners - I always use it as a gentle alternative to manure on seedlings and potted plants.

We are legally permitted to collect seaweed that has been washed up on beaches, but can't harvest it without a licence. The seaweed is washed to remove excess salt then laid on the surface around plants like a mulch, never dug in. It tends to turn to a jelly and decomposes, providing micronutrients.

In Western Australia, where the soils are basically impoverished sand, gardeners use so-called 'rock minerals', even a clay slurry where they can source it.

It may be a matter of feeding the microorganisms that in turn have a symbiotic relationship with the plant roots, rather than actually feeding the plant directly.

There is so much to learn in this field. People do not understand how important it is to eat food that has been raised on soils that have been remineralized properly. I know of several different farmers who grow this way and they are all universally successful. The problem is that there is a extremely high up-front cost AND the food that they raise must, by necessity be higher priced than anything else at the farmers market. Yet, those who know clamor for more of it! I've spent time on market gardening forums and I notice that this is an universal trend. At one time someone in a forum somewhere specifically requested a locally grown watermelon, I think it was. Of course, it was watermelon season, yet she was asking for a locally grown watermelon in her area, which I believe was northern Idaho. I decided to find a random city in that area and analyze the farmers that were at their farmers market. The lady told me yes, she knows of that farmer. And that farmer is the most expensive farmer at the market, AND the busiest. There was only one farmer at the market that was growing to those principles.

Dr Redhawk, at the risk of sending this down the rabbit hole, I came to this from a different angle.

All major religions (that I know of) have a flood story. Most also have a historical record of people living much longer back "in the day".

I would imagine that after a wide scale flood event, seawater would be mostly involved  in the flood event (there isn't enough fresh water produced by the evaporative energy of the sun to even get close). This could have been meteoric or tectonic, makes no difference, it would involve sea bed being washed inland. We have mostly paid attention to the fossils, but the minerals are also translocated. Yes, this is based on oral histories, but that is what we have.

Different hypotheses for why people might live longer- more blocking of UV/cosmic rays, or better nutrition- this was preagricultural presumably. Could it have been the minerals? I can't change the atmospheric stuff.

Our blood mineral concentrations mimic diluted sea water pretty closely- about 1/4 ratio. Plants (hugely generally) are not that different. We share a ton of enzyme families. We don't photosynthesize, they don't need oxygen transport, but even those molecules are similar!

So I have been looking to recapitulate the minerals of a bygone time. My soil is granite substrata, and was only flooded very remotely (we are well out of any historical flood plain). Initially the mountains would have had a mix of granite, basalt, and other less common deposits washing down. This would be a good mix of minerals. Rather than test for microminerals (with the exception of boron, which has a pretty narrow window) I am applying a mix of rock dusts from three main deposits within an hour of me, only one of which is granite. The cost of transportation varies from under $70 a dump truck to around $200, and the cost per ton is around $20.

I try to do this after any earthworks are done, because minerals will follow a gradient, and be leached rapidly if plants are not uptaking them. The goal is nutrient cycling, just like the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith.

For the Sea-90, I would pay around $50/acre/year for their prescribed rate of application. Rather than do that, I would rather do foliar application which has a higher rate of uptake. So I am adding it to my budding compost tea brewing, and experimenting with how much I can add and still keep the organisms happy [note- this will mean an upgrade in my microscopy equipment, thanks Dr Redhawk for the links on your post]. It's not much, right now, maybe 100grams of Sea-90  in 15 gallons. I may be able to increase the rate of Sea-90 by diluting the tea. So far this has been pretty effective, the most notable thing has been that the japanese beetles are MUCH less vigorous on the plants I have foliar fed. Nothing looks at all stressed.

There are some other Sea minerals I am trialling as well, kelp in the compost tea brewer seems like a good idea with less salinization but it was hard to clean out. The big compost tea guy noted he got less microbes with increasing kelp, and that looks right to me. Ocean fish heads in the compost is another.  It seems like generally plants have adapted (or been selected?) for less of the sea microminerals. Maybe reversing that is doable!

For the record, my cost per acre for the rock dust is around $100 total over 4 applications. The "dust" I get has some pea-sized aggregate, which is nice for the poultry should they be looking for grit. This is pretty cheap compared to azomite or Sea-90 or kelp, which I use much more sparingly. Of course the fish heads are free!

Tyler Ludens wrote:My land was all sea a lot of millions of years ago (Cretaceous).  Do I still need to bring in sea minerals or are the sea minerals already there in the rock?

In most areas of the world the soil that was laid down during the Cretaceous period is approximately 150 feet (or more) below the surface, That means any minerals from the ocean of that period are at that depth.

TJ, I would use the Sea-90 more like I use Epsom salts, about 1/2 cup is plenty to spread around one of my full sized fruit trees and it actually persists for at least 3 years in my soil.

When we need to make such additions I prefer to make them localized to exactly where I need them the most.

Everything else you are doing is very good, just remember that you don't need to make additions every year when it comes to minerals, they do stick around, especially in good microbe rich soils.

Thank you, Dr Redhawk for this important informationI  A vitamin capsule is fermenting as we speak. Just one question which may be silly (it could be that something obvious is escaping me): my humanure is 100% recycled and twice fermented before it re-enters the plant ecosystem. Surely if I just eat lots of fish this will eventually make its way through the garden?

hau Natasha, What makes it through the body is the nutrition our body didn't need at the time we processed those foods carrying the nutrients so what comes out is left overs.
So yes if you eat lots of fish it will end up in the garden, but when you ferment and heat up any compostable material, there will be some rearranging of those materials (chemical bonds breaking or forming to create new, different molecules) it doesn't happen to all of them but a small portion of them.

Bryant RedHawk wrote:

Tyler Ludens wrote:My land was all sea a lot of millions of years ago (Cretaceous).  Do I still need to bring in sea minerals or are the sea minerals already there in the rock?

In most areas of the world the soil that was laid down during the Cretaceous period is approximately 150 feet (or more) below the surface, That means any minerals from the ocean of that period are at that depth.

In my area it is at or just below the surface.  Are the minerals from the Cretaceous then at or just below the surface here?  We find Cretaceous fossils lying on the surface.

thank you so much!Off to get ocean water

That is a great question Tyler,

If you are finding fossils on the surface it could mean that the mineralized soil we want has been eroded away by wind and water or it could mean that these minerals are accessible by plant roots.
The determining factor would be when in the Cretaceous period that animal died, if it was early in the period then the minerals would likely be gone, if it was very late in the period those minerals are most likely still sub surface and close enough for plant roots.

Then there is the question of which minerals were available at that time? Were all the minerals we know today already formed or were some of them formed during or after the catastrophic meteor strike that began the end of the Cretaceous period?
We do know that there is a layer of selenium that defines the end of the Cretaceous, that is how we figured it out in the first place, so If we look at the periodic table what we want to know is where is Beryllium compared to Selenium, that will tell us if this vital mineral was already present or not.
Beryllium is the first element in table 4 which makes it element #4, Selenium is # 34 in the periodic table which tells us Beryllium was created before Selenium in the formation part of the earths crust.
So I suspect that if your soil is indeed from the Cretaceous period (fairly likely) then you are probably good to go for growing the nutritional values our bodies really need.

Thank you, Redhawk.  Looking at maps of the strata it appears that the rocks are from the Comanchean period of the Cretaceous, which is somewhat early.  Good to know many minerals might not be available.  And even if they were still in the rock, the high alkalinity would probably make them unavailable to most plants without a very active living soil.

Tyler, we do know that most of the southern states (including Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and all the way to the east coast and up to Missouri was all under the oceans during the Permian period of the Paleozoic Era.
So you should have plenty of the minerals in your soil, all we need to do is figure out how to get them available to the plant roots. (bacteria and fungi are going to be key organisms for this but the pH will need to be in the 7.5 to 6.8 range for best utilization.

Thank you for that, Redhawk.  

hau TJ, I want to address this

All major religions (that I know of) have a flood story. Most also have a historical record of people living much longer back "in the day".

The flood story you mention here has been (for most of the religions) been traced back to one single flood story, simply retold in a way to fit the re-teller's point of view or set of circumstances.
This is born our by geological evidence and so can be thought of as a bunch of plagiarism over the centuries.

If we look at the bone evidence of human remains, the idea of extreme longevity "back in the day" was once again man writing what he wanted to believe rather than what actually was.
In any period of homo sapiens or any of the hominids for that matter, 90 years old is and was quite ancient, sure there are a few that lived longer but none have lived past 120 years as far as we can determine.

My opinion is that in past times groups of homo sapiens did have access to a wider array of minerals in their foods when compared to todays "Commercial Agriculture products" which have less nutrition than was available at the beginning of the 1900's.
Once we started using machines to plow the land and adding artificial "fertilizers" the nutrient density of foods started a vicious downward spiral.

Very nice article and lot's of information from contributors. Thanks very much.

So, couple of methods to get these minerals and traces into our soil are:

Preparing liquid sea weed fertilizer using washed off seaweeds.

Preparing fish fertilizer with ocean caught fish.

Using rock dust as a fertilizer.

Using pure sea salt on soil and under trees in moderation.

Adjusting the acidity between 6.8 to 7.5 in the soil.

And may be collecting expired vitamin & mineral pills, dissolving them in water and applying them on soil in moderation.

Anything else?



 

In most areas of the world the soil that was laid down during the Cretaceous period is approximately 150 feet (or more) below the surface, That means any minerals from the ocean of that period are at that depth.

Ugh, I'm going to need a much bigger subsoiler. Thanks for the informative post Dr Redhawk. As always. I was looking over your grafting post and have decided to try some bud grafts this weekend. It is fun figuring out how to create abundance with less! So much more fun and cheaper than ordering from Starks! You have been a great inspiration in this task!

Tj Jefferson wrote:

 ...the soil that was laid down during the Cretaceous period is approximately 150 feet (or more) below the surface...

Ugh, I'm going to need a much bigger subsoiler.

If all you need is a bigger subsoiler I'd really like to know what kind of tractor you're running there!

Why is this thread going off on an esoteric path?

Soil remineralization is a proven science from the 1930's and the 1940's, William Albrecht is considered one of the godfathers of the movement. After WW2 the US Government sent the main research institutions off in search of profits from chemical agriculture- however, there have been lone people toiling away for decades in this field. Niel Kinsey is a soil consultant who specializes in doing this. Arden Andersen is another one.

A publication that specializes in soil remineralization and such is Acres USA.

Now, you might ask why I am here on a permaculture forum? Because permaculture, at it's most fundamental level, fulfills all the needs of nature. Not much else does- and soil remineralization is a small part of that.

Here's a brief page from a permaculture consultant that talks about this:

http://www.permacultureartisans.com/permaculture-building/soil-fertility-and-nutrient-management/

J Anders wrote:Why is this thread going off on an esoteric path?

Are you referring to the use of seawater? Redhawk has several worthy threads here, several of which cover the items in the link you provided. Compost teas, fungal vs bacterial, the relationship that living roots play in the biota, etc. There's even one about sitting bare butted in the dirt. Brilliant stuff imo.

wayne fajkus wrote:

J Anders wrote:Why is this thread going off on an esoteric path?

Are you referring to the use of seawater? Redhawk has several worthy threads here, several of which cover the items in the link you provided. Compost teas, fungal vs bacterial, the relationship that living roots play in the biota, etc. There's even one about sitting bare butted in the dirt. Brilliant stuff imo.

No. Millions of years ago stuff. This is all science based stuff.

What can I do if I don't have access to seaweed? Not even as animal supplement?
Use sea salt?

Why is this thread going off on an esoteric path?  

I don't get this comment either, I must say.

Because permaculture, at it's most fundamental level, fulfills all the needs of nature.  

Aha, maybe that is the difference of perspective. For me permaculture mimics nature, the interactions are so hard to scientifically replicate that I suspect I will be compost before we understand them at any depth. For instance see the original post about the slow pace of micromineral discovery:

Others bask in silence. We do not know all the answers, or even the questions: Henry Schroeder, in writing The Trace Elements and Man, suggested another 400 years would be required to discern the role of each mineral if the present rate of discovery is maintained.

So in many ways we are fumbling a little blind. There are only a few ways of discovering the purpose of something, and the major way is to find a cluster of pathology and correlate deficiency. However correlation is not causation, etc. And as in the early days of human nutrition, the "normal" levels were set by measuring the serum levels in people eating an industrial diet! So there is a move to revise even the levels of the "known purpose" minerals on that basis. And it is very hard to supplement one micromineral without disrupting the function of others, or create a deficiency in higher organisms one at a time. Zinc toxicity can look a lot like copper deficiency, since many enzymes are somewhat nonspecific and take up something that is about the right size and with the right charge. This is both in transport/storage and in functional enzymes. It's very complex.

I have read many sources from the original soil scientists, and I am certain Dr Redhawk can quote chapter and verse, but many were operating on a dysfunctional paradigm of reductionist science generally, which was and is the issue. So we are in some ways back to traditional methods of "knowing". Not in every case but certainly in many as it pertains to the current discussion.  Esoteric discussions actually frustrate me (due to my day job), but in the same way as I would not apply Newtonian physics to issues of electronics and magnetism, we are kind of back to the future. I hope that is a fair commentary.

Susan Wakeman wrote:What can I do if I don't have access to seaweed? Not even as animal supplement?
Use sea salt?

Sea Salt that has not been "purified" is what you want to use. In Switzerland you might be able to get some of this type of salt from Spanish or Italian salt purveyors, do ask if they have a product that is salt just as it comes from their evaporation ponds, no processing after collection.

Henry A. Schroeder wrote Trace Elements and Man in 1973. His book was and is influential in the current research going on. His time line has been altered because of the main stream interest and findings are coming far faster than he or anyone at that time expected.
With the computing power now available and about a 10,000 percent increase in the number of researchers working in the field of minerals and their roles in the human body, it is safe to say that within the next 100 years we should have aprox. 1/2 of the minerals identified with their roles in cellular processes known.

Indeed much of what we are currently working on was known about at a lesser level even in ancient times but since the Library of Alexander was destroyed along with all the knowledge of the time, we are in the process of re-discovery I'm sure.
Today there are herbalists that have pointed the way for some of the current research and the discoveries that are being made, are based on extrapolation of what is already known, though it can be thought of as not common knowledge since one has to spend several years at the least to gain the knowledge of a herbalist.

My own research path was started by one of our great medicine men, what I learned from him set me on the road to find ways to get the nutritional values back into the foods we eat, those nutrients were lost because of the use of heavy tillage and artificial fertilizers coming into vogue as the tractor was invented and improved, along with the many "new" tools of disturbance designed to be drug behind those tractors. That method was directly responsible for the "great dust bowl" an event that taught that those methods were not as great as previously thought, even though even today they persist.
It is well known (or should be) that there is nothing truly new, just that what was known is being re-found or we are looking at things from a different point of view.

Redhawk

There are 74 minerals found in soil, there are 95 minerals found in sea water, and most of those extra minerals happen to be keys for human (and all animal) well being, so the big question for me is "Why aren't these minerals in the soil?"
Even volcanic soils don't have those extra minerals, so why do our bodies do their best when these "missing" minerals are made part of our diet?
Could it be that those missing minerals are somehow bound up in ways that hide them from the current chemistry testing methods or is it that these minerals need to be synthesized in some sort of deep sea setting, like the smokers?
Could it be that the missing in soil minerals are leached to the seas by rain water runoff and that is why they can't be found in chemistry testing?
These are mysteries that count, especially since we are finding that many of these minerals are necessary for cellular functions and disease prevention.

Most folks know that for our bodies to actually make use of vitamin C we need to have some zinc in our systems.
The problem is created because zinc acts like a catalysts that allows the vitamin C to be used in the mitochondria and that boosts our immune system.
When this discovery was made there were some others that were just as significant, like that most disease issues humans have come from inflammation in the body.
Inflammation is the root cause of most of the issues we find in the human body so to actually fix these issues the inflammation needs to be corrected, but how do we do that is the big question.
Herbalism is and has been since the beginning, the best method for brining balance to the human body, it has been in use for at least 50,000 years, with new herbs discovered along the way by almost every culture that has arisen.

Modern Western medicine is the only science that has taken the tact of treating symptoms rather than finding the root cause of those symptoms and fixing that which is making the patient ill.
Today there is a small group of these doctors that are using immunotherapies to treat those with cancers. Currently there are just a few cancers that can be treated by immunotherapy but more are coming as the immunotherapies are found that will treat the particular cancer cell types.
This is revolutionary medicine in the western world, since these therapies cure, meaning they can get rid of the problem cells permanently, as long as the patient adds in the proper dietary components to keep new cancer cells from being able to develop.
One of the main problems of cancer treatment is that cancer cells have "cloaking devices" they can mask their true nature to the body's immune system fighters and detectors, so that they are never attacked.
Having the proper nutrition helps tremendously with this detection problem and it is one of the areas under great study at this time.

I believe that once a person has the ability to eat foods with all the minerals in them that they are supposed to have in them, we will see dramatic decreases in illnesses such as cancers, Gut issues and any other illness you know of or that will be discovered.
Already we have new ways to treat many of the diseases and this trend will continue as long as the AMA keeps their hands off researchers work.
My mission in life is to develop methods to get the full mineralization needed by the human body into the soil and then into the foods grown in that soil, this is how we will have the best success in preventing and treating diseases.
The other half is getting the farmers to use those methods so they will grow these foods which then make it to those grocery store shelves so people can eat them.

Dr. Bryant Redhawk,  I am undergoing another type of immunotherapy to treat my allergy caused asthma.  After a year of treatment the difference is wonderful.  My lungs used to be packed tight with congestion this time of year (grass and tree pollen).  Now it is only a minor top of the chest congestion that is easily dislodged by a quick walk.

I have recently discovered the Bionutrient Food Association  http://bionutrient.org/site/library/videos/dan-kittredge-living-web-farms I just got my lab report back and looking it over I have waaaaay too much phosphorous and just barely enough potash. I'm wondering if I should add a little potash anyway just to help offset the phosphorous? because they are really out of balance. I've also ordered kelp meal as a general trace element additive and will be using it. I can only do foliar feeds in early spring and late fall because we get so hot here in the summer

hau Mary, yes I think adding some potash would be very reasonable, then work on the microorganism counts with compost teas and mushroom slurries to help the microbiome numbers.

Bryant RedHawk wrote:hau Mary, yes I think adding some potash would be very reasonable, then work on the microorganism counts with compost teas and mushroom slurries to help the microbiome numbers.

Thank you; that was kind of my gut feeling to do that since the phos is so very high. I bought a mix of dried mushrooms at the market, on clearance at that, along with a couple of aging portobellas. I'll be whizzing them up probably tomorrow and spreading them around everywhere I can. Thanks for that suggestion.

I've been looking at the bokashi stuff but not sure I can wrap my head around it yet. Will keep reading.

Bokashi is a lot like making kimchi, just not for human consumption but rather soil consumption.

It is something that can be used directly in soil or you can add it to compost heaps (which is a good addition of microorganisms)

Bryant RedHawk wrote:Bokashi is a lot like making kimchi, just not for human consumption but rather soil consumption.

It is something that can be used directly in soil or you can add it to compost heaps (which is a good addition of microorganisms)

I can make fermented pickle things and gathered in general that's what bokashi is. I guess I was getting wadded up over the details, abbreviations and other stuff in the threads. I will find a bucket and give it a go

Many people seem to think that if is sounds technical or involved, then it must be better, this seems to also go for food recipes, most of the time the best method is the most simple method.

Bokashi proponents tend to make it sound difficult and involved but it is fermenting, how hard is that for most food items?
When I make a batch I use a five gallon bucket with a lid, I throw in food scraps, add water and usually a splash of milk or if I have naturally fermenting figs I missed picking I will toss those in to get the fermenting started.
I set the cover on the bucket to keep flies out, it is loose, just sitting on the rim not pressed to seal.
As we get more vegetable scraps I add them to the bucket and if needed I add a little water to cover the new scraps, lid set back on and this is repeated until the bucket is full.
about once a week then I check to see how the ferment is going, when it is through I can use the liquid once diluted and I usually add the leftover scraps to one of my compost heaps.

Simple is good, complication is unnecessary usually.

I've even messed up a saurkraut batch and used it to start a bokashi batch

Bryant RedHawk wrote:There are 74 minerals found in soil, there are 95 minerals found in sea water, and most of those extra minerals happen to be keys for human (and all animal) well being, so the big question for me is "Why aren't these minerals in the soil?"
Even volcanic soils don't have those extra minerals, so why do our bodies do their best when these "missing" minerals are made part of our diet?

This got me thinking. What about Himalayan salt? Can we use it to ammend soils? It is claimed that it has 84 minerals. Minerals in Himalayan Pink Salt Also how come there are 10 more minerals in contemporary seas compared to ancient seas (100-200 million years)? Did they just "show up"?

Also I tried to compare Himalayan Salt with Sea-90. Even though values seem not encouraging (if the numbers are right), I am really curious about what would be your comments on using Himalayan Salt. I would need to import Sea-90 while I can freely resource Himalayan salt from sushi restaurants.

I see no reason to not use what you can get local.
I would use Himalayan pink (we use it on our own table as a finishing salt) just like the sea-90, about 1/4 cup spread all the way around a tree's drip line.

The differences in sea salt mineral content can be attributed to location, minerals are not evenly distributed around the globe, this is a function of oceanic currents more than anything else.
The sea of Cortez (gulf of California) is known to be one of the richest biomes on earth, so it stands to reason that the sea water there would be some of the most mineral rich, (which testing has shown it is).

It is very hard to compare "ancient sea mineral content" with contemporary (current) sea mineral content. What has happened is that the ocean currents move surface water to the ocean floor and these "deep waters" usually don't come to the surface again for around 1000 years.
This occurs because the deeper that water gets, the colder it gets and unless a warm current goes under the cold water, it will stay deep as the currents above it pull it along.
Once this deep water hits a sloping shelf on the ocean floor, it begins to move up not in the water column but as a result of the upslope of the ocean floor.
Eventually the deep water contacts directly with the underside of the current and begins to be sucked up into the current (this is most evident along the California northern coast and up to Victoria BC, Canada) as the deep water comes up it is called upwelling and supports more, varied life than non upwelling areas.

The only "ancient" sea water we can find today is locked up in polar ice and that means it has been rendered closer to fresh water than true sea water over the many years of being frozen and movement.
If there is a real difference in what the seawater held when dinosaurs roamed and now, it would be because of those types of factors, as sea water cools minerals can drop out and settle on the ocean floor.

Redhawk

I wonder about the spawning of Salmon as a means of mineralizing. To bad we’ve damned the rivers. Our forest must suffer. Be nice if I could catch a few fish and use the waste as compost. To bad Salmon no longer made it to Salmon Falls Creek.