- Location
- Moreton-in-Marsh, Glos
Seaweed isn’t the answer, but can be a small part of it. There are cheaper alternatives to the Glenside version of it too.Are you using the seaweed products that Glenside sell?
Without dragging the files out, I am not going to be able to go through what is iron to excess. But I can tell you we are “ very” iron to excess.How do you define what an excess of Calcium is? And iron?
I think its a total misnomer to say there should be a certain ratio of Ca, Mg and K for ideal plant growth as espoused by Albrecht Soil balancing. Plant growth is palpably not affected by ratios of nutrients because its been tested quite rigourously. furthermore the size of your soil sample vs your growing medium is what 1 million times smaller?
You either have enough P and K in the soil for your needs or you are mining it - albeit very slowly possibly if chopping straw etc. But you still have enough "quantity" of P and K - even normal NRM soil tests are only a snapshot and as limited as any other soil test.
It may be the case that high pH soils could take sulphur in order to temporarily acidify the soil zone a bit but the parent material is still the same. I can also accept that an very high calcium soils will limit plant uptake of other nutrients but it still doesn't lead to a ratio
This combined with the calcium causes triple super phosphate to form insoluble calcium phosphate which is what our teeth are made of.
Any guesses as to what we can do to break that cation bond and make the phosphate soluble again?
This farm followed RB209 for years and it was obvious that something was wrong. It was as if the phosphate we were applying didn’t have any phosphate in it. It did of course, but something was preventing it from getting Ito the plant. There is so much of it locked up now, that I probably won’t need to apply any more in my lifetime.
But you are right, we could actually mine some of our fields for potash.