volcanic rock dust

[Chae1]

Apologies if this is in wrong section. Does anyone have any experience of using this product?

I would be using it under a conventional system.

Was speaking to a lady about it on a stand at local show today.

http://www.reminscotland.com/

 

[martian]

Looks like good stuff. Presumably ground up granite and very cheap? Otherwise you could just buy some Type 1 MOT and sieve the lumps out for your farm tracks and use the dust on your compost heap?

 

[Chae1]

Looks like good stuff. Presumably ground up granite and very cheap? Otherwise you could just buy some Type 1 MOT and sieve the lumps out for your farm tracks and use the dust on your compost heap?

Not that cheap £45/t for 28t delivered tipped. £90/t in ton bags.

Has to be spread through lime spreader. I'd try a lime spreader load to trial it for salesperson. Just split a field and see if any visible difference.

Snake oil normally springs to mind with these things. Lady that sells it is local and a lot of what she said makes sense. Doesn't seem to be any proper analysis of product online though.

 

[Osca]

I looked at this a while back - it will be sourced from a local quarry and if you are getting it on a farm scale you can go direct to the quarry and ask for a typical analysis and quite possibly buy and collect it off site. The analysis will vary place to place, of course, but as the cost is in the transport there's no point buying it from a commercial supplier when you will probably have somewhere close at hand.

I know what you mean about snake oil - but it is supposed to be helpful - lots of anecdotal evidence and some research done on it's beneficial effect when added to compost, if I remember rightly. It is supposed to make he soil less acid, but not through any huge addition of calcium - I don't know what the mechanism is or what element does this.

I didn't go ahead with it - too dear in small bags and I don't have a forklift to unload big ones straight from the quarry, so the logistics beat me. Anyway I really needed to improve the ph and could get more mileage for my money just by using lime.

If you try this I would be interested to know how you get on. The commercial name of the version I was looking at was Seer's Rock Dust, sourced from Collace Quarry, but the quarry and the company had some sort of falling out, so this may be from elsewhere or a company run by different people. If I find the analysis I was given I will post it, (may take some days to find) but it may not be entirely relevant either to the source of this present rock dust or to your most local source.

 

[Osca]

Looking back at what I'd written that was a hugely detailed bit of general unhelpfulness, wasn't it.

 

[N.Yorks.]

Looking back at what I'd written that was a hugely detailed bit of general unhelpfulness, wasn't it.

If you find the analysis that would be interesting to see?

 

[Osca]

I'll try and find it - may take a day or so but I'm sure I still have it somewhere.

 

[Chasingmytail]

my husbands argument is that he already spreads homemade compost over the soils and that should help bring everything back to the correct levels. Mob grazing etc should improve the soils without spending excessive money on more soil improvers???

 

[KMA]

Sounds like good marketing of a waste product but if it works..........

How fine is this 'volcanic rock dust' screened to we've got a blue whin quarry just over the hill.

 

[PSQ]

Spreading fine volcanic ash would be one thing, but whin dust would surely eat the spreader vanes in minutes.

 

[KMA]

Only got a little bit of ground so would be hand mixed into the compost though I am toying with the idea of scrounging an old cement mixer.

Certainly hard stuff just a finer grained rock than granite, which is why I'm sceptical about this volcanic ash stuff, surely ash from the biofuel plants would be just as good if not better and the nutrients would be released quicker.

 

[REMIN]

Apologies if this is in wrong section. Does anyone have any experience of using this product?

I would be using it under a conventional system.

Was speaking to a lady about it on a stand at local show today.

http://www.reminscotland.com/

Hello! This is the lady from the stand at the local show, Jennifer Brodie. I have been working with this product for 12 years and whilst private gardeners all over the country, and Slovenia and Majorca, where I export to enthuse about the difference it makes getting professional growers to come on board is taking an age. Here is what one farmer had to say down in Herefordshire: http://www.reminscotland.com/user-r...he-soil-fertility-provided-by-his-pig-manure/ - this is featured in Soil Association's summer magazine. Here is a link to a (now retired) raspberry grower closer to home: http://www.reminscotland.com/user-r...r-no-doubt-about-benefits-volcanic-rock-dust/

I did a FACTS (Fertiliser Advisor Certification and Training Scheme) course in Craigstone at the end of 2014 and was pleased to find they too talk about the 5 parts of soil: AIR, WATER, DECAYED ORGANIC MATERIAL, LIVING ORGANISMS and MINERALS & TRACE ELEMENTS. As you will see from the Quick Lesson on REMIN's home page: http://www.reminscotland.com/ - REMIN volcanic rock dust is the 5th part of the soil. If we only ever add NPK back into soil, and yet each crops takes out what minerals it needs, the soil is bound to be getting short of soil. And, of course, it helps the so important engines of the soil, the LIVING ORGANISMS....

BUT anyway, my reason for staying with this product is .. because I have seen what it can do in some many situations, in so many places - AND we have a SUMMER SALE on right now!

 

[SilliamWhale]

What is the analysis of it?

And what is the price of it?

Ignore the living organisms stuff for the moment. Firstly you need to establish what its worth. Secondly you need to ask where it has been trialled (ideally on different farms over 3 years) because if you don't know that then why would it be more measurable on yours straight away?

Its not that its snake oil, its just that is it worth it financially?
They do sell wife beaters though!:

 

[KMA]

Interesting, I'd still like to know what is meant to be in it, I'm assuming it takes a while for the soil microbes to break it down and release whatever it is that is boosting the plants.

Isn't that what is supposed to happen with Comfrey - the microbes surrounding its deep root making the minerals&etc. from the subsoil?

There's still a hell of a lot we don't know or understand about soil and the way it and plants interact.

 

[REMIN]

Interesting, I'd still like to know what is meant to be in it, I'm assuming it takes a while for the soil microbes to break it down and release whatever it is that is boosting the plants.

Isn't that what is supposed to happen with Comfrey - the microbes surrounding its deep root making the minerals&etc. from the subsoil?

There's still a hell of a lot we don't know or understand about soil and the way it and plants interact.

Attached flier lists minerals and trace elements in REMIN - ie all of them - but no Nitrogen, just food for Nitrogen fixing bacteria. Spot on about the Comfrey - deep roots are where they come-fae (are you allowed humour?).

Australia based Nutri-Tech Solutions http://www.nutri-tech.com.au/ doing a lot of good work. They say some of the food produced by the plant's photosynthesis, as well as producing plant tissue, is extruded from the roots to attract living organisms (like nectar / pollen and bees) and the living organisms exchange the plants "food" for the minerals they have digested from the rock minerals ready for the plant. I was lucky enough to meet their guru, Graham Sait, this summer when he was over visiting the honeyberry folk near Dundee. Here's a wee video by him:

Dr Elaine Ingram's Soil Food Web gets more into this: http://www.soilfoodweb.com/

 

[KMA]

Spotted quite a large area of comfrey on one of my walks which will be 'harvested' when I have time and remember to take a couple of old feed sacks with me. Incidentally there's a huge area of russian comfrey just over the fence from at the Fedex Aberdeen depot.

It's funny how when you learn something new you adjust the way you do things I've started to notice lots of clumps which I assume are where all the microbes are round the roots of my veg so am now careful to return them to the soil or the compost heap.

 

[Breakthru]

Hello! This is the lady from the stand at the local show, Jennifer Brodie. I have been working with this product for 12 years and whilst private gardeners all over the country, and Slovenia and Majorca, where I export to enthuse about the difference it makes getting professional growers to come on board is taking an age. Here is what one farmer had to say down in Herefordshire: http://www.reminscotland.com/user-r...he-soil-fertility-provided-by-his-pig-manure/ - this is featured in Soil Association's summer magazine. Here is a link to a (now retired) raspberry grower closer to home: http://www.reminscotland.com/user-r...r-no-doubt-about-benefits-volcanic-rock-dust/

I did a FACTS (Fertiliser Advisor Certification and Training Scheme) course in Craigstone at the end of 2014 and was pleased to find they too talk about the 5 parts of soil: AIR, WATER, DECAYED ORGANIC MATERIAL, LIVING ORGANISMS and MINERALS & TRACE ELEMENTS. As you will see from the Quick Lesson on REMIN's home page: http://www.reminscotland.com/ - REMIN volcanic rock dust is the 5th part of the soil. If we only ever add NPK back into soil, and yet each crops takes out what minerals it needs, the soil is bound to be getting short of soil. And, of course, it helps the so important engines of the soil, the LIVING ORGANISMS....

BUT anyway, my reason for staying with this product is .. because I have seen what it can do in some many situations, in so many places - AND we have a SUMMER SALE on right now!

Does it have similar properties to Diatamateous earth which is ground volcanic rock.
White stuff is insoluble and used against grain beetles/mites whereas red is soluble.
The red is highly charged and so when put in soil displaces other elements from the clay in the soil on which they are locked up so making them available to the plant.

 

[SilliamWhale]

Attached flier lists minerals and trace elements in REMIN - ie all of them - but no Nitrogen, just food for Nitrogen fixing bacteria. Spot on about the Comfrey - deep roots are where they come-fae (are you allowed humour?).

Australia based Nutri-Tech Solutions http://www.nutri-tech.com.au/ doing a lot of good work. They say some of the food produced by the plant's photosynthesis, as well as producing plant tissue, is extruded from the roots to attract living organisms (like nectar / pollen and bees) and the living organisms exchange the plants "food" for the minerals they have digested from the rock minerals ready for the plant. I was lucky enough to meet their guru, Graham Sait, this summer when he was over visiting the honeyberry folk near Dundee. Here's a wee video by him:

Dr Elaine Ingram's Soil Food Web gets more into this: http://www.soilfoodweb.com/

Crucial bit missing. What are the quantities of the minerals in what your selling?

 

[N.Yorks.]

Any analysis for us?

 

[KMA]

Hmm, I think diatomaceous earth is from sedimentary deposits and it gets its name from the diatoms in ancient seas which I'm told look like razor wire under a microscope and is why it is so effective against mites and thing as it rips their exoskeletons apart.