I’ve combined five sources in this blog post about the amazing properties of rock dust for soil remineralization. Anyone with a garden or planning a garden needs to know about rock dust. Specialty brands with the widest range of minerals such as Azomite can be ordered online and through garden shops. You can also get rock dust very inexpensively from gravel quarries. It’s the powdered residue left over from crushing and processing gravel. As explained in the video above, 8 lbs./sq.yard of rock dust lasts 10 years!
Bread from Stones by Dr. Julius Hensel
“During the course of his researches, Dr. Hensel found that in the primeval rocks, as granite, lie a potentially inexhaustible supply of all minerals required for the feeding and regeneration of the soil, plants, animals and man. All that is required is to reduce them to finely pulverized form, so that their mineral elements may be made available to plants. Hensel wrote a book describing his discovery of a new method of creating more perfect fruits and vegetables, rich in all nutritional elements and immune to disease and insect pests, with the result that it produced worm-free fruit without the need of spraying. The foods so produced by rock-meal (rock dust) fertilization were true Organic Super Foods, far superior in flavor and value than those produced under the forcing action of manure or chemical fertilizers.
The use of various pulverized rocks, [such] as granite, limestone, rock phosphate, etc., in place of chemical fertilizers, will lead, claimed Hensel, to permanent restoration of even poor soils to the balanced mineral content of the best virgin soils; and the rock dust thus applied will remain year after year and not be washed away by rains or irrigation water, as is the case with highly soluble chemical fertilizers.
This will be an economic saving to the grower and enable him to sell foods at a lower price than when he must spend large sums on chemical fertilizers. Also, since foods thus mineralized are healthy and immune to plant diseases and insect pests (as Hensel experimentally demonstrated), there is no need for the expense and dangers of spraying.
Foods raised by Hensel’s followers, including many German gardeners and farmers, who were enthusiastic in praise of his method, were found to possess firmer tissue and better shipping and keeping qualities than those raised with animal manure or chemicals. And most important among the advantages of Hensel’s agricultural discovery is that foods grown on mineralized soil are higher both in mineral and vitamin content and so produce better health and greater immunity to disease than those grown by the use of chemical fertilizer sprays.”
More from the source: Bread from Stones free ebook
Permies.com discussion about rock dust (Permies.com is an excellent site for gardening information.)
Remineralize the Earth – Project in Costa Rica
“Remineralize the Earth, in partnership with John Todd of Ocean Arks International, embarked on a visionary mission in the hilly country of Guanacaste, Costa Rica. The Agroforestry Project in Costa Rica: Food, Fuel, and Income to Sustain Local Communities was a model project designed to demonstrate the potential and evaluate the effectiveness of remineralization while restoring the devastated tropical forests of the region.”
More at the source: Remineralize.org
Love for Life: From Bare Earth to Abundance This is probably the best garden I’ve seen on the Internet. They used soil mineralization as described in the sources above to make their amazing garden.
Better soil, better food, better planet…. We see a future of thriving farms and gardens producing healthy, nutrient-dense food in great abundance. We see exuberant forests returned to a state of grandeur not seen in centuries, silently sequestering the carbon dioxide that so threatens our planet today. We see a stable climate and a cleaner, healthier environment. We see all of this being possible through the simple and effective process of soil remineralization.
see: http://remineralize.org/
Love it. Thanks for sending this.
Here’s a good source of information on rock dust.
Rock Dust Primer
http://remineralize.org/a-rock-dust-primer
What type of rock dust is best?
Feeding poor soil with mixed rock dust may be compared to feeding an ill person a varied diet of unrefined, natural food. If no one single food is a panacea, it might follow that no single rock type is “ideal.” Indeed, the virtue of glacial gravel is said to lie in its broad spectrum of rock types. The late John Hamaker advocated the use of glacial gravel dust, ideally followed by river and seashore gravels and mixtures of single rock types.
In the book The Survival of Civilization, John Hamaker suggests finely-ground glacial gravel because that is nature’s way throughout millennia to create fertile soils. Glacial gravel, which is a natural mixture of rocks, will create a broad spectrum of minerals in the soil in a natural balance.
Much of value can also be gleaned from Europe and the research and experiences there where single rock types and combinations of single rock types such as basalt are used.
continued ….. http://remineralize.org/a-rock-dust-primer
WW 1 & WW ll were intentionally funded in existence by the private owners of the federal reserve bank. The drums of war were pounded upon by the political body. The media communicated their message. The people suited up and went to war to kill and destroy.
At the close of WW ll, Hitler’s humacides were diluted down, packaged and marketed as pesticides & herbicides. Modern global farming was birthed. Bioregional independence took a nose dive.
Soon expensive farm equipment replaced farm workers. This is the reason there are so many poor people living in rural agricultural areas. They lost their jobs and kept propagating. Technology reduced the need for jobs, even more so the case at this present moment. The same family farm was replaced by large corporate farms – similar to what’s happening with surveillance & drone technology replacing the need for military personal. That’s why you hear about downsizing of the military. Not that warfare is going out of favor, but robotic technology is rapidly replacing the need for unreliable human beings, i.e., Edward Snowden reporting to the planet live from Russia.
In the mid 90s it was a well known fact at UC Davis that pesticides were on the way out due to two reasons; loss of effectiveness – just what’s happening with antibiotics, i.e. Superbugs and ineffective antibiotics, combined with law suits brought about because of poisoning – hence we now have GMOs. And we can’t even get the food labeled in the USA! Isn’t it our government?
We live where farming began in the USA, once a few Natives were moved out of the way, Virginia’s Eastern Shore. There still are small farmers here, farming between 1 to 30 acres organically, not many, or growing GMO corn, soy beans, wheat, alfalfa potatoes, tomatoes – 10 to 3,000 acres. Over time the small farmer has been mechanized by the John Deere salesman and the USDA. People are dumbed down. They don’t seem to mind. So Monsanto has become in agricultural, what Lockheed Martin Corporation is to the military industrial complex.
see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_100_Contractors_of_the_U.S._federal_government
Farming and the military are organized and run by the same people in the background. That’s why they operate under the same principals; death and destruction, control and conquer rather than the more organic approach of communicate and cooperate.
To answer this question – “I wonder if farmers are aware of this?”
Who are you talking about? A small organic farmer like in the video, or a larger mechanized farmer who, even if he/she understands this important point of soil health and vitality, can’t do anything about it for the most part – they’re locked into a system, they have to follow what brings in the most amount of money with the least short term risk. The USDA offers cheap crop insurance. And remember, the real economic benefit goes to the shareholders of Monsanto.
And don’t forget, where did mad cow disease come from? Where has it gone?
Excellent info. I wonder if farmers are aware of this? The tilling and over use of land depletes the soil of it’s properties thus, over use of chemicals to replenish the soil hurts not only the soil but the consumer who gobbles it up. I wonder how long it will take before they will finally disclose this or the secret gets out. How many generations will be affected because of this along with the GMO’s? Greed, the love of money cost everyone in the long run. A more simple and less costly way seems to always work best. Great post!
No doubt the multi-billion dollar/year fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide corporations will do anything to shut this down. There’s no way they can compete against super cheap rock dust from local gravel quarries.
We got good results on our fruit trees (10 or 12 of them) and blueberry bushes this year after applying it last year and having had a cold rough winter that killed other plants friends had. Nothing really scientific but my wife has a green thumb and is a good judge of things that work or don’t. She’s a nurse and is good at observation. And it just makes good sense. Healthy soil is the key to healthy food as you know.
No GMOs please Pepe the Coral Polyp says..
One small drawback to rock dust is the need for soil testing. Ideally you’d test your soil and several sources of rock dust to get the right mix of minerals. Some people apply 2-3 kinds of rock dust.
And yeah, I agree. It’s common sense. Feed the plants what they need and they’ll grow faster and be healthier. And whoever eats those plants will get superior nutrition and better health. So for me it’s definitely worth $50 or so. We’re going to apply rock dust on our forest garden after the rainy season so it doesn’t wash away.
Did you test it by doing one area and not another?
Azomite works really well when we use it at different locations on our 10 acre farm. In the garden, on the large 100 years old pecan trees, perennials or where ever we feel the need to use it. In fact I just picked up 3 more 44 lbs bags of it from a local feed supply store in Virginia. It cost about $37 delivered. You may be able to find if for a bit less? It comes in pelletized form, but I also have one 44lb bag in powder form. This I use as a personal mineral intake, mixing it daily in a glass of H2O. Take about cheap mineral supplement.
Good stuff…
Good report once again.