I'm a simple plantain farmer and don't know much about the organic lifestyle. It might not have reached our Island yet, but I can say that I've never noticed a fruit or vegetable being labeled as organic. As far as the organic lifestyle magazine goes, if it's well written & you enjoy most of the articles then try to just ignore the myths.
Farming is a business and everything is based on a cost to benefit analysis. Organic material is basically free, with the real cost being based on the labor of collecting and applying it. Another benefit is that there is practically no limit to how much could be used. The amounts that you believe are "not tractable" appear to me to be embarrassingly low.
After doing my initial experiments 20 years ago, I made the decision to use grass clippings, banana compost, and bio char, although I did save the unused chemical fertilizer just in case it is needed in the future.
If you look through the
Members' Galleries it's apparent that the members using copious amounts of organic material all seem to have the most incredibly beautiful plants.
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Originally Posted by Richard
I agree that relying only on dehydrated mineral fertilizers is a poor idea. Certainly there are composted organics in all my soil mixes. There is also sand-to-dust size igneous rock as both a host for some soil bacteria and a catalytic surface for many biochemical reactions important to plants. This kind of soil activity improves both plant processing of nutrients and generates auxins that boost plant performance. A healthy soil is definitely necessary for healthy plants. It is also possible for the soil to be too healthy - too many organisms that out-compete the plant for resources. Further, it is simply not tractable to meet the nutrient capacity of fruit trees by organic matter alone. To do so would require adding over 200 pounds per year per plant to obtain production level harvests. This is why I use dehydrated mineral fertilizers to feed my plants. I'm very picky about this as well -- I do not just broadcast raw N, P, and K as do some commercial operations. Instead, I provide it in a balanced fashion along with a full array of minor- and micro-nutrients. There is a myth circulating on the internet and in organic lifestyle magazines that dehydrated mineral fertilizers kill beneficial organisms in the soil. The reality is that if you follow the given dosage for a water-soluble plant food, the concentration of nutrients you will deliver will be far less than the concentration achieved by stacking a soil with "organic" nutrients (i.e., 300ppm vs 100ppm).
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