Soil Amendments

For me, the core of sustainable agriculture, horticulture, or just plain gardening, is the soil.

Caring for the soil, increasing it's carbon, nutrient and water holding capacity, and reducing or stopping practises that lead to soil degradation, should be the foundation block upon which any sustainable land management practise is built.


As part of my random blabbering, you'll find that I advocate using natural rock minerals and organic matter in order to amend the soil.  Doing so, increases soil carbon, increases biological activity, improves soil texture and structure, water permeability and retention, as well as improving the nutrient holding capacity of the soil.

Regardless of what you are trying to grow, and where, there is a combination of these types of amendments that will benefit you.

Now, I do need to add something on the issues of sourcing certain rock minerals.  Often you will find that these may have travelled several thousand miles after having been mined from a location far removed from your own property.

Does this mean that they're not sustainably sourced?  Well, to a point it does in that you are depleted the very high reserves in one area, not to mention the transport issues etc.  However, these rock minerals are permanent soil amendments, meaning that once you have fully treated your land it will never need repeating.  Effectively, you are spreading the rock minerals around.

Chemical fertilisers on the other hand, which again are generally sourced from guano harvesting or mining many thousand miles away, do not permanently amend the soil, but rather temporarily provide nutrients to the plants growing there.  These sources are quickly being depleted and the price of such fertilisers is already increasing.

I know which one I prefer :)