Organic Living for All -- Minerals and Micro-organisms

Garden Magic #1 - Earth Minerals

Florida's soil is sadly depleted in minerals and microorganisms. In fact, it is mainly sand and silt mixture. Whatever nutrients that had been present have been washed out by our heavy rain storms. That is why you need to add the essential minerals as well as trace minerals in order to get anything to grow successfully at all. Most store-bought fertilizers contain only three of the essential minerals (N,P,K) and none of the trace minerals. They are also manufactured and not obtained naturally from the earth. When the rain washes out these fertilizers, they run down to the ocean and lakes and pollute them which affects the fish and other sea life. Our minerals do not do that.

Our minerals, which come naturally from the earth, are mined from an ancient inland seabed that consists of composted seaweed and crustacean marine life that has accumulated over thousands of years. It is rich in all the essential minerals the plants need plus a wide variety of organic trace element combinations that are vital for plants. Like us humans, plants need minerals to be heathy, and, since we eat plants, we can be healthier, too, when our plants are healthy.

Essential minerals that are present in our Garden Minerals: aluminum, arsenic, boron, calcium, chlorine, chromium, cobalt, copper, fluorine, iodine, iron, lithium, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, potassium, selenium, silicon, sodium, strontium, sulphur, tin, titanium, vanadium, and zinc.

Trace minerals present are: antimony, barium, beryllium, bromine, cerium, cesium, dysprosium, europium, gadolinium, gallium, germanium, gold, holmium, lanthanum, neodymium, niobium, palladium, rubidium, ruthenium, samarium, scandium, silver, thallium, thorium, tungsten, uranium, yttrium, and zirconium.

Minerals need to be constantly added to the soil because the heavy rains tend to wash them out of the soil.

Garden Magic #2 - Microorganisms. 

Plants need microorganisms for several reasons which we will cover shortly. First, what are these things called microorganisms?  They are organisms that are microscopic that are found in the soil in this case, although they can be found elsewhere as well. There are beneficial microorganisms as well as harmful ones. What we are interested in are the beneficial kind because they help the plants by decomposing organic matter and making this source of nutrients more usable to the plant. Some microorganisms help make minerals in the soil more available to the plant as well as increase the amount of nutrients present. Microorganisms have also been known to protect the plant against various diseases that infect plants and stimulate the plants own natural defense mechanisms.

Our Florida "soil" has very little if any microorganisms and yet contains harmful microbes that will destroy your efforts to garden. Use Earth Essence to supply the microorganisms needed and you will notice an improvement in your plants as well as in the taste of your produce!

Note that microorganisms cannot survive without the proper minerals in the soil, so you will need to add the minerals first to your amended soil before you add the microorganisms.

Along with the minerals, the microorganisms will also need to be added regularly after that to replace those that the heavy rains wash out of the topsoil.

If this sounds complicated, attend our soil prep workshop and see how simple it really is.