Mineral needs and interactions in plants (on soil)

I am reminded by recent learning that I need to look carefully at mineral interactions in the soil and the needs of plants.

I have been adding dolomite (a limestone with high proportion of magnesium) rather than normal agricultural lime (limestone essentially calcium carbonate) to my soil.

I have focused on magnesium because the use of lime not dolomite in broad acre farming almost certainly contributes to a magnesium deficiency in much commercial food, there being a need for calcium and magnesium to balance each other in nature. In humans many problems arise from calcium coming away from where it should be, causing deterioration in bone and muscle and contributing to nervous and cognitive disorders and poor metabolism.And while pharmacies and supermarkets are littered with calcium supplements, you really need the magnesium to get the calcium back where it belongs and staying there. You can get lots of information from the web on this, it's a good exercise in wading through 'marketing science' for facts.

A recent email from someone in the US (curiously in a discussion about a lemon tree in a pot in the UK) drew my attention to the fact that calcium is more soluble compared to magnesium and in high rainfall environments calcium deficiencies can rapidly arise, as also is the case with other minerals which are highly soluble.

We've had a lot of rain, some parts of my garden good, some not so good... 

So... I need add calcium but also to check my soil pH, must get a pH test kit, lent mine to someone...

pH is critical (see this introduction): an industrial way to achieve it is to add stuff to try to get the balance right. On the other hand, achievement of a high humus healthy soil, crowded with life, should itself nudge the soil towards the right pH.

Source here, same link as above

But it is also important to have an awareness of mineral availability. There is a thing called Mulder's Chart which can be found in many places on the web. In fact two charts, for animals and plants. This is the chart for plants, which I have borrowed from this site. This is a particularly helpful presentation, with its text, explaining the nature of interactions. I wanted to report here who exactly Mr/Dr/Prof Mulder might be, but mainly I got links to The X-Files.

Click on image to enlarge chart. Go below the chart for a bit more...

borrowed from this site

This becomes relevant when you find problems which may be identified in plant leaves. Here is a citrus leaf from my partner Helen's garden.

 

 It is growing in red sandy-clayey soil on a slope, recent heavy rains, rapidly drying soil. The task ahead is to work out what may be ailing the tree, and how to ffix it. Ideally we just help the soil fix it. There are pictorial guides to deficiencies evident in the coloration of citrus leaves. Try this, or this, or this... see if you can find better on the web, if so use the comment box.

My opening perspective is this:

1. The tree is young, young citrus tend to struggle at times and much self correction is possible;
2. The rains and wind have stripped compost, manures and protective mulch, first leaching away soluble nutrients, perhaps drowning a lot of microorganisms, and then drying the soil severely;
3. When roots go deeper, the problems may reduce, as the tree gets bigger and feeds from more damage resistant levels of the soil... but under the tree the soil is pretty shallow because of the slope;
4. So start simple: 

• Use a broadfork and use carefully at and beyond the drip line, lifting soil, enabling water and nutrient entry to lower levels of soil;
• Check the pH, as appropriate then add lime and Epsom Salts (giving the tree magnesium and highly soluble sulphur) and a bit of dilute urine (see earlier blog entry on urine in garden) for nitrogen and much more;
• Throw in some rusty nails for possible iron deficiency (citrus love iron);
• Add compost and well rotted manures;
• Re-mulch (the protective layer, high in carbon, slow to rot, resistant to weeds coming up. Plant  bushy legumes (peas, beans) into the mulch and
• Water well, deeply and not daily, allowing water to go deep and roots to follow, not spread near the surface.

May sound complex but not really that hard, and a good support like this should help for some time, as the tree finds its feet.


All this arising from discussion about a neglected lemon tree in a pot in England... Stimulus from small issues drives on to wider thought!

science achieves some understanding of crop rotation

There is an interesting article at Science 2.0 on research providing some eye opening discoveries about the benefits of crop rotation. One could perhaps also apply the information revealed about rotation to the practices in permaculture of mixing crops as well as rotating them... but one step at a time... this is scientific progress, in the sense of science waking up to the smartness of nature, looking at broad issues.

This is a major finding, quote from linked article:

"Changing the crop species massively changes the content of microbes in the soil, which in turn helps the plant to acquire nutrients, regulate growth and protect itself against pests and diseases, boosting yield," said co-author Professor Philip Poole from the John Innes Centre.
"The soil around the roots was similar before and after growing wheat, but peas and oats re-set of the diversity of microbes."

A key to the research has been a new ability to look at organisms across kingdoms:

Analysis has previously relied on amplifying DNA samples. This limits scientists to analyzing one taxonomic group at a time such as bacteria. It also means that everything present in that group is analyzed rather than what is playing an active role. Every gram of soil contains over 50,000 species of bacteria so the task is enormous.

There are relatively fewer actively expressed genes - RNA. It is now possible to sequence RNA across kingdoms so a full snapshot can be taken of the active bacteria, fungi, protozoa and other microbes in the soil. The research was carried out in collaboration with the University of East Anglia and The Genome Analysis Centre on Norwich Research Park.

"By sequencing RNA, we can look at the big picture of active microbes in the soil," said PhD student Tom Turner from the John Innes Centre.  "This also allows us to work out what they are doing there, including how they might be helping the plants out."

In sending a link to this article to a friend in Nebbi, Uganda who is an IT businessman and recently begun as small farmer. We have been discussing crop rotation. I commented on the article under discussion:

Science and technology makes too many humans think that the world is somehow just a lot of machines. People are so strongheaded about their own importance that they don't notice the way the world shapes itself. Industrial farming seems to start with the notion that a farm is an empty space which you scrape bare and load up with human genius, but we are just a not so bright, very dangerous species. And you probably notice that the humans who come as tourists may have the power of money but often so disconnected from the earth that they don't see much around them and definitely don't understand much.

Small farming at 1000 metres altitude, 2 degrees from the Equator, Nebbi Uganda, photos Vincent Ulargiw.
I am including photos to show natural soil quality and normal patterns of crop diversity.

 

  

Waiting for the rainy season, when the banana clump will be thinned and replanted, etc.

At Science 2.0 I commented:

You write:

" The findings of the study could be used to develop plant varieties that encourage beneficial microbes in the soil. The scientists are already investigating the possibility of engineering cereal crops able to associate with the nitrogen-fixing bacteria normally associated with peas."

Perhaps more importantly it should point to the great limits of conventional agriculture's understanding of and disrespect for the soil, and lead to more sensible practices within nature, rather than in clearing away nature and trying to do a chemical pallaver on top.

We can also draw on history, to see the succession of civilisations wiped off the map because of lack of respect for the soil. The issue is urgent. Peak soil is closer than peak oil. As is peak water.

The hunt for GM smartish things tends always to produce items demanding more water and or more chemical fertiliser because of designer weaknesses of plants. And more water ceases to be available while the flood of chemical fertilisers supplant and wipe out the populations of soil organisms discussed as important in this article.

This research is important in that it has, with its ability to examine a wide variety of organisms, unveiled realities which are not apparent in reductionist up-close studies. More important (for understanding of nature if not for securing corporate funding) to understand broad natural processes than immediately dive back away from the fresh air this offers into the worm holes of reductionist fiddle with molecules.

 We need to enhance understanding of soils and attitudes to water, getting more water retained in improving soils. People often talk about organic farming and sustainable farming with answers about the importance of what is fed to human consumers. The big question should be: "If I farm for 10 years or 50 years, will the soil be better than it was when I started?"

intellectual strengths of birds; observation powers of people

The Guardian has carried a wonderful report on the capacity of cockatoos to solve complex puzzles. Screen shot inserted here to entice you.

from http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/grrlscientist/2013/jul/10/lock-picking-cockatoos

I offered the following comment:

If you consider the intricacy plus force involved in extracting pine nuts you get the idea of everyday cockatoo life. Some Australian cockatoos seem very keen on lemon seeds, trashing the fruit. A particular generation of fancy tall street lights in Canberra were swiftly unlatched either for fun or for the rubber seal.

I think we underestimate or often just fail to see the extraordinary daily tasks of wild birds to eat. After a week of heavy winter rain in my southeast Australian garden recently the smallest birds are not seen, many perhaps not survived as seemed the case after fierce summer heat this year. The Eastern Spinebills frantically flitting for surely dilute nectar in scant quantities from downward facing flowers on flopping branches of Chinese lantern bushes, Abutela? Not a multistep puzzle but requiring flight, balance, twist and persistence generally invisible to and beyond gym-oriented Homo urbis. The satin bowerbirds came after the rain eased, out of the forest to grab whatever looked tasty in the garden.

Ordinary bird life is hard, complex and necessarily involves innovative braininess just to be alive. Big birds like cockatoos have the advantage of size and surface to volume ratios that mean they are less vulnerable to environmental stresses. Which means they have time on their hands to do research and innovate; the connection between time on hands and outcomes of an interesting kind deserves research!

Don't forget in review of larger bird cleverness the kites in northern Australia, alongside indigenous people when they use fire to hunt and produce preferred food bearing landscape. Some kites (bigger corvids) pick up burning sticks and carry fire to new fronts to drive out prey for them. Intelligence, observation, memory, participation, bravery, imagination, craftiness... I think a lot of human judgement about so called dumb animals arises from our own failure to note what is around us all the time.

.... But after reading your report, I'm not walking down my cockatoo infested streets looking like that dude in shades, and definitely not while carrying my Rubik's cube!

I choose not to place google ads on my blogs and web pages. But like most, The Guardian derives revenue from such. I note that in this cockatoo intelligence story, the google ads were these below, on the day when I looked and living where I live. You will get different.

I wonder if it's cockatoos or people that are being trained to do 'monkey tasks' (dear monkeys I apologise for the term, which is meaningful, I know, only within a prejudiced, narrow Homo 'sapiens' kind of vernacular, otherwise I'd have to say something longer, like "trained to do artificial and life-sapping researcher phony tasks like domesticated cockies get to do in the post-industrial age of subdivided and subdivided focus for doctoral students").

And where I wrote in that comment that: "...the connection between time on hands and outcomes of an interesting kind deserves research..." I don't think time on hands includes time at computer. Must run... rain stopped outside activity for a week or so here, as did pleurisy.

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But time on hands, for cockatoos? ....  I suddenly realise and run back to add this.

I suppose domesticated cockatoos, which the researchers assert to be smarter than wild cockatoos, have more time in their hands, and are waited on, fed, cleaned-up after. Life of some human children.

Whereas the big cockatoos and their close relatives in the wild,  in the morning after a cold and wet night, do not have to run hunt food like little birds, are not trapped at their research desks or perches with humans sharing their wisdom***, but fly free to find a powerline to sit on or swing around on in the sun, to natter, kiss and fiddle with each other.

Now who's smart in that comparison?
________

*** I knew one 'domesticated' cockatoo, intellect enriched by human company, who used to respond to the doorbell by shouting "bugger off, there's no one home!" ...  Indeed.