This brine with all the other minerals is a clear liquid and is a fertiliser for plants and soil biology. Healthy soil biology consists of a wide diversity of organisms – over 50,000 can be found in a single spoonful of compost. It stands to reason that this large diversity requires a diverse range of minerals to function well. Sea Minerals is one of the few, if not the only, natural source that provides this wide range of minerals. Please note that Sea minerals are complementary to all biology-friendly plant nutrition and are not a replacement.

For many minerals in Sea Minerals, we know their functions in plant growth. The precise interactions between these minerals and the 50,000+ soil species are not fully understood, but the benefits are easy to see. Plants show improved growth, with bigger and darker-green leaves that have a healthy shine – the latter indicating high resistance to insects and diseases. When the soil biology is not healthy, the growth of plants stays below its optimum, and they do not yet have their resistance against diseases and insects. They need to be protected with industrial chemicals, which further reduce the soil biology.

The Plant Health Pyramid developed by John Kempf shows that once all essential minerals for the first two stages of plant health are available, some of the complex compounds needed for the final two stages are produced by the soil biology, provided it is healthy. Following the lead from others, we found significant improvements in the health and yields of field crops, orchards and pasture after applying Sea Minerals, see the summary of case studies.

For large areas, It can be bought in bulk and applied when irrigating through fertigation. It is profitable from the first application at the recommended rate of 40L/ha.

For smaller areas, it can be bought under many names in small amounts and applied with a watering can.

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The Trial

The trial was conducted near Bundaberg in 2020.

Applications of Liquid Sea Minerals 5 L/ha and Humic Acid 15 L/ha were applied by boom spray soon after emergence and followed by overhead irrigation.

Treated area – 4 beds with 8 rows, equal to 1.25 hectares.

The Sea Minerals supply many nano minerals in small amounts. Generally, these are not used in farming today. The humic acid is soil biology food.

Later in the crop, leaf sugars, as measured by refractometer* showed a 20% increase in treated rows.

Results

There was only a small yield increase, but there was a marked increase in nut size. This gave almost 50% increase in large Jumbo grade, which commands a premium price.

This gave $520/ha increase in returns to the farmer.

The post Bigger Peanuts, how restoring soil biology led to a marked increase in Jumbo grade nut size appeared first on Healthy Plants - Healthy People.

If you know something we don’t, we would appreciate it if you get in contact with us!

Information sourced and compiled from:

• Sea Minerals Reduce Dysbiosis, Improve Pasture Productivity and Plant Morphometrics in Pasture Dieback Affected Soils
• Teaming with nutrients – Jeff Lowenfels

The post Known Functions of Sea Minerals appeared first on Healthy Plants - Healthy People.

Sea minerals are being harvested as a left-over product after winning table salt from seawater. It contains 32 minerals known to be needed, some in minuscule amounts but still vital for some soil organisms. The list of those elements can be found at Known Functions of Sea Minerals

Soil biology is already established in existing orchards, otherwise it would not produce much. But has this biome all it requires for optimum tree health and productivity? To find out, a test was carried out on an Avocado farm in Childers.

The treatment consisted of applying Humic Acid at the rate of 15L/ha and Sea Minerals at the rate of 5L/ha to three rows of the Sheppard variety. The application was by injecting the liquids into the under-tree irrigation. The first application was on 3 October 2018, a second on 29 November and a third on 26 February 2019. The treated rows were in the centre of a field and the rest of the field was the control.

The results were excellent.

The results were excellent.

By 8 May, the soil in the treated area was softer and held more water. This was assessed by feel by two farmworkers and two trained agricultural consultants, who all agreed.

At harvest, the average bin weights in the control rows, each side of the treated rows, was 416 kg. The 10 bins from the 3 treated rows averaged 460 kg, an 11% increase in weight. This indicates more sugars and minerals in the fruit.

Sugars are produced in leaves through photosynthesis. This is the complex process in which plants combine sunlight with water from the soil and carbon from the air into sugars. It needs many minerals to work well.

Leaf sugars were measured with a refractometer¹ on 2nd April and 8th May 2019. On both occasions, the results, measured using Brix² readings, were 10% higher in the treated rows compared with adjacent control rows. Higher Brix readings mean healthier plants and the healthier a plant is, the less attractive it is to insects and the more resistant to diseases.

An increase in sugars also indicates an increase in the minerals that gives fruit its distinctive taste. It means that plants have more sugar to feed the soil biology, so it in turn can increase soil carbon levels and structure and provide more minerals back to the plant in exchange for the sugars. This starts a virtuous upward cycle of improvements.

Increased Gross Margins

Avocados are sold in trays of 5.5 kg, and bigger fruit means more trays. An important test is if extra trays mean more dollars, as well as improving the soil and giving better taste.

Working that out in detail is beyond this article. But a rough calculation suggests that the per hectare extra income from more trays can be $600/ha or more. It means that investing pretty small amount of dollars in biology will pay itself back in one harvest, as was also shown in our trial on improving soybean yield by 9% with Bio-Booster and humic acid.

Farmers do not have to wait years before getting their money back, as is commonly believed. The next harvest will pay for it handsomely.

Worth Doing More Tests?

Is it worth doing more tests of giving the soil-biology what it needs so it can perform better? That is up to the growers.

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