Adding Salt To Soil

[drtreelove]

I’ve been looking at a thread in the main farming forum on adding salt to soil and thinking that I better not get started with comments or it will look like I’m preaching; maybe not the thread for me. But then I thought about the people who may be reading and be lead into thinking that this is some kind of intelligent practice, adding concentrated salts of any kind to soil.

I’m too old to think I can save the world, but I’ve decided to preach a little. I put it here in the organic sub-forum where my comments may be appreciated more by those who already have an idea that there is something more healthy, satisfying and environmentally responsible about growing plants and food in accordance with natural principles.

Using concentrated chemicals to provide plant nutrients, including most common chemical fertilizers, is kind of like a human health principles and thinking that you are getting all the components that you need from vitamin pills or the blender, instead of whole food and a healthy lifestyle. Or worse yet, that you can get the energy you need from methamphetamines or other drugs without experiencing a downside. It may feel good and work for awhile, but at what cost?

I’m guilty of using chemicals for a quick fix. But I’ve always use them with a mind to phase them out as I build soil fertility and establish a balance that allows natural plant health and biological controls, a balance that I can never hope to fully understand and get completely right on my own or by relying on modern science that is largely funded by the chemical and pharmaceutical companies.

Concentrated chemical salts can provide short term benefits, but can be very damaging to soil and plant health. In fact, one measure of a good chemical fertilizer is its “salt index”, the lower the better for repeated use. Salts can burn, or dry out the plant tissue by interfering with water movement and retention and other chemical balances. The initial sign of salt burn is tissue necrosis (browning/dying) on the leaf tip and leaf margins; advanced salt burn includes death of the plant. Put an extra heavy dose of urea or ammonium sulphate on your Malaysian grass and see what I mean.

I haven’t started to search for all the specifics that I’m sure are available on this subject, but maybe some of you can contribute. And please consider that a lot of chemicals end up in the groundwater, waterways and oceans, and the by-products chemical production end up in the atmosphere, all with potentially disastrous long term consequences. Go organic! don

[loong]

I'm not sure exactly what is in the salt that the Thais use

เกลือสินเธาว์

gleua sĭn-tao

Which is Rock Salt

There are deposits in the North and has a very high proportion of Potash apparently.

I have been unable to find out if it is refined to any extent, but the Thais just refer to it as ปุ๋ยเกลือ, bpŭi gleua.

When the Thais translate to English, they just call it salt, but it is not Sodium Chloride, it's mainly Potash as far as I know.

There is some opposition to exploiting the huge deposits of potash that the North has.

http://www.readbangkokpost.com/business/ag...on_fertilis.php