Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Organic Farming without the Quackery

There are a lot of benefits to organic farming South Africa, however small the scale –from the smallest kitchen gardens to the most complex of industrial farms. One of the odd things about it as an industry, though, is the sheer quantity of bad advice it can sometimes attract; you’ll find yourself being told to do all manner of things that don’t necessarily make much sense! The way to get around this is to spend some time educating you about the truth of the matter, to keep from being suckered in by bold claims and unverifiable assertions.

Why to Perform a Home Soil Test Analysis

It’s not actually true that a home soil test can tell you everything about the chemical makeup of the soil in your garden – you’ll hear people claim that occasionally, but in truth all they do is tell you the pH level of the sample you’ve selected. This is often a great deal of use in its own right, but it’s not quite the panacea that some would make it out to be!

Rather than investing in fancy kits that purport to change the way you garden, either buy a simple pH monitor that will do the job just as well or test the soil yourself using vinegar and baking soda. There’s no call to spend more money than that.

Why You Should Consider Liquid Sulphur


Without sulphur, plants can’t produce much in the way of proteins, amino acids, enzymes or vitamins – meaning that they won’t grow well and, once harvested, won’t be as healthy for people to eat. If your soil isn’t too rich in sulphur, adding liquid sulphur to it through a process of foliar feeding will help a great deal.

Why There’s a Point to Amino Acid Chelates

You’d probably need a degree in chemistry to properly understand the workings of chelates, but suffice it to say they’re a great help to many gardeners – but, like everything else, they’re not the kind of magic bullet that some unscrupulous salespeople would have you believe. So why would you need an amino acid chelate at all?

The layperson’s explanation draws on some popular over the counter painkillers. You’ll sometimes find painkillers sold in liquid form: little plastic blobs of pill that, if burst, would have liquid inside the gel-like coating. This makes them quicker for us to absorb, and means that they get to work faster. On a microscopic level, chelates do the same thing to fertiliser – meaning that the plant can better absorb the nutrients inside.

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