Soil Remineralization

If you were following my Facebook feed last year, you know I am really interested in the idea of soil remineralization, as written about in Steve Solomon's The Intelligent Gardener. It might sound a bit intimidating, but really it is just a fancy term for testing your soil (which you are already in the habit of, right?) and customizing your fertilization based on the results, with the promised results of healthier, more disease and insect resistant plants. Plus, you get to fill out worksheets, and everybody likes worksheets, right?

Confession: I really do enjoy filling out worksheets.

So, last fall I started a little experiment with spinach to test the theory. Let's take a look at what happened.

Here is our first plot, in non-remineralized soil. Not too shabby for plants that have suffered through the winter. This plot actually has the largest plants, but it also got a significant head start on the other two.

Plot two, also ixnay on the emineralizationrey. Plants are much smaller, but were also planted later than plot one. (Oh how I wish I had jotted down the actual start dates, and could supply more than the vaguest of timelines)

And we finally come to plot three, the one that actually did receive the additional fertilizers. These plants have almost caught up in size to plot one, and are the healthiest of the bunch. Score! In addition, the soil in this plot has a much improved tilth, soft and spongy compared to the rest of the garden's solid clay. Thank you gypsum!

In summation: this test actually wasn't nearly scientific enough to gather any real results. In theory, all the plants had access to the same levels of macronutrients, and the only real difference was levels of micros and calcium in the soil. Of course without actually testing the soil plot by plot, plus taking into effect light levels, wind patterns, soil temps, yadda yadda yadda....

What I do know is that the results are close enough to what I want them to be to go all in with this process. The upsides are big, the downsides are small, and plus, I already bought all the ingredients.

Soon comes the fun part, the taste test. It will happen as soon as I can shake my current head cold long enough to actually taste anything.