Mineral and organic mixing myths?

Posted by: @denizen

Hi all. In my absence (dreaded covid... groan) I've been reading around about mixing mineral ferts with organics. I've always been told adding minerals is a bad thing for organic soil health and will negatively affect the micro-organisims/soil web. If I'm reading this article correctly it seems that's not always the case? Interested to know what you guys make of it. Hopefully I can post the link (ah I can't! Will do my best to chop it up. You'll need to copy paste).

  sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0038071714001187

The salts will have a detrimental effect on the microbes, but wont kill them off completely. Use salts if you need to, but full organic is preferred as it is better for the bacteria in the soil

I’ve combined organic and salt nutrients in outdoor gardens for years with nothing but good results. While I try to avoid salts when possible, they can help provide a boost at critical times in your plants life cycle. I have severely reduced the use of salt based fertilizer over the years and these days one sack of 13-13-13 will last 2-3 years. I used to go through one every six months. I’ve recently started adding JMS to my outdoor garden too. It seems to be on par with a low dose of salt nutes as far as nutrient response goes and definitely has longer lasting effects. It also helps repair the damage to the soil from salt nutes by adding tons of microbes to the soil. The HOHG guests have been teaching me some new old tricks and you are correct, you can mix salts and organic if you manage it correctly but it’s not ideal 😉.

So riddle me this @Macky and @Monkeydo, if salts are detrimental to organics, then why does JMS work when it contains salt? Then with the KNF or KFN or whatever, they also use sea water for the mineral content, in their concoctions.

Salt will kill most things if given in large amounts, but salt and water are what we're made of. Maybe everything in proper moderation, like cocaine and hookers. 😀

I'm using Atlantic Sea salt, what are you using Monkeydo? I've read to try different salt from different sea's, different mineral content. idk.

We might have to save this question for one of podcast guest?  Thanks  

As I understand what was explained to me by Chris Trump and Elaine Ingham, the problem is 2 fold. The microbes we want also want to be needed. If you’re feeding salt nutes the nutrients are readily available without being processed by the plant. This breaks the symbiotic relationship between the microbes and the plant and in turn the population of microbes will diminish. I’m not a scientist but that’s what was said. Secondly the tiny 16-20 grams of salt in 5 gallons of concentrated JMS which will again be diluted at 20:1 will give you barely a pinch of salt in 5 gallons of applied solution. So far I’ve made my JMS correctly and incorrectly, I forgot the salt once and got a weak batch but was still somewhat effective. The salt is added to provide a touch of salinity, the imo we want reproduce faster this way but I don’t know why. Still, I would use about 5 - 10 pounds of salt fertilizer on a citrus tree each spring and maybe a light dusting every other month till fall so that’s A LOT of salt in a concentrated space. I’m sure that soil was way damaged even though the fruit was delicious but I’ve been working to fix this soil issue over the past few years. This year it’s only JMS so far so probably 3 grams of salt this year, my lowest ever. Microbes can tolerate light salt, just not the massive amount we sometimes dump on them.

That makes sense and I haven't taken the time catch up on Chris and Elaine's vids yet, but it's a must do very soon. Thanks Monkeydo. Good luck on replacing the salts, seems quite possible. 

If you’re feeding salt nutes the nutrients are readily available without being processed by the plant. This breaks the symbiotic relationship between the microbes and the plant and in turn the population of microbes will diminish

Yeah this is what I thought and makes good sense. The following quote's quite interesting, though.

A meta-analysis based on 107 datasets from 64 long-term trials from around the world revealed that mineral fertilizer application led to a 15.1% increase in the microbial biomass (C_mic) above levels in unfertilized control treatments. Mineral fertilization also increased soil organic carbon (C_org) content and our results suggest that C_org is a major factor contributing to the overall increase in C_mic with mineral fertilization

I think they're specifically talking Nitrogen based ferts in outdoor environments with a ph over 5 but still noteworthy I guess. I'm like 90% organic these days but good to know I can give them a shot of N and my microbes may like it!

@denizen back in the day I used to till under lots of biomass every fall in my vegetable patch. I’m talking everything from rootballs to used Halloween Jack-o-lanterns too. Sometime in the latter part of winter I would till a small portion to see how the passive compost was doing. Some years I would hit a stinky mass of rotting vegetables so I’d apply a couple handfuls of urea based nitrogen fertilizer. That charge would put the microbes into overdrive somehow and the last stinking bits were digested in a couple of weeks. I don’t understand the mechanics but it was a tip from an organic gardening publication years ago. Apparently too much green compost can lock up most available nitrogen in the soil and the microbes don’t appreciate this. I try not to get myself into that predicament anymore and compost in a different area but in this case, the added nitrogen seemed to benefit the microbes.