This is a discussion facilitated by Tom Vanacore. Please feel free to ask questions and respond with your experience and know-how.
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This is a discussion facilitated by Tom Vanacore. Please feel free to ask questions and respond with your experience and know-how.
You need to be a member of Remineralize the Earth to add comments!
Replies
I wanted to add a comment to Tom's excellent introduction to this topic.
While volcanic rock products are often marketed as "natural" and OMRI listed for use in organic agriculture, it is important to remember that all magmatic deposits "naturally" contain heavy metals such as Lead, Mercury, Arsenic and Cadmium. Usually the levels are low (parts per million) but they are always present to some extent and need to be quantified with an independent soil analysis or ICP multi-element analysis.
We are conducting liberation testing on our reclamation project in California to determine at what particle size the heavy metals can be liberated and removed by gravity and magnetic separation to produce a cleaner volcanic rock dust product for utilization as a soil conditioner.
Our current size target is 50 microns where we see a very high liberation of the heavy metals (and their associated minerals) including iron oxides such as magnetite, hematite and ilmenite. In addition, sulfides, tellurides and selenides are liberating and reporting to the concentrate along with the heavy metals at this grind size.
To underscore Tom's point...not all volcanic rocks are the same and it is important to know the composition of the rocks that you plan to use. Also, most aggregate or quarry operations are limited to crushing and screening and do not have the equipment to perform additional grinding and classification to produce uniform gradations below 300 microns (50 mesh).
I believe there is an opportunity to make even better volcanic rock dust products by applying downstream fine grinding and mineral processing techniques. We are testing these concepts now in the context of economic feasibility and, if successful, may encourage more suppliers to adopt these practices in the future.
Tom's organization - Rock Dust Local - is the best resource I have found for detailed information and product sourcing here in the USA. His field experience in application of these products is unparalleled.
Hi Joanna, I have been using a combination of Rock Dust (Basalt) and BioChar. I amend 6 cups of Basalt per Cubic Foot and 10 cups of biochar per cubic foot of material.
Is Vermont the closest source for Basalt to Mass?
Joanna Campe said:
Thank you for sharing these wonderful photos! I am not aware of this way of grinding rocks and utilizing it and I'm wondering if Native Americans in the past through thousands of years may have done this?
Joanna
Lovely garden! I wonder what local materials are available in your area that could be screened, if they are not already screened into a fine dust? You might be able to find a fine dust from the same riverbed.
Joanna
Hi Troy,
Please make sure that all the links to your blog are available to us, that are specific to remineralization, and I am particularly interested in your results with biochar. We have a research project in eastern Massachusetts with rock dust and biochar, looking to find an optimum combination to get the greatest yields and Dr. Tom Goreau will be presenting a paper at the North American Biochar Symposium at UMass in October:
http://symposium2013.pvbiochar.org
Unfortunately we did have some problems with flooding this year which set us back for our second growing season and the late harvest data will probably not be available in time for the conference.
Also, please feel welcome to be in touch with me by email.
All the best,
Joanna
Troy Martz said:
Hi William,
I'm wondering if you did find rock dust for your garden and what the results were for this season?
Best wishes,
Joanna
William A Ellerbe said:
Hi Troy,
Exciting adventure tracking down rock dust, isn't it? Please do separate plots if possible, one with the product that you mentioned, one with the local source that you found called candy stripe and one with a combination of the two versus a control. Do you think that might be possible? You could get a low-cost scale and measure the weight of the plants.
Please document well and perhaps we can have an article on the website. If you post something on your blog, please put a link to it here or post in general and perhaps write a blog here as well.
William, I'm hoping that you will do something in the realm of urban gardening that you can document and also create an article for us by the end of the summer. Do you think that might be possible?
All the best,
Joanna
Remineralize the Earth
I purchased rock dust in 50lb. bags. The product is called Agrowinn, and the owner told me that is was better than Azomite because of much lower levels of alumina... I am not an expert in this stuff, but it made sense at the time (plus, Azomite or Gaia Green was not available locally).
Recently, I called a local compost facility, and asked about rock dust. The owner told me they don't specifically market rock dust, but that I was welcome to come and screen it myself.
When I arrived at the facility, it was a large lot with nothing growing on it. I live in the Southern California high desert, and there isn't much humus in the soil. However, there was one pile of volcanic rock (pink) they called "candy stripe." Weeds were popping up through this pile of rock like crazy -- the only living green thing on this lot.
The owner said they had a problem with weeds there, and I just bit my lip in excitement. Of course, that was the pile I screened, and ended up buying 1 cubic yard of the stuff for $30. He had no idea why I wanted it, and I didn't get into details (he may want to charge me more in the future!)
Needless to say, I have no idea of the mineral content, but I took a clue from mother nature and thought if weeds can grow like crazy in a sandy lot, maybe my 1 acre hobby farm / super garden would as well.
End result is a mixture of glacial rock dust and this volcanic stuff, mined in California near Ventura.
There is much more to this experiment of mine beyond rock dust... I am also doing a deep wood chip bed (Back to Eden style), with a small amount of inoculated biochar. I will be posting my result all year via my blog.
Thanks!
Troy
This wonderful discussion will inspire me to look for local Rock Dust resource within the Maryland, DC and Virginia areas. Can't thank you enough as I'm learning so much through our various discussions.
This is not a specific source of rock dust per Se but a good one nonetheless. I participate in a Native Sweat Lodge here in Hamilton. The sweat requires heating dozens of 5-10 lb Grandfather (round riverbed) rocks in a large fire until they're cherry red. They are then placed into a pit in the lodge and splashed with cedar tea to create the medicinal steam we need. Many of the rocks fracture which we call Grandmothers and then later, these are easily smashed with hammer into a fine powder.
Grandmother rocks are usually discarded since they are not used again in subsequent lodges. For me, this has become a perpetual source of fresh rock dust which I apply to my community garden plots at Hamilton's Gage Park.
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