Soil is KEY

How you build your gardens soil, with nutrients and minerals, is key to true health.

I have been working with Jerry Bale and others on this process, for years now, and the truth is in the results. The amazing health of the people using this correct biological loop, is undeniable.

Our bodies need a large variety of minerals to balance the natural chemistry in our bodies. When these minerals are missing, our health suffers.

Taking pills with a few vitamins is not how our bodies best metabolize these elements. Food is going through a digestive process that utilizes the nutrients it needs. So one quick flush of a multi-vitamin is not how our bodies naturally absorb what is needed.

When we consume a vegetable, the plant has gone through a metabolizing process that has broken the element down, (example could be iron), in such a way as to make it easier for our bodies to take in what essentially is a non-soluble substance. As a professor very profoundly stated, in one of my biology classes about plant uptake, "consider the symbiotic relationship plants have with the fungi mycorrhiza, this is a process where a microscopic living organism breaks down an element that is essentially a rock, and makes it viable for the plant to metabolize that substance." The plant is part of the process that makes your body able to uptake the same element.

Volcanic ash, sea kelp, food refuse that has been taken from organic gardens (not off the shelf pesticide produce), wood chips (from trees without pesticides) and manure (from stock that is not on hormones or on chemical feeds), all composted through the Worm Composting process, is what creates soil that will make your garden produce incredibly healthy food.

You too can produce soil that will help your entire family live a more healthy life.

How Plants Make Us Healthy

Health is really what we need from what we eat. So what are we looking for?

The building blocks of our cells are generated from an amazing biological process, where the actual soil with living micro-organisms breaks down minerals and nutrients and actually injects it into the plant roots such as mycorrhiza.

Not only must those minerals and nutrients be available in the soil, but the living organisms that transfer and network those minerals must be in your soil as well. As living organisms, they must have an environment with moisture and some temperature control as with any thing trying to live. Soil that has been left out in the sun, to bake with no weeds or ground cover, is not going to have living organisms in it. So buying top soil from the local garden center that looks like fine moon dust, is not going to give you food with the health benefits your are wanting.

Plants make us healthy by transferring, and biologically breaking down, nutrients and minerals through the mycorrhiza process or biological loop. Then the plants metabolism, along with it's ability to create carbon atoms through photosynthesis, creates a molecular state that when consumed, your body can recognize and absorb those nutrients that actually started in the biological loop in the soil.

A plant can grow fast and green with lots of nitrogen - but that does not mean it is a plant that has absorbed the nutrients and minerals we need to be healthy.

I have been shocked at how few organic gardeners even consider this part of that necessary loop. Simply removing pesticides and GMO seed from your growing process is not enough. If you are striving for an organic garden, you need to understand the basics of soil biology. It's really not that complicated and this is one of the best University links that breaks it down in a simple manner to comprehend.

Information is the most important tool you can use in your garden.

What is Organic

Organic is such a buzz word in our culture, but does organic mean it is perfect or complete?

Most people want to stop consuming man made pesticides. This is a good start, but is this what makes food healthy?

What is healthy food?

These are the questions that this blog is focused on.

I was certified as a Master Gardener in 2006, and, although very informative, the program surprisingly did not answer the question. The truth is we need to search out these answers for ourselves, which takes time and effort most folks do not have. So a consolidated blog, focused on growing healthy food, (not just pesticide free), is what we need.

I am also a Certified Arborist, and Licensed in Idaho to apply restricted use pesticides, so focusing on this information became a study for me. In that search, I have been in dozens of certified organic gardens, quizzing the owners what they were doing in their food growing practices. Most felt they were organic because they believed they were pesticides free. However, they were using ditch water with pesticide run off, and often composting from feed lot waste with growth hormones, and wood chips that could have come from trees treated with systemic pesticides.

So the reality is; it is very difficult to get completely pesticide free.

The second issue was the food itself. Did it have the nutrients needed to help our bodies health.

It seems this should be the focus. As much as avoiding man made pesticides and chemicals, are we actually improving our health with the foods we eat.

The main study most growers are focused is how to make the plants grow fast to produce a crop. But in my search for better food, I am finding that fast repetitious growth actually depletes the soil and defeats the main goal - food that makes us healthy.

I am finding other back yard growers with similar findings and this has lead to our own research on how to create truly healthy food.