(JOHN) This is John Kohler with GrowingYourGreens.com here in my front yard garden and I have a
very special guest with me today so this is the man and he’s eating my home grown strawberries.
(DON) I thought you meant the strawberry… Ok!
(JOHN) That’s my special guest and it’s going to get eaten.
(DON) My special guest.
(JOHN) Well, anyways, my good friend with me here his name is Don Weaver and he literally
wrote the book… I know he’s a modest guy, but he wrote the book on soil remineralization
and using rock dust and he got me into the rock dust and that’s why I’m so excited
about rock dust. So, I’ here now with the expert, and I call him an expert he probably
wouldn’t consider himself an expert but I think he’s the expert he knows a lot more
about rock dust than most people in my opinion.
(DON) Tell them who the real expert is John.
(JOHN) Nature is the real expert we want to just model nature and people try to make nature
hard by spraying toxic chemicals and, you know, chemicals don’t appear in nature,
MiracleGro don’t appear in nature, but guess what? Compost appears in nature, things like
rock dust and minerals should appear in nature but are getting hard to find in nature so
we need to maybe duplicate nature and use technology to emulate nature. Does that sound
right?
(DON) Sounds like a plan, yeah I think that’s pretty accurate. My perspective is nature
has a pretty good design going and if we’re wise we’ll study it, see how mother nature
does things on the planet and then when it’s productive and constructing and health promoting
we should obviously imitate or cooperate with those methods and those systems. So, as far
as the soil life system which produces all the vegetation and all the plant and animal
life on the earth it’s all based on the foundation of a healthy mineral base and a
complete mineral base. The mineral are the first food of the microbes in the soil and
microbes are the first step on the whole chain of life on Earth. So, our first responsibility
in being good stewards, or caretakers, or regenerators of the Earth would be to make
the soil microbes have their complete natural which is basically the rock minerals from
the Earth’s crust plus the organic matter that grows out of the Earth that needs to
go back to the soil to replenish and build it up, year to year potentially we could build
the soil to a higher level of fertility each year we’re giving more than we’re taking
from the soil so I and other have been experimenting with rock powders for the last 30 years and
before that people were doing it back in the 1800s and some people even further back, as
back as the Aegean cultures in the middle east supposedly they used ground up rock to
add to their compost to make a much more fertile compost and produce the basis of their fertility
and health back many centuries ago as Edmond Bordeaux Szekely talks about in his book The
Ecological Health Garden, very interesting book.
(JOHN) What’s the difference between the Azomite that I have here the Gaia Green Glacial
Rock Dust and here’s the Ocean Solution or Ocean Grown Solution, basically minerals
from the sea concentrated in a bottle, much easier to ship, and then we have just an example
here of some other kind of stuff that’s sold as a rock dust but kind of looks like
sand to me. So what’s all the differences and why don’t you just start with that.
(DON) Ok, sure. Well, Azomite has been around probably 50 years. Now it comes out of Utah,
the name comes from A to Z of Minerals, A Z O M is A to Z of Minerals, “-ite” to
make it a cute name. It has every element on the Earth’s crust as far as we know it’s
been analyzed extensively so it is a pretty complete mineral fertilizer. Legally some
of these things aren’t “fertilizers” according to some state laws but in terms
of the definition of creating more fertile soil these are fertile soils. A lot of the
chemical stuff out there called fertilizers I think might be more accurately called de-fertilizers
because in the long run they result in depleting the soil of fertility because they’re adding
maybe three elements or so back to the soil to stimulate the crops to take out 60 to 90
minerals. So, does that make sense in the long run? Obviously not, I don’t believe
it makes sense in the short run either but that’s been the habit of humanity since
World War II approximately, the chemical forcing of soil production by adding stimulating chemicals,
akin to adding stimulants and drugs to the human body to try to force out some expression
of health instead of building it from the same foundation upwards.
Anyway, Azomite is a good product that’s on the market. I don’t particularly advocate
any one product or I think any of them work well in one’s local environment and it’s
practical to bring in, makes sense to consider as a source. The Gaia Green Glacial Minerals
is it this one?
(JOHN) That’s that one.
(DON) I’ve been using this one about the last three years and getting really good results
with it. Comes out of British Columbia, it’s a natural glacial mix of rocks and usually
the best rock dusts are from mixtures of rocks which are mixed up by the glaciers.
Hello white cabbage butterfly! They’re apparently interested in this topic as well, as they
should be.
(JOHN) They like mineral rich foods too?
(DON) They like the mineralized brassicas, they’re by far the best. They don’t need
to munch up all your plants, they can get a few bites and they’re done and you got
all plenty for yourself. Important principle. Anyway, Gaia Green Glacial rock dust, “Gaia”
being a name for the mother earth, is a very good source, it comes out of British Columbia,
and a lot of places are marketing this now. Companies with value farm supply and Harmony
Farm Supply out in this area, in Sebastopol area, and quite a few others… Lyngso Garden
Materials in Redwood City down near where I live in the San Francisco peninsula. So
that’s a good one.
(JOHN) So does that have all the same…? Well I can’t say “all” the same because
it’s going to have a different spectrum minerals but…
(DON) Different balance but they’re basically the same full spectrum is usually what’s
found in glacial mixes because the glaciers crush and grind rocks from a number of different
strata of the Earth crust and mix them together and spread them out over usually huge areas
during the glacial periods and on a smaller scale in the inter-glacial periods. Like in
the Hunza area where people are reputed to be the healthiest people on the world and
among the longest lived, as you can read about in John Robbins’ Healthy at 100 book. The
Hunza people are benefiting every year from the glacial melt water coming down out of
the Himalayas above them and the glacial melt water is full of the finely entrained rock
powder ground by the glaciers, they call it glacial milk in Hunza land and they drink
it as well as add it to the soil in all the crops so they have super high quality food
there. Remember Jolene Tong from the San Francisco Raw Food Group went there and tasted their
produce, she was amazed, hadn’t really tasted true organic mineralized produce. Big upgrade
from standard organic produce growing off in what’s slaughterhouse by-products and
the animal manures and benign neglect, to adding all the minerals and making the soil
so much better.
A lot of the taste compounds as well as the health producing compounds are found in the
trace minerals so if you’re lacking molybdenum and zinc and manganese and many of these trace
minerals the quality of the food and the taste of the food goes way down. And there’s been
studies showing since early 1900s it’s been 20-80% drops typically in most minerals measured
from the foods back then compared to now. So we’re saying accumulative demineralization
of the soil; year after year or decade after decade leading us to, if not total extinction
which is possible, to a state of degeneration where we’re not even consciously able to
understand what’s happening to us, like the frog in the frying pan where they gradually
turn up the water and it doesn’t jump out, it just stays there and gets boiled. The degeneration
of the human brain body and spirit along with the ecological degeneration seems to go hand
in hand so we’re obviously part of the system if we want to upgrade our health it’s not
just human health we need to be concerned of, it’s total ecological health that’s
obviously the issue, or should be obvious, I hope it’s becoming more obvious to all
of us.
Anyway, remineralization of the soil is just a simple way to give back to nature potentially
hundreds of years of depletion, in almost overnight we can be generous give back to
the soil what we’ve been taking for decades or even centuries and repay this debt to nature
that’s been accumulating and I suggest we repay as soon as possible.
John mentioned this Ocean Solution, there’s a few products using sea solids or sea solutions
which I think have a good place in advanced mineralized organic agriculture. I haven’t
tried them extensively myself but I’ve read enough testimonials and results people are
getting to know it’s a very helpful product if it makes sense to bring this into your
local garden or farm. John mentioned it may be cheaper to ship this and that depends partly
on the quantity, I think ideally we should be shipping billions of tons of gravel dust
all over in trains in trucks.
(JOHN) I agree!
(DON) Get it out there in generous quantities so whether a truckload of this would be cheaper
than a truckload of… actually they’re probably roughly the same weight or volume,
whatever it’s probably comparable but whatever we need… I think everything that’s helpful
we need to get out as soon as possible to repay this debt before nature stops renewing
our lease on life and kicks us off the planet. Nature is the landlord and we haven’t been
very good tenants as you probably all know out there.
So this last one John is showing me for the first time, it’s a new product on the market
that we’re not sure would be really as helpful as these other because it doesn’t seem to
be very full of fine powder and usually you need something pretty fine to feed those tiny
mouths of the tiny microorganisms, they can’t eat big rocks obviously and even sand size
particles tend to be big rocks to these tiny microbes so it makes more sense to grind it
fine and we’re a little doubtful this is fine enough, it’s mostly sand size it appears
but it really needs to go through what’s called a sieve analysis going through different
size sieves or screens to show how much will pass, say through a 50 holes per square inch
screen or a 100 mesh screen and a 200 mesh screen. Usually you want something at least
going through a 100 mesh and better a 200 mesh, even a 400 mesh screen which makes like
a really fine like a talcum powder rouge kind of fineness to it. So, that’ll feed the
organisms really fast and generously. So, we’ll have to do some growth test with this
as will be the manufacturers if they haven’t already and see if it will be a good one to
use for some people.
(JOHN) Another question my viewers have is that I use these guys because luckily they’re
available here but most people don’t have a good farm supply store in their local area
and most places actually don’t carry this d it’s very hard to find unfortunately and
I wish every farm supply… I wish Home Depot sold this stuff, they should, I’d be making
sure it would fly off the shelves and people would get results and they’d buy more. So,
hey if you work for Home Depot or Lowe’s you guys should pick up this stuff.
(DON) And I’ve written to the CEO of Home Depot, did you get my letter and the articles
that I sent you? Please re-consider, I’ve heard nothing back.
(JOHN) Evidently not.
(DON) Not yet. (JOHN) Maybe they’ll watch my video. But
anyways, so if people can’t…
(DON) Watch all his videos, they’re worth your time.
(JOHN) If people can’t get this products I know another source of gravel dust is really
a gravel yard or places that sell gravel and rocks. So tell us about that and how people
would get that stuff and get it by the truckload and if it would be as good as this or if its
better obviously than nothing, right? Don why don’t you tells us about that.
(DON) Sure! Forrest Gump might say sometimes you get some really good fine gravel dust
t these gravel pits, sometimes they’ll be crushing and screening gravel to different
sizes and most of their market is for the larger gravels and cobble stones maybe and
sand, there’s a big market for sand, and sometimes they don’t really have a market
for the very fine dust which might end up in a big pile off to the side that just sits
there often and you can buy that, sometimes they’ll give it to you for free or you can
certainly ask “Do you think I could have a sample of your fines?” They often call
them fines or rock dust or gravel crushers screenings but you could ask what’s the
closest thing to a rock dust or powder they have and ask them if you might do some experiments
to see how it work in your horticulture, agriculture or forestry experiments growing trees or gardens
or whatever and often they’ll give it to you or maybe they’ll say “Well, we have
to sell it for $10 dollars a ton or something” and that’s a bargain $10 dollars a ton.
If you can get something that shows promise you might want to take a little bit first
do some pot tests with and without it, different fast growing vegetables like radishes grow
fast or any fast growing plants you can think of.
So, that’s a good way to go about it, see if it works and then you can establish a relationship
where you can just get as much as you want anytime for a cheap or reasonable price and
then if they have a big amount, more than you could use, you can tell your friends about
it or go in with group purchases or tell your gardener and farmer friends and this’ll
take that pile sitting there and get it out on the soil where it’ll do some good for
all of us and also of course it’ll help save the climate, which is deteriorating,
it’ll make for much more biomass to suck in the excess CO2 and bring it down to normal
interglacial levels so we don’t totally wreck the climate and throw us into either
into fully chaos climate or another glacial period which is very possible, you can read
about that in The Survival of Civilization book which I co-authored with John Hammond
or a later book I wrote called To Love and Regenerate the Earth. They’re both free
online at SoilAndHealth.org, that’s the soil and health library I recommend, a lot
of good information there on human health and planetary health and soil health, so along
with John’s excellent website SoilAndHealth.org is a good one and Remineralize.org my friend
Joanna Campi started 20+ years ago and that’s an excellent resource for gravel dust commercial
sources all around the world and also a lot of good articles and information there you
can tap into. So, Remineralize.org I highly recommend.
(JOHN) Alright so this is John Kohler and Don Weaver with GrowingYourGreens.com keep
on growing and use some rock dust! It’s good for you, it’s good for the soil, it’s
good for the planet, it’s good for everyone! We’ll see you next time.
(DON) Live long and prosper!