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+--- Thread: High-Performance Agriculture: How it Can Increase Your Garden Yield By Eight-Fold (/thread-171.html)
High-Performance Agriculture: How it Can Increase Your Garden Yield By Eight-Fold - FarmTech - 01-21-2015
High-performance agriculture is providing plants with the environment and the nutrition they need to allow them to express their inherent genetic potential. When you do this, you’re not altering a plant’s yield; you’re just allowing the plant to fully express its inherent yield potential. For example, tomato seed has the genetic capacity to produce 400 to 500 pounds of fruit per plant. But every time that plant is exposed to any level of stress throughout the growing season, that potential harvest is reduced.
When we give the plant nutritional supplements, the reality is that we are not increasing yields; we are simply preventing those yields from being lost. The source says that the foundation of plant’s health really boils down to two things:
Plant nutrition and soil biology
Satisfying these 2 requirements will result in healthy plants that are able to ward off insects and diseases. Yield will also increase dramatically and the plants would be able to survive a wider range of climactic changes. Plants need at least 64 different minerals and trace-minerals for optimal growth.
One of the most potent strategies that can be used to improve plant health is compost tea.
Quote:While there are a variety of ways to make compost tea, you typically use a volume of water, certain sugars for nutrients, minerals, along with certain bacteria or microbes. The mix is then aerated using a pump, as the beneficial organisms require oxygen to survive. The tea is typically grown over 24 to 48 hours, and then you apply it directly to the soil on a regular basis.
An ideal compost tea is composed of tens of thousands of different species of bacteria, along with fungi and protozoa that actually digest the bacteria. This type of tea compost can address both of the main components necessary for maximum plant performance, i.e. mineral nutrition and optimized soil.
The minerals are actually created through the microflora in the soil, as follows. The soil bacteria, fungi, Actinomycetes, and a variety of other soil microbes feed on these soluble sugars and amino acids. They also extract minerals from the soil mineral matrix and use them to build their own bodies. As that microbial population cycles and regenerates, the minerals that are contained in their bodies are then released and become available for absorption by the plant. Again, this is very similar to the way that fermented vegetables or probiotics improve your own digestive and overall health.
BioChar, which is charcoal used as a soil amendment, can be used to improve the soil structure and encourage the growth of beneficial microorganisms. Producing BioChar involves slowly burning biomass, such as wood and other plant materials. The slow burning produce charcoal that has an incredibly high surface area.
Long term use of NPK fertilizers is bad for the soil:
Quote:While many soluble NPK-type fertilizers produce rapid, noticeable plant response, they significantly suppress the soil microbial community because they’re essentially electrolytes, and when applied to the soil, they increase the electrical conductivity of that soil, which results in a burnout and a suppression of the soil microbial community. So, long-term, this simply promotes soil destruction and decreases your ability to grow healthy plants.
Source: High-Performance Agriculture Can Increase Your Garden Yield Eight-Fold
RE: High-Performance Agriculture: How it Can Increase Your Garden Yield By Eight-Fold - FarmKing - 01-31-2015
This summarizes best practices in crop farming
RE: High-Performance Agriculture: How it Can Increase Your Garden Yield By Eight-Fold - Manihot - 04-11-2015
I can see that the future is tending towards natural farming. Chemical use is doing us harm.