Rock dust Remineralization- Anyone using it?

[12540dumont]

I might just have to test that.

It's good to know.

I usually pick in the am, just so that I don't have to do so much cooling. Melons picked am last about a week. The ones I pick in the pm only about 3 days. This is if they are stored at 60 degrees.

Frigerated, they all last a couple of weeks. But the Fridge is really pumping if I pick in the afternoon.

Plus, okay I admit. Anything over 80 degrees and I start wandering towards shade and water. In the summer I like to work from 6-12 and then eat lunch and start canning/processing at 1 and go on till 4. Then start dinner.

[steev]

Of course everyone wants to get that work done before the sun gets too oppressive; the sweet life, like sweet melon, aint easy. Still, I pick my breakfast melon after supper, the day before; it only has to keep 12 hours, max.

I, too, like to head for the grape arbor when the sun gets too much, to enjoy the cooling breeze in my Yucatan hammock; luckily, the mountains to the west seem to always suck in a breeze from the east, so it's really not bad out of direct sun.

[12540dumont]

a hammock! a hammock. I want a hammock and a margarita, and a beach house...I guess I better finish weeding.

[ottawagardener]

To answer the original question, the farmers in the fields down the hill are. I know nothing about it though

[steev]

I may have just figured out how to cool melons and stuff. I think I could pipe well-water into and then out of a chest freezer, if the seals were tight enough, so that my irrigation water would cool produce to ~55F, and then continue to my fields.

[steev]

So then stuff would be pre-cooled prior to the fridge.

[MikeH]

Growing vegetables is an extractive process. We grow intensively in raised beds initially filled with pure plant-only compost and we mulch heavily so we haven't given much thought to the soil. Last year's drought had us chasing our tails trying to protect our new-ish trees - fruit, nut, etc.  by heavy mulching.  We didn't have enough mulch so we started thinking about growing mulch which quickly becomes compost. That got me thinking about the soil and wondering about the condition of the soil in our raised beds.  More or less by chance, we planted some buckwheat and oats in one of the idle raised beds just to keep the weeds down. But the results of almost complete weed suppression and a good amount of biomass got our attention quickly.   As a result, we've started to focus on the soil - structure, biology, feeding, etc. which leads to mycorrhizal fungi, growing fertility through green manures, ramial wood chips, etc.  One of the things that I've come across is the idea that soil can be deficient for whatever reason in some/many of minerals that are necessary to good human health.  Most of these minerals are also necessary for good plant growth. A bit of searching led me to remineralization and then to Steve Solomon who I already knew about from his Soil and Health Library and his book Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times.  He's a big advocate of soil mineral amendment.  I haven't bought his new book The Intelligent Gardener: Growing Nutrient Dense Food but I have spent  some time following the discussions in his Yahoo group.  While I don't disagree with soil improvement as he lays it out, it seemed to me that the process of soil testing, adding various minerals based on the test results, testing again, amending again seemed to be a never ending cycle that transferred money from my pocket to someone else's pocket.  It would seem that Nature doesn't read the tests and, thus, doesn't respond accordingly.  
Somewhere in my search, rock dust came up as a subject, in particular glacial rock dust.  We live in an area where there are lots of glacial deposits in the form of moraines aka gravel pits. Is there any reason why I can't just get gravel crusher dust?

[steev]

No.

[richardw]

Certainly ive paid much attention soil mineral amendment,this is because much of the South Island where i am is made up of glacial deposits but its gone through more than just the one deposition period,the results are that our soil are very low in Selenium ,Boron and many other minerals,so Selenium&Boron were added to my gardens when i first set them up,since then i regularly apply rock phosphate and Granite dust from my brother in-laws headstone business.