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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Apr 9, 2012 12:09:26 GMT -5
Okay, so I've been thinking about trying to take a chemistry based approach to figuring out how to make the "perfect soil". I think I've finally got the ratios figured out. I've come to the conclusion that basically the best fertilizer for plants is basically dead plants. All the chemicals are pretty much there in those previously living organisms, so when they decompose they are pretty much still in the same ratios. I think carbon is probably the one least thought about, but easily the most important.
So i took the chemicals from DNA and broke them down to figure out how much Oxygen, Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen and Phosphorus are needed. I know that there are a few elements that are needed once in a while like Potassium and Calcium, but all of those trace elements combined only make up about 4% of cells. The other 96% is basically these 5 elements.
What i used:
Guanine
Cytosine
Adenine
Thymine
2X:
2-Deoxyribose
Phosphate Group
Here are the ratios i got:
C29 = ~30%
H41 = ~40%
N15 = ~15%
O20 = ~20%
P2 = ~2%
Broken down even more:
C = 28.05%
H20 = 56.07%
N = 14.01%
P = 1.90%
So basically you need 30% Carbon, 50% Water, 15% Nitrogen, and 2% Phosphorus. I think this is the reason compost tea, charcoal, and perlite work so well at fertilizing plants. The sugar and charcoal work great as carbon sources, and perlite works great at holding in water. It also seems (at least at first glance) that the chemical fertilizer ratios they sell to farmers are giving way too much Phosphorus and Potassium! Maybe this is a simplistic approach, and maybe too simple. I don know, but i found it to be an engaging thought experiment. Let me know if i made any mistakes or what you think. I'm thinking about posting something similar about this on my blog, but i figured I'd test it out here first.
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Post by steev on Apr 9, 2012 15:35:42 GMT -5
I think you're basicly right; dead plants are eventually ideal fertilizer ( I'll not reiterate my thoughts on the implications for other organisms, like us ). Further, I think the point of commercial fertilizer is not so much to provide the ideal for sustained, healthy growth, but to over-fertilize to compensate for losses due to washing away nutrients before plants can take them up, and to promote rampant, rapid growth for quick crop turnover. It appears that these "advantages" come at the costs of aquifer pollution and reduced nutritional value of the crops.
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Post by Walk on Apr 10, 2012 7:32:27 GMT -5
If you're interested in the chemistry of remineralized soils, you should check out the work of Dr. William A. Albrecht, Prof. of Soils at U of MO. His work in the early 1900's is written about in the Albrecht Papers, an Acres USA publication in 1975. Also, the Acres USA Primer and the books by Dr. Harold Willis cover his work. Soil chemistry is a very complex subject, much more involved than the percentages you stated above.
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Post by templeton on Apr 10, 2012 8:27:22 GMT -5
Just a couple of questions - i know next to nothing abot soil chem, or biochem for that matter. (but it would seem on the face of it that dead plants should have most of the stuff needed to grow live plants...)
Why start with DNA? isn't that a fairly minor part of the cell?
pH?
bioavailability?
T
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Apr 12, 2012 1:36:30 GMT -5
Just a couple of questions - i know next to nothing abot soil chem, or biochem for that matter. (but it would seem on the face of it that dead plants should have most of the stuff needed to grow live plants...) Why start with DNA? isn't that a fairly minor part of the cell? pH? bioavailability? Well DNA was the easiest to start with and get the ratios figured out. If anyone had information about what the rest of the cells are made of and the chemical equations to go along with that information then that would be great. I figured the DNA was also a good place to start since the plant starts with the DNA, and if you dont have enough nutrients for ther DNA, then you wont have enough nutrients for anything else. It's just an idea at this point. Yeah, perhaps pH and other things are also important things that probably should be taken into consideration, but i haven't got that far yet. Still just a thought experiment. |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Apr 12, 2012 2:31:50 GMT -5
I haven't done the math, but if you are only interested in elements, I bet when you get all done that it ends up looking something like Miracle Grow in a hydroponics lab using hard water with the addition of ad-hoc carbon, and oxygen from the atmosphere.
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Post by Leenstar on Apr 14, 2012 16:32:47 GMT -5
I do have a biochemistry degree and can tell you the overall mass of a plant is much more cellulose and other stuff than DNA. The mass of the plant from DNA is tiny. Most bulk comes from cell walls.
I don't have another reference to which to direct you and applaud the approach but I wouldn't use the chemical composition of a miniscule portion of the plant as a means of determining the appropriate macroscopic nutrients that need to added to amend soil.
There is no question that carbon needs to be available but the carbon in plants is a result of anabolic conversion of CO2 (from the air) into carbohydrates through photosynthesis, not from root uptake. The effects of carbon in the soil are more likely structural to the soil.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Apr 14, 2012 17:01:51 GMT -5
Thanks leenstar!
Okay so now i have Cellulose (C6H10O5). More carbon and more hydrogen and oxygen. Any other structures that make up a significant structure in plants?
I understand the ability to gather carbon from the air, but are you sure plants wont gather it from the soil if it's available? Some of the best soil I've ever seen is found in the forest or wild areas, and is always a dark color (i presume from the high carbon content) and full of organic matter. I suppose that even if plants dont use carbon from the soil (which i still suspect that they can), that perhaps a reason that type of soil does so well is because the carbon is used by microrganisms in the soil, which help to create a healthy ecosystem which then benefits the plants. Someone did tell me that more carbon in the soil will also help retain more water.
Pectin? (C6H10O7)? Now how do i figure out the ratios between cellulose and pectin, etc., and DNA?
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Post by Leenstar on Apr 14, 2012 18:03:33 GMT -5
Cellulose is carbohydrate chain that makes up the bulk of a cell wall in plants. By mass it is probably the most abundant material next to water.
Simply discussing the raw atomic composition overly simplifies the biochemistry. You don't just assume that if you have enough hydrogen and oxygen around you'll have water. Carbon organized in a myriad of different configurations and due to this there is an entire branch of chemistry, organic chemistry, to deal with it.
It is safe to assume that dead plants, having been once alive had enough of the atomic and moleculary building blocks about them to have successfully resulted in a plant. Trace minerals that may have been pulled up into the leave by plants from potentially hundreds of feet away or below will be present in the leaves that once they fall t the ground and decompose make them available on the surface.
Decomposition doesn't really break things down in to their anatomic components, instead it breaks things into molecules that can't be broken down further or at least into smaller molecules picked up by bacteria, plants and animals and reprocessed (or stored and concentrated).
The chemical composition approach can work in a general way. Take a plant, burn it analyze the resultant gas in a mass spec and you'll get the general elements. By mass using cellulose is probably a fine approximation. That said you are more likely to use your compost than go to the garden center and pick up a bag of carbon and a bucket of nitrogen.
The chemical composition of the soil is heavily dependent on the configuration of the molecules present. For simplification consider pH. many different molecules will exist in different configurations or be present in different forms depending on the pH. They also can affect the pH. They can buffer it or they can drag the pH to towards either end of spectrum. You can see this with the leave molds of different trees which can have different pHs.
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Post by canadamike on Apr 14, 2012 19:29:09 GMT -5
Looking at soil from a chemical standpoint is only interesting for..chemists. Soil is alive. The chemical approach has done more than its share of damage. I do agree, though, that even organic material can be described in a ''chemical'' way, but I think the initial proposition is simply flawed... That said, you will still need NPK, Fe, Mg and all the other ones, seaweed contains about 80 of them  Chemistry is only chemistry to a certain extent. As an exemple, I am having a ball these days with a pure silicium product called ''OXYLYSE''. It has been treated, magnetized ( or else, I do not know how) and you take a tooth pich, grab some of the powder with it, and this minute amount will make a quart of water full of bubbles within an hour. They use it to maximize the work of bacterias in digesting petroleum products in spills, digest wood, give back life to overfertilized ponds with alguae problems, and in agriculture. The darn thing is simply powdered quartz, at least to the eye, but it behaves SOOO differently. I commercial producer of peppers I have talked to has used it in his fields, and it rid them of of a huge bacterial spot problem. Are we talking physics here or shemistry, or biology?  |
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Post by sandbar on Apr 24, 2012 0:20:07 GMT -5
CM, I'm having trouble finding info on Oxylyse ... lots of dead links in Google. Do you have a link that would start me on a new Internet rabbit trail ...  What do you use it for? Steve. |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Apr 24, 2012 0:59:51 GMT -5
CM, I'm having trouble finding info on Oxylyse ... Oxylyse is a trademark that was used at one time by O2Gen2 of the Cayman Islands. (It appears to have abandoned the trademark, or become a defunct company.) |
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bertiefox
gardener
There's always tomorrow!
Posts: 236
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Post by bertiefox on Apr 24, 2012 5:34:00 GMT -5
How can you have a "perfect soil" when plants have evolved to grow in different soil types, with different levels of moisture, nutrients, pH, soil structure and so on? You can have a 'perfect soil' for brassicas, but not for carrots. Surely that applies far more than with just the chemical constituents.
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Post by MikeH on Apr 24, 2012 6:17:51 GMT -5
If you're interested in the chemistry of remineralized soils, you should check out the work of Dr. William A. Albrecht, Prof. of Soils at U of MO. His work in the early 1900's is written about in the Albrecht Papers, an Acres USA publication in 1975. Also, the Acres USA Primer and the books by Dr. Harold Willis cover his work. Soil chemistry is a very complex subject, much more involved than the percentages you stated above. |
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