Rusty Hinge 2 wrote:
The message
from "Mike Lyle"
[...]
Sounds like a waste of money. If your soil is lacking something,
you
find out what it is, and replace that, not a whole lot of other
stuff. But you probably don't need anything you wouldn't get from
the
usual gardening processes: compost, bonemeal, etc, seaweed if you
can
get it, and a bit of ordinary fertiliser if you need it. There's
no
magic in volcanoes: the best thing for improving soil is growing
things in it.

It isn't a waste of time: in fact, in trials it has proved
spectacularly effective in increasing crop yields.

It was featured on (IIRC) one of the R4 science programmes. I can't
unforget the details, except that I think the initial experiment
was
carried out in Perthshire.

OK, I'll accept that -- unfortunately missed the prog. So how does it
work? And has it worked in other places? I can see that from time to
time a depleted soil might need trace-mineral replacement; but surely
that's a rare case?

I'm assuming that the experiments were carried out with the usual
controls, in order to avoid what I think of as "the reading-scheme
phenomenon" (impressive results achieved with a new teaching method,
but turning out to be just because of the extra attention received by
both pupils and teachers).

--
Mike.