In article ,
Stuart Noble writes:
| Chris Hogg wrote:
|
| But I doubt that what you've seen is the extracted material. Most
| probably it's the lignite itself. Whether it has any beneficial
| effects on soil in that form, I don't know, but I would guess it would
| take years to break down and release the humic acids onto the mineral
| particles in the soil, which is where it's needed. After all, the
| lignite in South Devon has been in the ground for some 20 million
| years, and has become pretty stable and inert over that time.
|
| Yes, I did wonder about that. I guess the purveyors of humic acid are
| banking on an alkaline soil. There seems to be a lot of controversy over
| whether potassium or ammonium humates are beneficial.

The key to that is whether it is in the bioactive level of the soil
or not. Even peat is stable when below the water table, and degrades
very slowly if below the bioactive level. It was the use of the Fens
for farmland that caused and is causing the oxidisation of the peat.
There isn't a hard and fast boundary between peat and anthracite,
and my understanding is that the term lignite covers a wide range!

So it will depend on how lignified the lignite is :-)


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.