"Janet Baraclough" wrote in message
...
The message
from "TR" you @me contains these words:

a few months ago there was an article in the papers about
basic rock nutrients you could but in bulk from a scottish site

http://www.seercentre.org.uk/

is the place you're thinking of; but all is not what you think. Those
impressive veg are not achieved just by scattering rockdust on barren
hillside.. I spent a day there once and a long time talking to the
Thomsons. What his website carefully doesn't mention, is that as well as
the rockdust, he spreads hundreds of tons of municipal compost (the
stuff councils make from their green-waste collection services). That's
what really creates the soil fertility imho.

http://www.sepa.org.uk/news/releases...p?id=96&y=2004

properly acknowledges that SEERS combines large-scale managed waste
with the rockdust, and provides a more realistic account imho ( read
down to what John Ferguson says.)

I'm not decrying what SEER achieves, but understand that a dressing
of Scottish quarry dust (that's what he uses; granite quarry iirc) will
not, on its own, make infertile/exhausted soil produce heavy crops. I
would also be surprised if Scottish rock dusts could "remineralise"
depleted soils in Africa which are geologically unrelated.

Janet

A very fair critique.
Whilst I applaud SEER for their work I really think that they let themselves
down by extolling the virtues of ground granite.
It contains the same trace elements that would be obtained from a variety of
other sources.
AFAIK it increases acidity slightly and that's about it.
In fairness to SEER they do not make the same outrageous claims that are
being chucked around by others