Complete Circle Nutrition

Program description

We follow the Kinsey/ Albreacht approach to soil balancing. Traditional agriculture and horticulture normally follows a plant budgeting approach. This is where the nutrients are added according to typical plant removal nutrient budgeting numbers. This ignores how nutrients, cation and anions interact in the soil. Many soils that are out of balance will have a low efficiency in converting nutrients from the soil into plant nutrients and impacting on animal and human nutrition.

As time goes by, when conventional methods are used more nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus is added in a top up approach, but more and more nutrients are leached or become biounavailiable to the plants. This is seen with soils tests showing nutrients present, but do not show on the tissue tests during the growing season - a significant lost opportunity.  

The answer is to follow the laws of chemistry to build your soils with the right structure of nutrient interactions. This will bring about improved soil structure that can be seen with the naked eye. Lastly, this will create an environment that will host beneficial microbes and stop the expensive use of fungicides and over use of herbicides.

Our program monitors the calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium and trace minerals and we design nutrient applications that will balance the soil. The program is provided as an application plan that can be followed according to your budget with nutrients clearly set out in priority to start the production gains in the first growing season. Some key principles managed are :

1. increase the calcium levels to allow for greater movement of nutrients
2. balance the calcium to magnesium ratio to improve soil structure and ensure optimum magnesium levels and to improve the nitrogen utilisation efficiency
3. correct the soil base saturation levels of calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium to optimise plant utilisation of soil nutrients
4. include vital trace minerals as the nutrient base saturation levels are balanced to ensure healthy plant growth and to build plant resistance to insect damage and disease pressures.

Applications

This program has been well proven in Australia and New Zealand, particularly in intensive dairy enterprises where it is used to improve milk production and reduce bacterial counts in milk. It has been used in cropping where it has improved yield and improved  the plants capacity to cope with frosts, insect pressures and disease pressures. 

It is also used in horticulture including the humble veggie garden. We see improved brix readings in vegetables indicating better sugar conversion through photosynthesis resulting in more nutritionally dense foods. 

There can be nothing more rewarding than producing your own food that is nutritional dense, easier to grow and produces better quantity, quality and flavour. It is one thing to be able to grow crops and vegetables, but it is through understanding of how nutrients interact that we can become better in growing nutrients, which is where our focus ought to be.

Please contact me for information on how our soil tests and nutrient planning  can make the difference in your production systems be it intensive, broad acre or the humble veggie garden.